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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."
I'm pretty sure Dell Mini 9 + OSX = breaking the license. Or has apple suddenly made an about face in this regard?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The license agreement may not even be legal.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Just breaking the license doesn't make it illegal. We've all seen unenforceable clauses in licenses and until Apple's license is tested in court, we won't know if the "Apple-branded" hardware bit is legitimate or not.
Of course, if you pirate a copy, instead of buying one that is illegal.
But if you buy a copy of OSX and install it on a non-Apple-branded computer, somehow I doubt that Apple will make too much of a fuss.
The one thing I really like about Vista is the sidebar, I find it pretty useful having currency converter, calendar and such immediately to hand. In Windows 7 they seem to have done away with it and made the gadgets stand alone such that they either obscure windows if set to always on top, or they hide behind them otherwise making them either annoying or useless depending on which setting you have.
As the performance tweaks in Windows 7 don't matter to me because my machine is powerful enough that I've not had performance issues in Vista nor noticed a difference with Windows 7 beta anyway and as I don't find the new taskbar worthwhile is there anything in Windows 7 that makes it worthwhile?
I can see Windows 7 being good for those who held on to XP, but for those of us who did switch to Vista and have had no problems with it (so all 3 of us then :p), and particularly those of us who liked the sidebar it seems a step backwards. I can't see the gadgets being worthwhile to anyone in their current incarnation - has anyone found them useful when they're only ever out the way or in the way?
I don't have a netbook but I have a PC with less ram (768 mb) which is about 7.5 years old now so the processor isn't all that fast etc. Since in the article they mentioned that it seemed to be the rma which caused the problem with office anyway, I would not say that this is good performance at all. On my PC I regularly run openoffice, firefox, IM client, music player. This is on Ubuntu with fancy compiz effects enabled with my PC which has less ram than a netbook and I have no problems.
Also I know somebody with a cheap netbook and I have seen them happily using a web browser and office suite on it without trouble, again using linux.
Since when has lack of drivers been a legitimate negative ramification of OSX? I'm not trolling--serious question. I've been a user since X.0 beta and can't recall a single "lack of driver" issue. That's not to say the problem doesn't exist, only that they are so far and few between that it isn't even worth mentioning.
Are netbooks anything other than "entry level".
My wife bought an Asus netbook a few weeks ago and opted to pay a couple hundred bucks more for a nicer model. There are some predictable upgrades you get for a few bucks more, but the most impressive is the expanded battery. While she was installing Office 2007 on her fully charged battery I asked her to hover the cursor over the power gauge, and lo and behold it reported 6.5 hours of battery remaining - and that was at nearly full load. She can take notes in school all day without being tethered to an electrical socket. That's quite a leap forward in mobile computing, though as TFA specifies, she won't be playing Crysis on the thing. Guild Wars, however...
Word might be to blame. Microsoft states that Word needs 256MB RAM minimum, and 1GB RAM for grammar and contextual spelling to be turned on.
Uh ya Office 2007 has some ridicules memory requirements. I had a 1.4 celeron with a gig of ram on xp and 2007 was laggy. Which is ridiculous for a word processor.
take a look at the crunchpad. It hasn't been released yetbut it will be a tablet and a modified Linux that boots into a browser only. No shells just a browser.
Personally I can't wait. No bqckground apps means decent betterylife.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Yeah, but a well designed OS doesn't page to disk when it's not necessary. If the entire OS and the app suite can be held in RAM, then it should be. If Win7 is generating page faults, then either the entire memory requirement is greater than the installed RAM or Win7 is swapping stuff out when it shouldn't. Either way, Win7 doesn't come out looking all that great as far as I'm concerned.
I'm tired of MS's patent crap.
It's not really your problem, unless you are working as a competitor, but I doubt you are.
I'm tired of the DRM.
Don't purchase DRM protected content. Two birds, one stone
I'm tired of the FUD.
Oh, you made a poor choice with Linux then. There's plenty of FUD to be had. Been to BoycotNovell lately? COLA? Read any Kdawson posts?
I'm tired of mediocre product after mediocre product.
Linux is a good choice for you then. It's not even a product. More of a garage band of programmers trying to find solutions without a problem.
I'm tired of their high prices.
Considering as important and widespread as Windows is, its price is pretty reasonable. You can even upgrade for a discount.
I'm tired of them stacking the ISO.
Yes, because God forbid Microsoft, who knows about creating software to handle documents, gets involved in creating a document standard nobody really gives a shit about in the first place.
I'm tired of embrace extend extinguish.
You got FOSS dude, why shed a tear for proprietary crapware?
I'm tired of fixing other people's computers from malware.
Fortunately for you, Linux will never be popular enough to be a prime target.
I'm tired of the overwhelming OS storage footprints, and everything else they do to ruin computing for everyone.
Correction: Ruined for you. Don't push your beliefs on everyone else. You are just one person, and a pretty grumpy one at that. If your budget for computer hardware is tight, then Linux is your obvious choice.
I'm tired of the whole company and I wish everyone would dump them forever.
Ha ha, dream on.
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
Yes, but if caching stuff to RAM impedes running applications, it defeats the purpose it began with.
It doesn't do that. It caches things when its idle, and it takes no time at all to flush pages of memory that don't need to be written to disk if something running needs the memory, so why bring it up?
It does however show that its using a lot of RAM so twits looking at total ram allocated and then running around squawking about how high it is aren't contributing anything to the discussion.
Seems to me that the best answer would be to lay out the package manager like Amazon's review pages, showing one of each of the top voted good/bad user reviews, a link to the package homepage and maybe a link to its screenshot page.
From the F'n summary: "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."
/., but sheesh!
Funny, I never realized unlimited time ends in July. Why the hell is there an inane quote from an anonymous reader in the summary? Why not just say, "MS is making the beta available until July, much longer than earlier releases." I realize this is
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.