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Windows 7 vs. Windows XP On a Netbook
Justin writes "Many in the industry are counting on Windows 7 to bring the netbook market to the next level. Having netbook manufacturers ship netbooks with 7+ year old Windows XP pre-installed surely deterred some from joining the ranks of households with the small, light and portable netbooks. It seems Microsoft has addressed most of the pitfalls of Windows Vista on a netbook by increasing battery life and performance to be very close to that of the lighter-weight Windows XP. Legit Reviews has the full scoop of battery life and performance tests pitting Windows 7 against Windows XP on the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA Netbook." I'd like to see a follow-up with a few different Netbook-friendly Linux distros, too.
Actually, no.
ASLR, Internet Explorer's Protected stuff (which not one of the competitors has), Bitlocker, the new Firewall (which finally has a nice group policy settings), service hardening using restricted accounts, NAP inclusion, kernel patch protection, etc. etc.
I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it. Last I checked, XP could access the internet. I don't see the point in putting Windows 7 on your netbook at all.
Well, let me play devil's advocate and throw out some ideas for you...
1) Security, there truly is a major level of security between XP and Win7. This goes from the built in malware tools, to even IE running in protected mode so it is technically more secure than running Firefox or Chrome, as the browser doesn't even user level rights. (This is why the Flash and recent IE exploits you have read about (that can even affect OS X and Linux are IMMUNE on Vista or Win7 when running IE.) - I know, this is hard to hear and I hate saying it myself, but is true.
2) Network features. Running through the airport and having the new Win7/Vista networking stack features is freaking awesome, as it not only does really good at just hooking into the WiFi, but also remembers. So that if go back through Denver it knows not only how to connect (which all OSes should do), but it also knows how to classify the network and flips on the Firewall on the fly and correctly sets all sharing settings based on the profile of the network there.
3) 3G features - Networking Again - 3G if you have the latest drivers from most manufacturers, and you have a 3G netbook, or even a 3G phone that you are tethering, the Network connection is treated more like a WiFi connection, and gives you instant information from the same interface, with Bars, Speed, etc, and again automatically just hooks you into the network and again applies the level of firewall security and sharing crackdown that you have specified.
4) Resume from Standby or Hibernate - Set your Power Button to hibernate and you can flip the netbook on and off as fast as you can open your phone. The speed differences in resume from standby are good, but the hibernate resume features are fast, and when you are trying to rebook flights running through an airport, you appreciate these little things.
5) Then add in 1000 other new features over XP, from better application boot times via Superfetch, to pulling up tons of information from a simple search. There are also the nice corporate features that work better and are handy from newer ways it deals with Offline files and access remote servers, to even NTFS features that do a bit extra to keep previous versions of your documents with you at all times, without even having to back them up every hour.
And this could go on and on and on, as the full list of several thousand features were contrasted between Win7 and XP that really do make things easier and work better than an 8 year old OS. (From bluetooth to even having the right printers appear based on what network I'm roaming on at the moment, just little things that are nice.)
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Finally, netbooks are NOT ONLY for just browsing the internet. They are low power computers, and you seem to discount that there are users running Office, and Photoshop, and Corel, and Illustrator, and even playing games on these computers. There is a difference between getting a crap Web inteface to my documents when at the airport, and actually opening the application they were created in and just editing them.
You can also find 'geeks' like myself playing an MMO on netbooks, and sure it isn't 60fps, but 20-30fps on a device isn't bad, and ironically, most of the games that the Netbooks can actually run, hold their own and often run faster under Win7, as it does a better job of silencing background processes.
There are also the times, I just want to read an eBook, watch a movie, listen to a book, or listen to music, and then the Netbook becomes the ultimate PMP, and you will find me with headphones on and my Netbook is shoved in my briefcase. (Oh and on flights where space is tight, again, they work quire well for movie viewing, you are getting a 8-10" screen for you and anyone you travel with and about the same battery life as a gen