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Best OS For Netbooks and Underpowered Tablets?

Posted by Soulskill on from the vista-right? dept.

vigmeister writes "I hopped on the netbook bandwagon early this year in a rather odd fashion by picking up an outdated portable tablet (Fujitsu P1510) which just about matches the latest, greatest netbooks for their performance and portability features, while nipping them by managing to give me a better battery life. I've been happy using XP Tablet on this machine until recently, when I started thinking that by optimizing the OS for targeted use, I may be able to squeeze more out of the device. So, my questions are: What OS would you recommend for a netbook/outdated laptop? Usage is typically light — web surfing (with multimedia), email, word processing, spreadsheet and reading PDFs. Also, what OS would you recommend for a ultraportable tablet? Usage is similar to a netbook; there's a little more document editing going on, and good handwriting recognition and note-taking software would be great." Read on for further details about vigmeister's question. vigmeister continues, "I would like for the user experience to be snappy on a computer that is essentially running the equivalent of a 1.2 GHz PIII with 512mb RAM. The other objective for both of these is to maximize the battery life, as that is the major drawback of these ultraportables. A small memory footprint would work wonders, since the hard drives on these devices are typically slow and completely suck the joy out of using them when swap space is being used. Any tips? If you are still using your outdated laptops/tablets productively, please share with us how you're doing it, so we can too."

5 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. options by itzdandy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I *WANT* to tell you to put some ubuntu on there and tweak it up a bit.

    The only real reason that this isnt the best option is that Linux (and BSD) are heavier on battery life than WindowsXP. I run linux on my laptop and have on other laptops and linux sucks down the battery faster.

    For a Tablet, batter life is a pretty big thing I think and this is a major issue. I get as much as 30% less battery life out of linux.

    That being said, linux has come a long way on this front and this may be remedied pretty soon.

    Also, with ubuntu 8.10 as well as new releases of fedora the wireless management is much better.

    If you are not concerned with battery life then definitely grab a newer linux distro. Remember that you need to do a number of tweaks for power such as turning the swapiness down and selecting the proper power states.

  2. SSD or Compact Flash? by niko9 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe replace the hard disk with an SSD or low power compact flash?

    If you go the CF route then check out Voyage Linux. 'Tis like Debian but made for embedded and low power machines. http://linux.voyage.hk/

    (I use it with a PC Engines single board computer running MPD as a source for an audiophile grade USB music server. Just install th OS to CF and apt-get what you need.)

  3. If you are going the windows route ... by phoxix · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Windows XP SP3 + nLite > Every other version of Windows.

    It works with 99.999% of everything, and doesn't suck hard like Beasta

  4. Re:That's enough computer to run Ubuntu by cyber-vandal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Before the destruction of the proprietary home computer market by the PC, software was a lot more efficiently written because the authors couldn't expect people to just upgrade their hardware.

  5. Re:Linux or Windows? by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well... That slimmed down XP sounds darned interesting. I think I'll add it to my netboot options over my lan for possible installation.

    And after a long and hard search, 30 seconds later, here's the link.

    Since you cant buy it, I see no reason why we cant download and use it. It does need a cdkey, from that which you will need yours.

    --