Microsoft's partners really want that hardware refresh.

The latest news on that front -- fed by Dow Jones Newswires out of Taipei -- comes with Intel's vice president of the sales and marketing group and general manager for the Asia-Pacific region, Navin Shenoy, telling reporters that Intel expects the upcoming Windows 7 to, to quote the article, "stimulate demand for corporate personal computers in 2010."

The article also paraphrases another company executive as saying corporate demand may take some time to fully ignite, thanks to companies' IT budgets still being under pressure from the economy.

That news story adds to Intel's steady drumbeat throughout the summer about Windows 7, starting back in July with executive vice president (and chief sales and marketing officer) Sean Maloney contending that adoption of Windows 7 would go faster than adoption of Windows Vista. Then, on Sept. 1, Microsoft and Intel held a joint press conference where they demonstrated how Windows 7 will supposedly offer better processor performance and battery life than Vista.

It's easy to see why Intel's pushing so hard on the "more demand for Windows 7-equipped computers" front; few other companies (aside from Microsoft, obviously) have so much riding on the Oct. 22 rollout of the new operating system. If there is no Windows 7-powered tech refresh, and PC sales stay moribund, that's bad news for Intel.

True, netbooks will likely continue to sell in massive quantities in the short term, but Intel stands to make less per unit off those lower-end processors than it could if nearly every business in America decided that an office of brand-spanking-new machines was in order for the first quarter of 2010.

(Which reminds me -- on Saturday, I received a postcard from Verizon offering a netbook if I signed some sort of phone deal. The netbook was advertised as "just like a laptop, only smaller and lighter." Ha. Hahaha. I would love to be a fly on the wall of Verizon's customer service hive when the calls start pouring in from irate customers, wondering why their new "just like a laptop" devices refuse to run games or any sort of memory-intensive application without bursting into merry flames.)

The worst-case scenario for Microsoft and Intel is that a sizable percentage of customers -- particularly corporate ones -- will want to stick with their old machines installed with Windows XP or Vista, rather than upgrade immediately to Windows 7. (If you want a case that, in many ways, demonstrates the urgency with which Microsoft is trying to nudge its users forward, even though those users continue to purchase XP, take a look at Russia's recent anti-monopoly probe of Microsoft, concluded in Redmond's favor on Sept. 7, focused on whether Microsoft had been cutting back on supplies of XP in order to prod users onto newer Windows operating systems.)

If that happens, certainly Microsoft would experience a few quarters of reduced revenue, as PC sales remained stagnant and adoption of Windows 7 proceeded at a steady but unspectacular pace. The economy is the big question mark in the whole equation -- until businesses feel ready to spend again, no matter how old their machines are, Microsoft and Intel risk not receiving the explosive burst in revenue that would come if IT procurers rushed out to upgrade both their hardware and software.

And the economy is the one thing out of anyone's hands. All Microsoft and Intel can do is push their marketing departments as hard as possible, continue to have their executives push that line about an upgrade/refresh -- and pray.