Comparing Windows and Ubuntu On Netbooks

Barence writes "With the arrival last month of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, PC Pro has revisited a familiar question: which operating system is best for a netbook?. The magazine has run a series of benchmarks on a Asus Eee PC 1008HA running Windows XP Home, two versions of Windows 7 (with and without Aero switched on) and Ubuntu Netbook Edition. The operating systems are tested for start-up performance, Flash handling and video, among other tests. The results are closer than you might think."

Comments

Re:Can you even buy a netbook without windows?

[John Betonschaar]

I have atom based machines that can play 1080p video without a hiccup but try to make a 320p youtube video full screen and watch it stutter and spurt...

Yes that really cracks me up with my Atom Ion-based HTPC as well. Watch a 1080p movie in XBMC with silk-smooth framerates, then open an SD Youtube Flash video in Firefox and the whole thing grinds to a halt. The best part of it is when you go back to XBMC and open the same video using the Youtube plugin, and all of a sudden everything is silk-smooth again, apparently the YouTube XBMC plugin rips the video out of the flv or uses the HTML5 source and pipes it through its own codec. Which goes to show how much Flash actually sucks for delivering web video.