Netbook + Windows 7

[KingAsix]

Alright I have a couple of things to do with some netbooks of mine and before I went on with my plans I thought it would b appropriate to ask a couple fo question to make sure I don't completely waste my time here. Both netbooks are Acer Aspires if that matters

1.Would it be okay to put Windows 7 Ultimate or anything but starter on my netbook. Reason I ask because awhile back I heard Windows 7 Starter was made for netbooks

2a.Would it be bad for my netbook to be triple booted. I want Windows XP on there, but I already have Windows 7 starter and Unbuntu but I don't want to remove unbuntu.

2b.On one netbook I was thinking about putting just Windows XP on there by itself......would that be bad.

 

[purplesludge]

1. Should be completely fine don't know about aero though.
2a. Probably not
2b. Netbooks used to come with xp installed.

 

[ZeroHikari]

1. I have win 7 Pro from University and its fine for the first couple of weeks, then it goes weird and you need to clean it up properly.
I also would recommened having turbo-mode from Tune-up 2011 on when you really need it to keep it sped up and working, or just disable Aero

2a.Haven't tried a triple-boot, usually best to dual-boot

2b. most Netbooks used to have XP, its usually recommended.

 

[KingAsix]

Whats this aero being mentioned

 

[purplesludge]

It's what makes windows look nice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero

 

[marcus134]

aero is not included in win 7 starter, it's better to not activate it on most netbooks ( if supported by the netbook)

dual boot, triple boot, ..., n boot! multiboots are all the same. As long as you have enough space on your hdd ( or ssd) for the os and other stuff it'll be alright. Since you use a linux distro, it's usually recommended to use GRUB to manage your multiboot loading.

 

[KingAsix]

Yea I use a GRUB to manage my multiboot....REason I asked about the triple boot is because I want to try XP on my netbook to see if it helps it run any faster, but I just want to try it right now

 

[Harsky]

I have an MSI Wind Netbook and I installed Windows 7 Ultimate on it. Still have no problem to this day. The great thing about Windows 7 is that I installed on laptops as old as 2002 and it STILL runs Windows Ultimate.

 

[_Chaz_]

I used to have Windows 7 starter on my netbook, which worked pretty well but was way to limited for my tastes. I moved up to Home Premium, which worked pretty well but sapped a lot of resources. I then used Ubuntu, which gave the best performance, but I'm a Linux noob, so I went to Windows XP.

Windows XP works better than the Windows 7s, but Ubuntu ran and looked the best. It's only because I couldn't figure it out that I switched.

 

[prowler]

I have a Acer Aspire One and Windows 7 (with Aero) runs just fine. I do not recommend Starter since it sucks really bad.

I can run Chrome, Steam, Zune, Pidgin and Terraria at the same time and not notice any lag (Zune has some at times but you probably don't use Zune).

As long as you don't run heavy programs, it's fine.

 

[Mantis41]

They key to running 7 on an older or underpowered machine is to cut down on the number of processes being run. If your lower left taskbar is full of crap you don’t even know what it does then get rid of it. It’s a bit like trying to get a fast lap time out of a tiny engine. Take off all the excess weight, rip out the rear seat, door trims and spare tire and it will go like stink. If you want all the trimmings of a Bentley then you are going to need a V12 5.0L engine to run it.

‘MSCONFIG’

It seems every program these days wants to have a background process or two running. Most of these aren’t required and add little value. There are also 3rd party apps for doing standard windows tasks like wireless networking. Get rid of it. The windows apps won’t look as pretty but they are more than functional. Run MSCONFIG and un-tick everything apart from security or virus programs. If you loose functionality and just can’t live without a missing feature then just re-enable it.

Here is an example of my MSCONFIG window. You can see all the items that have been un-checked.

Spoiler

Try and get the number of running processes on boot to under 52. It’s not easy but things will run so much better if you can live without the crap running.

Spoiler

As for Aero, as long as you have a dedicated video chip, ATI or NVidia for example it seems to take very little resource to run it. I have a T42 laptop with a 64MB ATI 9600 graphics chip. I notice very little difference with Aero on or off. The only small thing was you need to patch the catalyst drivers to run on some laptops. HPs for instance won’t allow catalyst reference drivers to run and so Aero refused to play ball with my old dinosaur. Hacking the catalyst drivers I think around revision 8.3 worked perfectly.

 

[shadowmanwkp]

Now that we're on the subject of msconfig, you might as well look at the services tab. Here you can find programs that will always run with windows. Not all of it are necessary though. Take for example fax, i don't know any home user who used his or her laptop to fax with. Other services that can easily be turned off are parental controls and remote connection, the latter of which is actually a security risk if you never use it. Do note though that you SHOULD NOT turn off programs without knowing what they will do, it could be that you have disabled a crucial service and therefore you're missing quite a lot of functions.

Other things that slow down a laptop are temporary files that clutter your hard disk. A good program to clean it up with is Ccleaner (piriform.com). It does not only look at temporary files, but it can also clean the registry (do backup first, before deleting stuff). It also provides a little shortcut to some msconfig functions.

Lastly, if you have deleted all you clutter on your hard drive, you should defragment it. Depending on the size of the drive and how many files you've deleted, you can get some good results out of it. You can get a lot of speed out of this because defragmentation rearranges the files on your hard drive so that they're closer together.

 

[Holified 2x]

I'm currently running windows 7 ultimate on a notebook i have to say it no difference performance wise if u not planing on gaming with the thing . .

 

[doyama]

Alright I have a couple of things to do with some netbooks of mine and before I went on with my plans I thought it would b appropriate to ask a couple fo question to make sure I don't completely waste my time here. Both netbooks are Acer Aspires if that matters

1.Would it be okay to put Windows 7 Ultimate or anything but starter on my netbook. Reason I ask because awhile back I heard Windows 7 Starter was made for netbooks

2a.Would it be bad for my netbook to be triple booted. I want Windows XP on there, but I already have Windows 7 starter and Unbuntu but I don't want to remove unbuntu.

2b.On one netbook I was thinking about putting just Windows XP on there by itself......would that be bad.

1) Windows 7 Starter was just a 'low cost' version of Windows 7 for netbooks just so they could keep the costs of the units down, thus allowing the netbooks main advantage, cost, to stay relevant. Many things don't work on Starter, but to be honest whether you'd actually miss any of those features depends on your situation. Go over the feature set and decide whether you want to go with Starter. Note that you can't actually 'buy' starter, it's only available via OEM's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

2a) Nothing wrong with dual/triple/quad booting. You just have to be careful about installing Windows since that tends to wipe out the MBR with it's own bootloader if you just blindly 'click through' the installer. There are lots of tutorials to address this and maintain GRUB if you so desire.

2b) XP is now a fairly poor choice of OS especially in the netbook/notebook range. Note that stuff like hibernation/suspend were at best 'random' on XP. They work much better, faster, and more consistently on Win7. I wouldn't go to XP unless you ABSOLUTELY had to, because some archaic hunk of crap software your corporation needs to run on XP or you're going to be losing $1 million an hour if it's not working (true story). Barring such extreme circumstances it's much better to go with Win7.