Taking care of business
You certainly can't accuse Microsoft of lacking pro-activity around the launch of Windows 7. Having been trying to persuade the world to upgrade to a Windows 7 PC for most of this year, it's decided to take matters into its own hands by selling the PCs itself.
This doesn't mean Microsoft has started making PCs, in the way it does peripherals, but it's effectively acting as an e-tailer for most of the major PC OEMs via its Microsoft Store.
You can now click on a tab market ‘Computers' and choose from a range of desktops, notebooks and netbooks from what looks like the ten biggest OEMs, bar Apple of course.
Unlike some other Microsoft sites, like PC-scout, this takes you all the way through to check-out. In other words, the commercial relationship is with Microsoft. Right now this seems to be a US-only thing, with the UK site still restricted to Microsoft software and peripherals.
Right now there are only ten notebooks, three netbooks and one desktop available. There are also no PCs from many of the OEMs listed, such as Samsung, Toshiba and Asus, while Dell has four. We can only assume there are more models to come, or Microsoft's going to have some moody OEMs on its hands.
