Surprised nobody thought of ... ahem ...

Yes, I too have Win7 + Office running on an EEE netbook, and it works very nicely thanks... but it is appropriate for a project like OLPC ?? I don't think so.

LOL, OLPC itself is asking MS to release Win7 for ARM dude, wake up.

Who's talking about translation? Just release WinXP or Win7 for ARM and the relevant MS software suites that the rest of the ecosystem will slowly build. Adobe et al will just port their relevant software from WinNT/x86 to WinNT/ARM, certainly better than use WinCE. And how can you use WinCE+Azure in OLPC if most of them will be used in circunstances where net connection is not always (ever?) available? Think about it.

"so MS (has) have a "window" of opportunity to come up with a revamped WinCE + Azure solution."
I think you are forgetting it is about the OLPC, and what about the Mesh networking, perhaps not something for WinCE.

A test system with a problem - wow, who would have thunk it ??

Yes, I too have Win7 + Office running on an EEE netbook, and it works very nicely thanks... but it is appropriate for a project like OLPC ?? I don't think so.

Getting existing x86 apps ported to ARM without a defined commercial market, is probably unlikley, and while an x86-ARM translator-emulator is a possibility, the performance hit may not be acceptable on such a low-powered CPU.

As per my earlier post, OLPC on ARM is unlikely to ramp up quickly, so MS have a "window" of opportunity to come up with a revamped WinCE + Azure solution.

Storms building in Microsoft's Azure cloud
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/444/1051444/storms-building-microsoft-cloud

Wow, putting your apps and data in unreliable servers thousands of miles away and access them via an unreliable network that can fail at any node... sheer genius. And do all that using WinCE!

My Atom netbook with a good SSD runs Windows7, Office 2007 and Firefox perfectly today, thank you very much.

MS probably has XP and Seven for ARM running in their labs right now, together with full MS Office for ARM. But they will release them only if ARM netbooks become a real hit, which is much less likely if there is not MS windows for them to start with (and yes, WinCE is garbage). Google still have a long way to go until they have an OS that's a real contender, unless they invest HEAVILY on it. Apple is way better positioned, but they would release OS X only for THEIR hypothetical ARM netbooks.

I don't claim to know any more than anyone else, but I think Apple's sub-netbook could well use an ARM core. Basically it will be an iPhone / MacBook hybrid. Clam-shell or tablet? Could be either.
Why would Apple do this? Well, they wouldn't want the sub-netbook to eat into MBA sales, and linking it to the iPhone/iPod Touch product lines ensures that. Also, they have a ready-made Apple iTunes App Store ready to sell the applications for the sub-netbook!

I liked SUSE, before it was taken over by Novell. Today, I find far too many interesting software packages missing in SUSE (that includes "Open"SUSE). Personally, I use Gentoo now. Other people may find Ubuntu more preferable.

In fact, Ubuntu sees ARM not only as an alternative to the x86 architecture, but as a part of a new market, called embedded devices. Serving the four markets - server, desktop, notebook/netbook and embedded - with one set of operating system and applications - Linux - might be the right strategy to beat Microsoft, and Microsoft's organ donors ("partners").

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmbeddedUbuntu

I must disagree. The solution for these platforms is NOT to port a large OS like Win7 so that standard apps can be run on it. Instead, the trend will be to more lightwieght platforms such as WinCE and running apps via a cloud service such as MS's own Azure platform.

I must agree that arm is a very important market that is on its way to the moon. There is no doubt in my mind that the trend towards power and thermal responsible designs is the future. It really is embarrassing that in over 20 years of notebook design the power management on x86 is still a major hurdle.
It is stupid for MS to ignore the future of world computing, people are using their mobiles to access the internet more and more. Who has time to sit on the desk and burn an hour or two when you could just load up the INQ from your phone? Now if you only you could post over the phone.

MS is not being stupid, just pragmatic.

MS's most important business partner is Intel.

Intel have already demonstrated that they can produce a *nix OS if they want to.

MS already have a heap of work on their plate.

Why invest a bunch of time & money in a dubious project, and screw their most important partner in the process ?

OLPC on ARM will not ramp up quickly, and that gives MS time to come up with an updated Win-CE solution for it, using their Azure technology.

Is it commercially supported supported Novell SuSE or OpenSuSE being talked about? I do suspect that MS had a hand in this, given it is Novell.

If non-x86 became a significant share of the PC market (even netbook) then MS would have to look at porting Win to new hardware, and I doubt that would go well.

Google will be happy to supply an OS to ARM netbooks, specially since netbooks was the only computer segment that showed profit in 2008. It will be google's chance to attack MS in their own field. MS is very, very stupid by not releasing WinNT for ARM, as WinCE or Mobile suck, and Google will take advantage of it (even Apple has MacOS X running on ARM!).

Just because Suse is not making a distro for ARM does not mean the community, ie. OpenSuse won't.

There is not much money for MS on netbooks and apparently there is not much money for Novell either (or money within Novell to do it).
But somebody will deliver Linux on ARM as it is possible.
I have a feeling that those who produce the hardware, the netbooks should put some more effort and money into mastering the Linux echo system.

for their buddies MS to do anything like that.
Not that I'm saying theres any link - I mean a bit of thought and recompile your linux and it should run on Arm and what possible sales. Moonlight woudnt be a goer on a netbook tho...