Windows 7 = magic bullet?
I fail to see how anybody can perceive that MS will make Windows 7 quicker than Vista, I'd be amazed even if that OS runs on netbooks.
Look at M$ history of Windows releases, each and every progressive release has increased the size of the OS by varying degrees. As a result, has also been accompanied by a need for more modern hardware and increased specifications, to support all the extra services and features.
Windows 7 now looks like it'll have full voice support and multi-touch, and everybody will expect all the extra Vista gubbins to go with it- Aero interface, Windows Presentation Foundation, UAC, Hyper-V and VHD support, etc etc. This stuff doesn't come CPU/memory usage free.
Even if they could, it relies on the fact that W7 will be flawless out of the box, just look at the long running issue with slow file copies/deletions etc on Vista, pre SP1. And now we've got a shedload of patches on Vista already and SP2 is on the way already.
I bet anybody here a grand that W7 will be bigger, and will not run well on these small low powered netbooks, esp with todays specs, even with an Intel Atom chip.
...That is of course unless they release a different version specifically for netbooks, with a hell of a lot of the bloat ripped out.