From the website, only Windows 7 Professional is supported at this point. Are there any plans to support Windows 7 Starter at this point. Maybe we need to move to the Atom 6XX series. Maybe they, 6XX, supports Windows 7 from the get go. I have not heard of MS stopping the sale of XP but then again I may have missed it.
This sub forum give me a little pause for fit-pc's support for Windows7, because, like it or not W7 is the future. I will like to purchase 10 units for an internet cafe, but I am not sure I can justify the expense for '7 Pro. I guess this may be a question for irads. Thanks for any help.

Look at the official end of sale notice at [1], it says:

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The Atom Z600 series is not meant for PCs and is lacking some legacy interface required by Windows. Linux will run fine on a Z600. However, Intel recently announced another Atom brand. They split up the Z series into Z - now used for smartphones and such - and E versions. Atom E600 have the legacy interface back and can power Windows PCs; it is marked for the embedded market. I don't know if Microsoft offers - or will offer - special priced Windows 7 Starter editions for this E600 series, I would rather belief they want to push the N series... Anyways, I doubt we will see an fitPC3 using any of the Atom 600 CPUs in the near future.
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Let's see what irads says, but usually they keep silent and announce a product if they are somewhat ready to go..

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... -sale.aspx

There is no need to purchase Windows 7 pre-installed. If you want to purchase Home-Premium or Basic it can be purchased elsewhere and installed on fit-PC2.
Unfortunately Microsoft does not offer Windows 7 Starter for nettops.

Regarding Atom E600 - I think fly's overview was very good.
I cannot discuss future products.

Fit pc folks may want to see this: http://liliputing.com/2010/09/habey-upd ... 0-cpu.html

The competition is already using the E600 and GMA600, a successor to the GMA500. Competition is always good.

By the way thanks for the posting.

The clock the E600 rather low (currently they ship up to 1.3GHz, compared to 2GHz for haven't looked at benchmarks) and their default case hasn't changed quite much in the last years. It looks rather large. 1,8" HDD, don't know if I like this or not. When not comparing to fitPC2 but to their own Z500 unit: They skipped the CF slot, thats quite bad :/. Are they shipping by now? Price information?

Comparing GMA600 to GMA500 is like a nobrainer. For what I read, they are based on the same PowerVR core - just higher clocked. We have 1080p support on GMA500 so I really don't see where this upgrade wants to score. The main weakness will be - just like gma500 - driver support. This is the windows subforum, so no ranting about linux support, but even windows drivers aren't in a good shape. They are usable, but core problems still remain. Let's wait how software side will develop -- for both, gma500 and gma600.

I might sound quite pessimistic, but Z600/E600 aren't that cool. They are way better than current poulsbo. E600 is a lot more than just a solid service release. It will likely replace poulsbo setups sometime, but the overall situation wont change. Same market, slightly better performance. No big deal.

You can compared the Z500 to E600 line at [1]. Be aware that I chose E680 vs Z530 vs PCH EG20T vs SCH US15W to have products at the same clock level. You need to compare the chipsets as well, as E600 series incorporated more in the CPU itself. Keep in mind, that information provided there might not be complete by now.

[1] http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=5 ... 2501,35444,

The E6XX+EG20T does have slightly higher power consumption, but uses more upgraded chipset with native SATA support and 4x PCIe lanes. Also the RAM speed is almost double. And the interesting thing, the EG20T is not mandatory, you can have a complete PC without it (which would make the size even smaller).

A note about RAM - it is 32bit wide in E6xx compared to 64bit in Z5xx - so overall memory bandwidth is reduced despite the higher memory clock rate. Bear in mind that graphics is UMA - so significant portion of memory bandwidth is serving the display.