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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.
DirectX 10, silly!
Seriously, though, Vista changed quite a few things under the hood. The only reason you don't see more Vista-only software yet is because it was, well, a flop.
If Windows 7 catches on, it won't be long before you run across software that refuses to run on XP.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Having run Windows XP, Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my MSI Wind U100 I can say Windows Seven has by far been the best OS. XP ran fine, but it wasn't particularly pleasing to the eye and had some issues running multiple programs at once. Ubuntu looked marginally better but performance wise it was terrible, I couldn't watch a flash video without it seizing up. Windows Seven looks pretty, runs faster than XP and is just better overall.
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The point of netbooks is to use them for whatever the fuck you want. Just because they are called "netbooks" doesn't mean I'm only allowed to access the internet with them.
On my netbook I can browse the internet, write an essay in OpenOffice, watch 720p movies, run an FTP client, play CS:S. Upgrading to Windows 7 makes all of these things faster.
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So, in my interpretation, the Windows 7 netbook had slightly shorter battery life, and performed slightly worse in all but two benchmarks. One of those two was dealing with "next generation gaming performance" that really isn't point of netbooks, and the other was essentially identical to the XP performance.
And the conclusion the reviewers take from this is that Windows 7 is good? Just because it isn't as bad as Vista, and isn't too much worse than XP?
With these sorts of results, XP is going to be with us for a long time. Why is it so hard for Microsoft to make something comparable?
Most people/companies are not interested in the new features offered by Vista. They just aren't that compelling
Most people anyway, have never sat down in front of a Vista machine for long enough to get used to it.
Compatibility, seriously? That hasn't been a problem for literally years. Any computer you buy off the shelf today is going to have compatible hardware and I bet you'd be hard pressed to find individual pieces that are worth buying that aren't compatible.
UAC? Can be turned off in about 5 mouse clicks.
I can't say much about performance except that my $600 laptop has enough power to handle it easily, I know that doesn't capture the netbook market at all, but if you're buying an off the shelf desktop or laptop I highly doubt you'll see any issues. It's true that there isn't a whole lot of big changes to make the transition worthwhile, certainly there's nothing that would make me upgrade an XP machine to Vista.
OTOH, if I were buying a new machine and had the choice, I would, in all honesty, take Vista for the little things if nothing else. Being able to control the volume on a program by program basis is very nice. Being able to search the start bar and individual folders, including things like the control panel is also nice, just to name a couple. The single largest problem with Vista was it's launch, for what it's worth running Vista is actually quite enjoyable for me.
(Please don't blow this post off just because it's not anti-Vista, I run XP at work, Vista on my laptop, and Ubuntu on my Desktop. All have the pluses and minuses, I'm just trying to dispel a bit of the bad reputation that Vista (unfairly IMO) has.)
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.
7's ~0.5 second sleep and awake times are a nice boost over XP, and on my Mini with 2 gigs of ram Firefox opens under 7 in 1/2 the time it took to open in XP. Also, when I boot up I can start opening programs as soon as the desktop loads, where in XP the whole system would freeze for seconds at a time during the 60 seconds after a boot, possibly because of the JMicron controller in my SSD. I'm not sure how I generally feel about the new taskbar in 7 at its default settings (i.e., OSX Docklike), but on the tiny screen of a netbook the reduced taskbar clutter is great. Windows management features like mouseover-full size Window previews make me feel a lot less claustrophobic in the tiny netbook world, as well.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Now Microsoft is facing the same game from the other end. Very carefully timed announcement by Google that all the OS you would need to run a netbook is coming soon. Vendors do not commit wholeheartedly to Microsoft. Device driver writers do not just hack something that will work in Windows alone and be done with it. Consumers also do not rush out to buy the latest and greatest. Corporations add another action to their evaluation. "What about Chrome OS?". That buys some time. Most vendors cite Chrome OS and demand hefty discount for Win7 in netbook market. Microsoft is forced to sell its OS at bargain basement prices in the fastest growing segment of PC market.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Um, I just went through the article and XP was faster in basically every bench mark.
What feature does 7 provide you that is a huge benefit over XP, especially on a netbook?
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That is why I recommend DSL Linux on older laptops where the battery is starting to lose charge. On this 733MHz SFF I'm typing on it is using barely 40Mb of RAM and that is with the TORAM option flag set, which loads the whole thing to RAMdisk! Which means on even a machine as old as this 733MHz with 384Mb of RAM it flies and programs load as fast as I can click them.
To be fair though, there IS a version of WinXP floating around the Internet called "TinyXP Beast Edition" that gives you all the Vista pretty and still only consumes 63Mb of RAM running the desktop. MSFT has just never been good at tweaking their OSes for speed. Maybe they should hire the TinyXP dudes to make a "Tiny 7 Monster Edition"? And for those that scream "Piracy!" for me daring to mention TinyXP? You can actually use your own key with it like I did and it works just fine. It is just easier to download a pre-tweaked version that to spend all that time tweaking it yourself. Oh and it has SP3 already slipstreamed, whereas my retail disk is XP SP2.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The tests confirm what many of us have been saying all along. Using XP as a baseline, Vista sucks gangrenous donkey balls through a garden hose. Win7, on the other hand, runs about as well as XP. Depending on configuration, of course. It wouldn't be terribly inaccurate to say that Win7 is XP with a better security model, and missing some of the bogus legacy shit that should have been dropped almost a decade ago.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br