Microsoft eases HDD capacity limits for netbooks

In a move to make Windows XP powered netbooks more appealing for OEMs and consumers, Microsoft has eased their restrictions on hard drive capacity for XP-based netbooks from 80GB to 160GB. Already ASUS and MSI have announced 160GB Eee and Wind netbooks that utilize larger capacity drives.

Processing power, HDD capacity, and RAM have been major limitations of netbooks in comparison to traditional notebooks, so the larger HDD should make netbooks more attractive to consumers. At the same time however, OEMs will have to walk a fine line between adding features without dramatically increasing price: netbooks are increasingly reaching price parity with fully-fledged notebooks.