Windows on a netbook
ONE of the selling points of Windows 7 is its ability to run on less powerful netbooks. I put this feature to the test over the weekend by installing Microsoft’s latest operating system on an HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.
The choice of this particular model was deliberate. HP’s first offering in the netbook market, the 2133 Mini-Note was widely regarded as underpowered, mainly because it used a VIA C7-M processor rather than the newer and more powerful Intel Atom chips. If Windows 7 Ultimate Edition could run on this machine, it ought to do pretty well on newer netbooks.
On the plus side, the Mini-Note had a decent amount of memory (2 gigabytes) and storage (160 GB) to keep things interesting. Also, the Mini-Note came with Windows Vista Business Edition installed, so an upgrade to Windows 7 didn’t seem at all unreasonable.
The first challenge was to install the software on a notebook PC without an optical drive. To get around this, I followed an online guide to create a bootable USB drive, copied the Windows 7 DVD files onto it (using my desktop PC, which has a DVD drive), then ran the setup program from the thumb drive on the Mini-Note. Because the Windows 7 files take up 2.5GB, you’ll need at least a 4GB USB drive if you want to take this route.
Installation from the USB drive finished without a hitch. Although some reviewers using the Windows 7 beta reported installation times of 15 minutes from a USB drive, mine was closer to 40 minutes.
The next challenge showed itself once the new OS booted: Aero, which makes the transparent glass on windows and other visual effects possible, was disabled on my machine. Because I had seen the same machine run Aero on Vista before, I knew this wasn’t a hardware problem.
The Windows 7 Troubleshooter suggested I upgrade my drivers, but Windows Update kept giving me an 80072F8F error, without telling me how to fix it. After spending an hour looking for solutions on the help system and a number of Web sites, I stumbled on a forum discussion that suggested the error was related to a bad system date. Sure enough, when I checked, my system date was somehow set to the year 2002. This must have occurred during the installation process, when I set the time, month and day, without realizing I also had to change the year. After all, why would software released in 2009 give you to option to set the system date to any year earlier than that?
I quickly corrected the problem (Control Panel > Clock, Language and Region), ran Windows Update, then rebooted the system.
A final surprise lay in store for me when Windows 7 booted up yet again. A window popped up over a black screen, warning me that “the activation period has expired.” Ominously, at the bottom right of the screen, was the sentence: “This copy of Windows is not genuine.” This was rather strange, since my review copy had come straight from Microsoft and I had checked the option to activate the software once I went online.
Clicking the “Activate Now” button didn’t seem to do anything, so I had to re-enter the product key (which I already did when I installed Windows 7) and wait for my copy to be activated online.
After a few minutes of suspense, the verdict came back: I was a legitimate Windows user, after all. And my Aero effects were now available.
Finally, I was ready to put Windows 7 through its paces.
On the HP Mini-Note, Windows 7 booted up to the log-in screen in one minute and 18 seconds and took another 24 seconds to get from there to a ready desktop. That means a wait of one minute and 42 seconds from a cold start, which, while acceptable, is still a far cry from the 30-second boot-ups that some reviewers were reporting.
Still, this was an improvement over the boot-up performance of Vista on the same machine (about 2.5 minutes).
But where the new OS truly shines over its predecessor is shutdown. On Vista, the several minutes of waiting for the machine to power down was so intolerable I usually forced the issue with the power switch. On Windows 7, I could finally get a decent shutdown in 18 seconds.
Windows 7 happily reported that my hardware had a Windows Experience Index of only 1.5 out of a maximum of 7.9, which sounds pretty crappy. Still, performance on the applications I normally use was acceptable, and video playback was surprisingly good. This suggests that the hardware requirements for Windows 7 are not as steep as they are on Vista, and that the old grading system may no longer be very accurate.
Windows 7 doesn’t come with very much by way of applications, so I suggest the following free downloads to get you going:
AVS Anti-Virus Free. If you’re going to work in the Windows environment, it’s prudent to get some protection.
OpenOffice. If you don’t want to spend all that much, this open source productivity suite will give you word processing, spreadsheets, presentation and database applications that are compatible with MS Office.
Firefox. This open source browser runs rings around Internet Explorer 8, and it’s safer, too.
Gimp. Powerful image editing software for those who don’t want to buy Adobe Photoshop.
Of course, most free Linux distributions like Ubuntu already come with this software installed, except the anti-virus program, which isn’t really important outside the Windows world.
There’s no doubt that Windows 7 is an improvement over Vista. The question is, will users be willing to pay P8,000 (Home Basic) to P16,500 (Ultimate) for what everyone agrees should have been delivered on Vista?