PC makeover with Best Buy $1,199.99Test drive: Windows 7 on a Netbook
Still semijetlagged from Las Vegas, one of the very first items on our to-do list was to install the now widely available Windows 7 beta on a Netbook.
From off-the-record conversations with PC makers during CES, we heard that Windows 7 played well with systems powered by Intel's Atom CPU--which is something we generally can't say about Vista. (Although it's also worth noting that Vista, while making for a somewhat sluggish user experience, actually performed reasonably well in benchmark testing on Sony's new Vaio Lifestyle PC minilaptop, which combines an Atom with a more appropriate 2GB of RAM.)
We quickly installed the 32-bit version of Windows 7 on a typical Netbook. The installation went smoothly, and the OS seemed to run well at first glance, but our wireless card wasn't detected initially. We eventually got that sorted out, and ran our iTunes benchmark test for a quick speed comparison (our test system had an Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB 5,400rpm HDD).
As the iTunes test is CPU focused, we weren't totally surprised to find similar scores, with XP completing the test in 743 seconds, and both Vista (with graphics options set for Vista Basic) and the Windows 7 beta hitting 760 seconds. (Note: lower scores indicate better results.)
While our quick benchmark testing did not show a Win 7 advantage, we can say that in anecdotal use, the Windows 7 interface responded quicker and hung less frequently than Vista, where just opening the Start Menu or My Documents folder can be a slog. We're cooking up some additional tests right now, and will report their results shortly.
It remains to be seen if Windows 7 is really a viable candidate for Netbooks (although Microsoft is purportedly working on a Netbook-specific build of the new OS), but if it is, this may finally give Microsoft the excuse it needs to retire the long-serving XP operating system. In the slide show below, you can see some photos of Windows 7 up and running on our test Netbook.
New York native Dan Ackerman, a former radio DJ turned journalist, has written about technology and music for publications including Spin, Blender, The Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today. He hosts the weekly Digital City podcast and the New York edition of Editors' Office Hours. Dan's new album, Tales Out of Night School, is available now. E-mail Dan.
Former radio DJ turned
journalist Dan Ackerman grew up in the Bronx and now lives in
Manhattan. He’s covered music, technology, and video games for
more than 10 years. His latest album, Tales Out of Night School
is available now. 
Joseph Kaminski,
when not juggling the dual demands of parenthood and HD gaming, is a
life-long Manhattanite and can be found testing the latest tech in
CNET’s Lab. 
Julie Rivera grew up
and currently resides in Brooklyn. When she's not deejaying,
bartending, or fixing gadgets for friends on the outside, you'll find
her testing, troubleshooting and developing benchmarks for laptops in
the "fish bowl" known as CNET Labs. 
Scott Stein, CNET's
newest laptops editor, was born in Queens and grew up a Long Islander -
and is now raising a kid in NYC. In addition to covering games and
tech, writing screenplays, and performing improv in seedy downtown
establishments, he's also a die-hard, season-ticket-holding Jets fan.
I recommend first downloading the WiFi driver for your card while you still have XP or Vista running on your laptop, and then install Windows 7. That way, if your WiFi card doesn't install the driver, you can just plug in your flash drive with the driver and install it from there. Or if you have another PC in the house, you could just download the driver from that one.
By the way, Windows 7 is faster, mainly in startup and shutdown, and I think you'll like the changes.
Hope it all goes well!
Andrew
Overall it works nice, and boots faster than XP. I think the beta doesn't handle networking cards (wifi or lan) very well (I have the beta on a desktop and now it confuses my lan card for a wifi card.). Also, the gadget system is bugged. It broke on both of my machines, and I cannnot seem to fix it and turn it back on.
Once Microsoft fixes these issues, Win 7 will be very nice.
The question is: Will they make it run with 2 GB of hard drive space or less?
We are running Windows 7 Ultimate on a Acer Aspire Netbook..
It has a 1.6 GHZ ATOM CPU, 80 GIG HD, 1 gig of Ram...
I have to say we are very impressed. I would recommend though 2 gigs of ram. WIndows 7 holds about 500 megs of ram. Much better then Vista's 800 plus megs...
It boots in about 40 seconds...
Networking is easy on it...it creates something called a homegroup...finds printers connected to the network instantly without any configuring...
All in all...seems much less of a resource hog then vista....and much more stable and better for networking...
Our company does a lot of work with residental users and i can see the benefits right off the bat as many clients of ours love wireless printers and file sharing. Windows 7 seems to really shine there.
BigK
Most of what I see is normal portables for people in public (airports, starbucks, ...), not netbooks. I try to ask the people with Netbooks(?) what are they using ( XP or linux) I have never seen a linux netbook in a public place, other than at a retail store where the netbook looked abused. Somehow, it makes me think that when CNET sends out the email "newsletter" (?) it is somewhat like the National Enguirer, trying to make a story out of something.
Look forward to seeing more Netbooks, that being said, the only time I really bring a portable, I need a database with me, so ... thinking the next one might be a 14" with Vista short-term, or Windows 7. Back to real life, ...
Using Windows is so much less advanced than Linux in every respect it defies all my rational powers to understand why anyone would voluntarily use Windows (if they had a choice). Not only is the operating system much better, there are over 8,000 excellent open source applications.
Using Windows is physically painful for me, it's so bad.
As for Macs, their hypnotic marketing doesn't really grab me. Apple is a huge multinational corporation just like Microsoft, They have successfully convinced consumers to pay more for comparable computing power.
I just want my electronic devices to be affordable and functional.
For the record I have it running on a Dell XPS 630i Quad Core with 4 GB ram, dual nVidia SLI 9800GT video cards, X-Fi ExtremeGamer audio and 2 x 700GB hard drives and it is using much less resources and the interface is snappier than Vista. It installed in approx 25 minutes and I have boot times under 25 seconds. Not a single problem with drivers or software compatibility.
Just for fun I installed it on a 5 year old Toshiba Tablet PC and the same on a 5 year old Dell 8300N desktop PC and both installed in less than 25 minutes and I didn't have a singlew problem with drivers. Both boot in around 26 seconds and use way less resources than Vista.
http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/notebooks/MSI_Wind/
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by jpblock82
January 16, 2009 10:03 PM PST
- I've installed Win7 on my Dell Mini 9. 16GB STEC (OEM) SSD, running 2GB RAM. I have to say, I'm in love :) I had to install a few drivers (Jmicron for the SD slot, and Synaptics touchpad). After install the brightness slider in power options was buggy (would bounce side to side). I installed a BIOS update and this fixed the problem. I'm running Chrome, and have only installed Flash, Java, Foxit Reader (adobe reader sucks!), and Avast Free. No productivity suite installed, (Google Docs Rocks!) and have no files saved on the SSD, got an 8GB SDHC for that. The 16GB SSD shows 6.97 free of the 14.3GB available. I'm very impressed with this beta and look forward to the final release. I hate Vista, so this a welcomed changed. Keep it up MS.
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by gymnasia96
March 31, 2009 9:29 PM PDT
- How did you install Windows 7 on to the Dell mini 9?
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