While the advantages of moving Windows to ARM-based silicon are numerous, mainly in the performance/battery life ratio, Microsoft needs to move even faster, so as to ensure at least some presence in the tablet world. By this year's holiday season Honeycomb slates and iPads will be everywhere in our homes, and the tablet would have received enough critical mass of popularity for Microsoft to swoop in and grab some share with its robust driver and legacy software support. Even with the iPad enterprise adoption it is still raking in about $100 per device in access and license fees to its corporate software.
Excited about Windows 8 on ARM-based chipsets? We'll be when we hear what battery life can Microsoft give us. Windows 7 was sped up because of Vista's lackluster acceptance, and now Microsoft is moving even faster with Windows 8 as the competition is threatening to marginalize it altogether if it doesn't move along.