Microsoft truly can’t get out of their own way … Windows 7 looks so good, yet we’ll have to suffer through a ridiculous number of SKUs when one would suffice. And the worst thing I’ve read yet on the topic is that Netbooks will get something called Starter Edition which limits you to 3 concurrent applications – who the hell wants that??
In a typical session I run Firefox (min 10 tabs), Pidgin, Twhirl or Tweetdeck, Ovi Suite and sometimes Evernote. I also usually add in iTunes or Last.fm for music. There are few processes like two-finger scroll, Jing and Dropbox running at all times and while I’m not sure if the smaller stuff would be blocked but it seems I would have to make a choice on the applications running. I would certainly NOT be able to fire up anything else like Skype for a video chat (which also works quite fine) without first closing down a bunch of stuff.
I run more than 3 applications at a time on my phones … come on Microsoft!
Update – Just ran across another source and it looks like Home Premium will be the standard netbook install for the higher end systems while Starter is really designed for emerging market low end systems.