Windows 7 on a HP MiniNote 2133
I have a HP Mininote 2133 with 2gb + 120gb disk. Its a decent netbook and came with Vista Business pre-installed.
I quickly installed Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid and was quite happy with it. Some friends of mine told me to try Windows 7 on it because it was more efficient than Vista on it and so I have it a try.
As the machine does not have a dvd drive, I copied the Windows 7 RC image onto a flash drive and installed it that way.
It was certainly better than Vista and impressed me with its ease of use and excellent hardware detection. Linux is still better at it, but for the hardware that Windows knows, it handles it very well. It even redirected me to the appropriate Hauppage support page to download the drivers and I got most of the system working perfectly much faster than I would with XP or Vista.
After a day or 2, the things that bug me still are the speed hit you take once you install the appropriate antivirus / security software and the fact that you get regular updates which require a reboot.
As this machine won't be used for gaming, I don't see a good reason to use Windows on it. I installed XBMC on it and it was quite flaky. It seemed it took a big performance hit running it.
In general the machine felt sluggish. I don't see it lasting a week on this netbook. I see myself going back to Linux very quickly. I will probably try Puppy Linux, Mepis and then Ubuntu Intrepid. Jaunty has issues with video drivers on it.
Last comment on Windows 7. On normal desktop hardware, at this point, I would choose it over Vista. I might even choose it over XP as you have to patch XP so much to get it into a usable state. However, this choice would only be made if I was in a work situation and I was not allowed to run Linux.
For now, my default choice for a work machine would be Linux, OSX and then Windows. For home, its a tossup between Linux and Mac. If video editing, photo management, etc is the prime consideration, I would probably choose mac first.
I quickly installed Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid and was quite happy with it. Some friends of mine told me to try Windows 7 on it because it was more efficient than Vista on it and so I have it a try.
As the machine does not have a dvd drive, I copied the Windows 7 RC image onto a flash drive and installed it that way.
It was certainly better than Vista and impressed me with its ease of use and excellent hardware detection. Linux is still better at it, but for the hardware that Windows knows, it handles it very well. It even redirected me to the appropriate Hauppage support page to download the drivers and I got most of the system working perfectly much faster than I would with XP or Vista.
After a day or 2, the things that bug me still are the speed hit you take once you install the appropriate antivirus / security software and the fact that you get regular updates which require a reboot.
As this machine won't be used for gaming, I don't see a good reason to use Windows on it. I installed XBMC on it and it was quite flaky. It seemed it took a big performance hit running it.
In general the machine felt sluggish. I don't see it lasting a week on this netbook. I see myself going back to Linux very quickly. I will probably try Puppy Linux, Mepis and then Ubuntu Intrepid. Jaunty has issues with video drivers on it.
Last comment on Windows 7. On normal desktop hardware, at this point, I would choose it over Vista. I might even choose it over XP as you have to patch XP so much to get it into a usable state. However, this choice would only be made if I was in a work situation and I was not allowed to run Linux.
For now, my default choice for a work machine would be Linux, OSX and then Windows. For home, its a tossup between Linux and Mac. If video editing, photo management, etc is the prime consideration, I would probably choose mac first.
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