Got a netbook running XP. Usual specs. Nice and snappy though. Because I'm a student I could use the new offer to get 7 for £30.. my laptop's memory card reader/touchpad driver wouldn't work with 7, but my netbook would be fine Is it worth it? Would I lose performance?
Windows 7 is definitely worth getting on a decent laptop or desktop, but for a Notebook it might struggle if it doesn't meet the recommended system specs.
The standard version of windows 7 should work fine with a netbook even those with Intel 945-based graphics and Atom processors. it should still perform as good as XP as well.
My good friend nabbed a Gateway netbook a month ago and put 7 on it almost immediately. I've played with it and see no problem.
I think Win7 has better scalability than XP, so it should consume less power depending on what you're doing. If it's idle it should be able to cut the power usage down very low. I'm not 100% sure on this though, but I've read that this is one of the goals for MS, to put a more up-to-date, yet less demanding OS on netbooks, which Vista would never make it due to it's poorly optimized system.
I've been running Windows 7 Professional RTM on my Aspire One for about a month and it works beautifully. It's extremely stable and, as madhatter said, power consumption is more efficient. A rough estimate of how much more battery life I get is about 30-45 minutes. I'm also using a pretty crappy hard drive right now. The Western Digital Scorpio Blue I used to have in it gave me at least another 30 minutes of battery life by itself. But yes, if you have the means to get it, it is absolutely worth £30. Edit: grammars
I also have been running Win7 on my AA1 and in my experience its been running better then it did with XP. It may eat a little more disk space when compared to the XP SP2 (SP3 eats about the same) but I'd say it well worth it.
I have been thinking about upgrading my EEE pc 901 XP to Windows7, exactly how much disk space does it use? I'm already struggling with XP on my main partition (4gb), adobe software like photoshop/fireworks even if installed in other drives always installs about 500mb of crap per application in the system drive.
I've been running the x64 RC-1 for a while and currently my c:\windows folder piled up to 14.5G. I believe MS recommends something between 20 and 25 Gigs for c:. Also that XP mode patch has been released a few weeks ago, so any software that won't run under 7 should be possible to run from within XP mode - no idea if your netbook's CPU meets the virtualization requirements though.
I have Win7 RC1 running on my EEE PC 901. trim it down with vLite (remove everything you never need, like additional drivers, features and stuff). Than, after installing, move the user/appdata and program files folder to the second SSD (use NTFS junction to do it). the eeeForums had a nice little thread about it. And I get about 6.5h out of it. Runs well for internet browsing, e-mail, music and non HD video. Also use it for work (mostly displaying something I can't find the English equivalent). So yes, it's a very good idea to install Windows 7.
I read some article where a tech site installed 7 on a Toshiba Netbook and experienced 3 hours less battery life.. just Google something like 'Netbook battery windows 7' and you'll probably find what I did- that put me off, but reading these real experiences tempts me somewhat..
http://jkontherun.com/2009/09/24/mobile-tech-minutes-windows-7-performance-on-a-netbook/ might help you decide looks ok to me
Windows 7 runs quite well on both the Acer Aspire One (9 inch), MSI Wind U100, Gateway LT3103, haven't tried it on an EeePC 701 yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ran well. I've run Win 7 RTM 7000, RC1 and RTM on these machines, with each running pretty much the same (RTM is more polished obviously) I thought maybe I would get better speed from XP on the Gateway LT3103 (A Athlon 64 Powered 11") but the performance seemed about the same between 7 and XP. (Still looking for a semi cheap 4 gb single stick for it) I find connected to a NAS, you don't really need to worry about storage space, and with prices falling as they are, I've found NAS's for under a 100 bucks with a not to shabby HDD. Ryan
What version of windows 7 have people been installing on netbooks? I thought there was meant to be a netbook version of windows 7 and im wondering if its optimised at all for netbooks compared to windows 7 pro. (I have windows 7 pro free from my msdn subscription and might install on my netbook).
I believe there was going to be a specialized version of windows 7 coming out for netbooks and sub notebooks but not sure if they are still going to bring that out or what. If its still coming out I'd have thought that it would be the standard windows 7 pro/ultimate just optimized more for netbooks by removing stuff that's more suited to a full desktop machine.
