Many of Microsoft's ecosystem partners--the Dells and Intels of the world--have nearly as much riding on Windows 7 as Redmond itself. Consumers and businesses continue to use increasingly aged machines to perform daily tasks, with 80 percent of those still running Windows XP (according to a research report by Forrester). If the new operating system can convince them to upgrade to a new machine, then everyone from chip-makers to PC manufacturers also benefit.

So when Windows 7 launches tomorrow, a number of these partners will be waiting in the wings with their own marketing efforts, intent on using their own advertising muscle to help the operating system come strong out of the proverbial gate. One of those companies is Acer.

Acer's been having a pretty good 2009. An Oct. 14 report from IDC said that they had passed Dell as the second-most-popular producer of desktops and laptops, after Hewlett-Packard. To reach that position, the Taiwanese manufacturer shipped some 11 million PCs in the third quarter, an increase of 25 percent year-over-year. Much of this is thanks to netbooks, which consumers flocked to for their super-low price (always an asset in a moribund economy) and ultra-portability.

Acer makes around $20 billion annually in revenue now, but it wants to expand that to $30 billion in 2012. The key to that, Acer's SVP of Marketing Gianpiero Morbello told me during an Oct. 21 interview in New York, is the "big opportunity" inherent with moving into the enterprise side of computing.

If businesses participate in a massive tech refresh in order to upgrade their IT infrastructure to Windows 7, which could help Acer out with its goal. But Morbello seemed a bit more recalcitrant when it came to some of Microsoft's other plans for holiday 2009 and beyond.

Specifically, Microsoft plans to try to direct customers away from netbooks--which have been selling in great numbers but offer lower margins for both manufacturers and Microsoft, since they come installed with more stripped-down and lower-cost versions of Windows--towards what Steve Ballmer referred to this summer as "ultrathins."

That is to say, ultra-portable computers with more powerful processors capable of running more robust versions of Windows 7--at more of a premium.

"We want people to be able to get the advantages of lightweight performance and be able to spend more money with us," Ballmer told the audience at Microsoft's annual Financial Analyst Meeting on July 30.

But Acer plans on continuing to concentrate on the netbook market. "We will be focusing more on 10-inch," Morbello told me, and "not hiding focus on the 11- and 12-inch screens." That's not to say they won't be pushing into larger form factors, but for the moment, Acer doesn't seem to be forgetting what made them an increasingly formidable player in the first place.

"We cannot drive the market. It's the market driving us," Morbello told me. "We believe it is better to sell more PCs at the right price."

In what might very well irritate Microsoft, a version of the Acer Aspire One netbook is also running the Android OS as a dual-boot along with Windows. Then again, Microsoft may also be hoping that Windows 7 will make Android OS a non-player, at least when it comes to PCs.