Windows 7 on a Netbook

[jacktesterson]

I've been away for about a year, so sorry if this has been asked before.


How does Windows 7 work on a Netbook? I have a Gateway LT Series Netbook, 11.6 LED Screen (1366x768 resolution), ATIx1270 video, AMD LT100 1.2GHz processor, 2GB Ram, 160GB Hard drive, Windows XP Home SP3

I am on the road a lot and use it for Web Browsing at hotels, etc. It works great using XP.

I am able to get my hands on another Windows 7 Ultimate License quite easy. I'd have to install using USB, but am wondering, would this netbook run Win 7 ok? Since I just use it for Browsing, is there even any point in doing it? I'm just thinking XP is probably going to hit the end of its lifecycle sometime in 2010 was all. I'm also wondering about Drivers...as Gateway doesn't seem to have drivers for my machine for Windows 7 on the site... only for Vista. I'm assuming Microsoft would have them included.

 

[Ika]

I switched from XP to W7 on my MSI Wind and it runs great, much better than in XP. I only get a few graphical hiccups when doing lots of stuff in Aero, but that's because I'm running Aero on crappy integrated graphics... your notebook will run W7 much better than mine does. I'd recommend the upgrade.

 

[JackMDS]

I do not know specifically on the Gateway but in general it will work OK.

It is Not a popular combination since the retail version of the OS is more expensive than the hardware. 😀

 

[M0RPH]

If it feels slow you can always turn off aero and other visual effects to make it more like W7 Starter which was designed for netbooks.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Just got a new Toshiba Netbook last friday. It came with Win7 Starter on it as most all netbooks you get now do. Often you have the choise of XP or Win7. I've known many people who have upgraded there netbook to a full version of Win7 and have had no problems. It runs quite well and does even better if you upgrade your netbook to a full 2Gb of RAM.

This is the one i got.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834114742

 

[ultimatebob]

This question has been asked many times before in the OS forum, but the good news is that Windows 7 runs great on a netbook. It seems to run fine on anything with 1 GB of memory or more, actually.

 

[soccerballtux]

If it feels slow you can always turn off aero and other visual effects to make it more like W7 Starter which was designed for netbooks.

all you really need to turn off is transparency, turning that off and my Acer Aspire One runs much much better-- it's got thte GMA500 graphics though.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Have Win 7 Pro on mine. Works fine, sans the intermittent graphics issues where it stops working and then recovers...

 

[TonyH]

As long as you don't have a small SSD, like the 8G in mine, it should be fine. 😛