BleepingComputer.com: Windows 7 on netbook

Greets all,

I've been thinking of installing Win 7 on my netbook. It's an Acer aspire, with a 160HD, 1.6GHz cpu, and 1GB ram, running Windows XP Home.

What does everyone think of that? On a google search,
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&sour...mp;aq=f&oq=

Apparantely Windows 7 eats a lot more power than the current XP on the netbook, thus draining the battery faster. However some of the articles are older, so I'm wondering if perhaps MS has done anything to it since.

Also, stores now have a lot of netbooks pre-loaded with Win 7 starter. A lot of them have similar specs as of mine. Do they really get less battery life than mine or is the fact that 7 uses more battery power perhaps not as big?

Thanks ;)

Well, Windows 7 has a slightly bigger footprint than XP does, but it is still way better than Vista (imagine Vista on a netbook: excruciatingly long boot times, with lots of lag). But Windows 7 should be somewhere in the middle (I'd say closer to XP than Vista). I tried some of the Windows 7 Starter netbooks at BestBuy the other day, and they were still pretty snappy. XP has amazingly low RAM usage, but I couldn't check the Task Manager on those Win7 netbooks to see what it was averaging (they disable it to keep people from screwing with them). As for the battery usage, I don't think you will see any major changes switching from XP to 7. But it is something to look for.

I'm going to be ordering the Samsung GO N310-13GO netbook within a week, and I plan to put Windows 7 Professional on it as soon as I get it. First though, I'm going to boot off an Acronis True Image rescue disk (before I do the first normal boot) and make a full backup of the factory fresh XP. This is in case the Windows 7 is too slow. I don't expect it will be, but I want to take precaution just in case. If it is, I can go right back to that factory fresh backup of XP. But it would have to be pretty slow in Win7 for me to do that (I like 7 that much, that I'm willing to sacrifice a little performance). But if the Windows 7 is fine, I'll probably still keep the factory image just because I can.

You can go ahead and do what I'm planning on doing (grab a system image, install 7, test it, then decide whether or not to revert back to XP), or you can wait for me to try it first. I'm going to do it either way (whether you try it first or not). If you want to save yourself the hassle, you can just wait a couple weeks, and I'll report back with my findings. Or if you're the adventurous type, you can try it yourself. Whatever you want to do. The specs on the one I'm getting and your specs are pretty much identical, so the differences in performance between mine and yours would be marginal (very small). Like I said, you could just let me do all the testing.

I think Windows 7 will run just fine, if you're bold enough to try it without saving your XP first. But you should always backup your system whenever you do something major, such as a new operating system. And you should also do periodic backups, too.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the matter. What do you think?

That's a good idea to make a image of the HD before putting Windows 7 on it. Just a question though, if I did that and had to later restore the image, would everything still stay intact & work (including the product key) the same as that at the time of the image it was taken?

If you could let me know when you do it that'd be great. I like to experiment with stuff too, but I don't really have the time, what with school and all. I agree with you that performance-wise there shouldn't really be that much of a difference. But battery life is relatively important to me, as I use it for classes and I can't have Windows 7 using up all my juice faster than I can drink it xD (if that happens).

Also, another question that pops to mind is I see most netbooks at Future Shop / Best Buy run Windows 7 Starter. I know the starter edition comes with reduced features, but do they allow the netbooks to run faster / longer battery life than the ones with more features, such as Professional or Ultimate?

Yes, if you later restored the image, it would be exactly the same as when you took the image. Should be no errors, activation issues, etc....because what you did was take a complete snapshot of the hard drive (registry, hidden files, and all). When you restore back to that image, it's as if you never did anything at all to it (nothing changed as far as XP is concerned).

Yeah, I'm planning on ordering that netbook in the next couple days, and it should be here within a week of ordering it. Yeah, I probably don't have the time either (school will keep me pretty busy), but I'm going to do it anyway. haha. I'm tired of carrying around my big, heavy Dell as you can see in this topic. That's why I'm getting a netbook.

As for the battery life, even if 7 uses a smidgen more resources than XP, I don't think it will affect the battery life, and here's why. Windows 7 has great built in features that control performance and longevity. There are a lot more power options in 7 than there are in XP, such as "Dimmed display" which dims the display to a certain brightness after a specified amount of time. There a lot of other things that make it easier to save power or boost performance, if needed. So even if 7 does chug more juice than XP, if you have correct power settings, you should see almost the same battery life.

Yeah, Starter is pretty limited. You can't change the theme, background, colors, etc...without using a special third-party program. I tested in a virtual machine on my computer for a little while, but I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it, so I can't remember all that you can/can't do. It's exactly what it says it is: Starter. It's enough to get you on the internet, word process, etc....just be glad they didn't go through with that 3-open-program-limit they were going to put on it.

As for whether or not Starter is more efficient than the higher versions....well, it's kind of hard to say that it isn't. The features are so limited, you can't help but to think that it is using less resources than say Pro or Ultimate. But I mean, the only thing separating Starter from the other versions is the correct Product Key. If you went to Best Buy and a bought an Upgrade box (it's just an empty box with a product key inside), your Starter would magically change from Starter to whatever level you bought the Upgrade for (at least that's how it's supposed to work). And not to mention that every install disk has the stuff to be whatever version you want, it makes it all seem the same then.

So in this case as well, I don't think there will be that big of a difference in performance/longevity. It's hard to know without testing it, but my educated guess says that it won't.

I'm going to watch a couple more video reviews of that netbook today, see if my local Best Buy carries it, and if all goes well, it should be here by the end of next week (the 22nd). After my testing, I'll report back.

Any other questions you have, I'll be glad to answer.

keyboardNinja, on Jan 10 2010, 08:04 AM, said:

lol ya, that's why I got a netbook too. Laptop was getting heavy to lug around.

keyboardNinja, on Jan 10 2010, 08:04 AM, said:

Good point, I didn't think of that. Maybe the reviews I found online didn't really take that into account.

keyboardNinja, on Jan 10 2010, 08:04 AM, said:

So does that mean that, whether I install Home Premium or Ultimate, either install would also take up the same disk space? lol and I'm glad they changed their mind about the 3-open-programs, that would have been a disaster.

keyboardNinja, on Jan 10 2010, 08:04 AM, said:

If you could let me know (particularly how long it'll last on a charge) that'd be great ;)
Oh, but you have a 6-cell, I only got 3-cell for now.

Thanks a lot, I guess I caught you at the right time :D

Windows 7 Home premium x86 ran fine on my laptop. It had the Intel Celeron M CPU @ 1.46GHz, 1GB RAM, and I had a 60GB HDD.
My RAM ran at 35-40% with no applications running, and the CPU ran good also. The only way my CPU would jump to 100% is when I converted videos, search my hard disc to recover deleted files, or watched 1080p videos. On my laptop, the battery life was the same as it was when I used Windows XP. Fully charged, on both OS, it lasted an hour using applications such as Word and Firefox.
So, I don't know the difference on battery life between netbooks and laptops, but the OS upgrade had absolutely no negative impact on my system.

^Well, a 6-cell in a netbook can last anywhere from 6-12 hours, while notebooks cap at about 6 (most are less at about 2-4) unless you have a massive 9-cell. As far as performance goes, the old Celerons have a faster fsb, but a slower clock speed. The Atom is a little zippier, and also has better power consumption. It's just meant for browsing and word processing anyway, which is all I'll be doing with it.

Sounds like you might need a new battery, urbanninja.

But yeah, I think the overall performance is going to be about the same (7 vs. XP).

funnytim, on Jan 11 2010, 04:24 AM, said:

Yep.

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It's certainly something to consider. We'll see how it plays out in the real world.

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I'm not certain about disk space (most likely would be very similar), but I can test that out in a virtual machine pretty easy. When I get back later today from my last class, I'll do a Starter vm and an Ultimate vm and compare disk usage (with just the bare-bones operating system, nothing more). I'm expecting them to be within 1GB of each other.

The real thing to take into consideration is the price!! I can get Professional for free from my University, or you can get it for $64.95 (used to be $29.95, but it went up at New Years) from Microsoft's Ultimate Steal if you have a valid .edu email address. Everybody else has to pay out the wazoo for it (unless you are a Technet subscriber).

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Well, a 6-cell will last a little less than twice the time a 3-cell would last, so you could at least get a rough estimate.

You're welcome.

My netbook shipped this morning, but it hasn't gotten into UPS's system yet. It should be here by Friday. I just hope I'm here when it comes, because I'll have to sign for it.

Well, here is the Starter install:



I gave it 1GB of RAM and a 16GB hard drive. Keep in mind with the CPU usage that it isn't close to what a real world scenario would be (a virtual machine without hardware assisted virtualization tends to crawl along). Just pay attention to the hard drive usage and RAM usage.

I'll have the Ultimate install ready in a couple hours....

What did I tell you?



Once again, ignore the CPU usage as it has no basis in reality. It only reflects how poorly my processor can run a virtual machine.

i Got it on my little acer netbook and it works fine. I haven't noticed any slow speeds what so ever. I think it runs better on a netbook.


uByte

Well, I wouldn't say better (unless you have a really old and slow laptop/desktop compared to a new netbook), but there won't be much difference.

Update on my netbook: it is in UPS's system now and has left the TigerDirect distribution warehouse. Estimated delivery is Thursday. I should have everything up and running on it by the end of the weekend.

As I suspected as well, you're right! :D

So performance/space wise that means it doesn't really matter which edition goes in (of course, that doesn't take into account cost)

yea, I also just ran Win 7 upgrade advisor and according to it my netbook is Win7 ready

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Cool, that's pretty quick! It's no hurry though, I probably won't actually get to putting Windows 7 on it for a bit anyway. But then and again I know you're just as eager to try it out ;)

By the way, to take a image of the whole computer would one use something like this?

Thanks again ;)

funnytim, on Jan 12 2010, 02:11 AM, said:

I was about to doubt myself when I saw that Starter was a little less than 6 gigs, but was reassured when Ultimate only took up a hair over 6 gigs (probably more language packs and themes or something).

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Exactly.

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Awesome!

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Yeah, they have pretty fast shipping. Yeah, I know when I get it, I'll be doing nothing but playing with it all weekend. Homework? What homework?

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I've heard that is a good one, but I was going to use Acronis just because I've used it before. The free trial is only good for 30 days, but you can make a bootable rescue disk that you can keep forever. I made a bootable flash drive that I'm going to stick in it as soon as I get it, and back up the factory fresh OS onto my external hard drive (as explained earlier in this topic).

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Once again, you're welcome.

Well, it came today. Look here for my first post on it (no reason to double post).

I took a screenshot while I was defragging it:



I've been busy installing programs on it, and just doing stuff on it. It runs pretty well. Not quite as fast as my big laptop, it's still snappy when I'm not doing demanding stuff like defragging, watching videos, installing programs, etc...

I think I'm just going to shrink the XP partition down to 20GB, then clean install Windows 7 on the rest. I think a dual-boot is what I need, anyway (so I can still use XP if need be).

Heh, here's a screenshot of the fresh install of Windows 7 Pro on it while I'm doing a full system image backup.



Memory usage is about twice what I thought it would be, but the processor runs the Aero affects just as well my Core 2 Duo in my big Dell (before I installed a single driver!!). I would have expected the snapping, preview, etc...stuff would have spiked the cpu usage, but it didn't. The only reason it's going up and down in the screenshot is because of the backup, but the system was still very responsive even with that going.

I did go ahead and order a 2GB stick of memory from Crucial because it will definitely need that. XP would have run fine without it, but 7 definitely needs that extra gig for breathing room. I would be functional without it, but I know I'll get better performance with the RAM upgrade.

I'm surprised at how well the cpu runs in Windows 7, but slightly disappointed at the RAM usage. But that is easily fixed with a quick upgrade (wouldn't have been able to upgrade the cpu if it had been crappy).

I'm happy with it.