One of Microsoft's biggest threats has been Google's Chromebook line. Chromebooks have been relatively cheap and functional, primarily using the Chrome web browser for “apps.” Since Google doesn't charge high licensing fees for Chrome OS, and they've marketed the simplicity and virus-immunity heavily against traditional Windows laptops, Chromebooks have been steadily eating Microsoft's laptop market share from the bottom up.
It looks like competition is going to get a bit tougher on Google, however. Microsoft has announced a slew of cheap Windows 8 laptops will be coming from their partners in time for the holidays, primarily to compete against budget Chromebooks. HP has a $199 laptop in the works, as well as smaller 7 and 8 inch versions of these “Stream” computers for just $99. At that price range, that's going below even Chromebooks and competing against cheap tablets that have also taken a slice of the market.
Aside from HP, Acer and Toshiba have some laptops coming out running Windows 8.1 and using Intel's low-end Celeron processors. These laptops are hitting the $249 price point, and for the most part, the specs seem pretty decent. A good bit of this price drop is coming from Microsoft lowering Windows license fees for OEMs, allowing them to push out cheaper devices.
Time will tell if Microsoft can stand up against Google's extremely budget pricing and simple interface.
source: The Verge
I think the assumption that is being made is that the reason people are buying chromebooks is because of the price. That may not be a valid assumption. Chrome OS has its own merits. One of the many merits is that it can perform well on relatively low end hardware. I don’t think the same can be said for windows. In fact, I think putting windows on this hardware will make it extremely slow …. forget about upgrades. You also notice that they did not mention anything about security. This is because Chrome OS is much more secure than windows. The advantage that windows has is that it can run a whole slew of applications that have been written for it, however, I don’t think any of them would perform well on these configurations. Chrome OS will eventually be able to run Android apps, offering it a huge variety of applications as well.
5 of the 6 bullets in favor of Windows are frequent favorites of virus writers. The reason I gave a chromebook to my mom is that it does what she wants and is simple enough that even if it somehow contracts malware, it’s trivial for her to factory reset and go forward from there.