Dear netbook: thank you for Windows 7

[Slimy]

When a new market of small-factor computers became very popular last year, Microsoft wasn't feeling too hot. Linux and Windows XP were being used, and the consumers buying these PCs were not able to take advantage of all the hard work that had gone into Vista. It didn't matter that with Vista SP1, the operating system was running better than its XP on higher-end machines. New computers don't necessarily mean better, faster, stronger anymore. Netbooks mean smaller, cheaper, lighter, and many consumers are quite happy to use XP, the operating system they had gotten used to during Vista's unusually long development. Microsoft simply did not foresee this new trend occurring when it was working on Vista; the demand for the inexpensive netbooks began to skyrocket even before the economic downturn.

Full Story: Dear netbook: thank you for Windows 7 - Ars Technica

 

[myzr7]

Thanks for the news Slimy. I'm crazy for one of them Netbooks gonna have me one soon with Seven on it I hope.

 

[bearhawk]

Thanks for the news Slimy. I'm crazy for one of them Netbooks gonna have me one soon with Seven on it I hope.

I have 7048 running on a ACER Aspire One AOA150 with only a gig on memory. Although Initial boot does take 45 seconds, to resume from hibernation only takes 20 seconds, and from sleep is just a few seconds.

It is plenty fast for what you use a netbook for, everything works except the webcam. But I haven't dug into that too much. I do get some unknown "Base System Device". So one of these days I'll dig into it again.

The only thing I don't like with the Acer is the crazy place they but the touchpad buttons. But it is hard to hate the thing for too long. It's just to convenient to grab and use on the couch. And with over 5 hours of battery life you can use it a lot.

 

[ibocpro]

Hi Everyone!

I have a Asus eee EPC1000HE and it runs Win7 very well. I have Areo enabled, movies on second partition, music, and even a few hidden object games.. The only app that seems to be a bit much is Media Center, it runs music, movies, and video with out issue but the interface gets choppy. Other than that one app everything else runs great! It is also very fast! Actually boots faster than my desktop, looking in to that..:huh:

I strongly reccomend Win7 on netbooks, just have to play with the drivers to enable unique functions, hotkeys etc. Win7 loaded all drivers except LAN on install and ran fine. Took a while to find adapted AHCI driver but that was the only one, after that just installed drivers from Asus in XP mode. That enabled all hot keys and shortcuts.

I did put a 2gb stick of RAM in, only $20 on Newegg so worth is weight in gold there. Also got a slim external DVD for it but that was just for fun, not really needed as flash drives really take the place.

Overall the eee runs excellent, the little atom cpu is the N280 @ 1.66Ghz with the 667MHz FSB and I have to admitt that little dual core is fast at only 5 watts! If you are in the market for a netbook make sure you get the N280, it is much faster than the N270. Also for the $20 get the 2gb RAM upgrade.

Cheers!

PS, used build 7000