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First Look At Windows 7 On an Entry-Level Netbook
davidmwilliams sends in his IT Wire review of how Windows 7RC1 performs on an Acer Aspire One netbook. Summing up: it runs, it won't win any speed competitions, you won't want to play Crysis on it, and it's pretty OK for light-duty, everyday tasks. In related news, several readers have noted that Windows 7 RC1 is now available; one anonymous reader notes "This time, Microsoft was smart not to limit the time that it's available or the number of keys. It will be up for download until July, so there's lots of time to grab a copy."
as many others type this in at the same time - but it sounds like it pretty much runs like all other netbooks - regardless of the OS.
I agree except for one quote:
Once I had loaded Microsoft Office 2007 the 1GB of RAM became insufficient and the computer started page faulting.
I don't know if 1GB of RAM should be too little for an OS and MS Word. I will say that my 5 year old laptop has no problem running Office 2000 on Windows XP ... with 512MB of very very slow ram. The same laptop has no problems running a simplified Linux with Open Office either. I say "simplified" because, yes, the default Ubuntu graphics shitfest causes it to be a bit unstable at times.
I'm not sure which piece of the equation is making a glorified word processing program page fault on 1GB of RAM but I think that's a bit ridiculous.
My work here is dung.
I tried one of the win7 betas but gave up quickly because I could find no working network driver for my onboard NIC. I installed the new RC on Thursday and the OS is an absolute dream. It feels light years ahead of everything I've ever used, and the streamlined interface has forced me to re-evaluate my insistence on turning off new features to make it work more like win95. You should give it another shake - my compatibility issues have been very minimal.
As for your comment about Linux replacing Windows when the application support is there, I think it's going to take more than that. Windows' sleek UI and excellent vendor driver support save the user time worth more than the entry price over its lifespan, plus Microsoft offers tech support for its products. With Linux it's inevitable that an end user will be forced to do something at the commandline, and realistically that's a huge time sink or maybe a deal breaker for the average user. This is just my opinion but Linux just feels like it is eternally playing catch-up, and by the time they're 60% of the way there Windows will have jumped forward to an entirely new era. Linux gets better every single month but it's never been on par in terms of the holistic computing experience - drivers, software, productivity, and even freeware are all in better shape on Windows, so that's why I've stuck with it despite trying many new Linux distros from time to time.