I was referring to my own experience of testing new model netbooks at the local Fry’s and Microcenter stores. These were from Acer and ASUS. All but one contained Atom N270 processors, 1gb ram, and Win 7 Starter. Performance of everything from launching a program to viewing a DVD via external drive was abysmal. Even the simple flash based games included as extras exhibited jerky performance.

The one exception was a 11.6″ Acer which had a dual core mobile Celeron, 2gb ram, and Win 7 x64 Home Premium. It was no speed demon either, but was noticeably faster than the others.

Now one could blame the Atom processor or 1gb ram, but Microsoft is the one who said that Win 7 would run fine on netbooks with these specs. I did test these against older models of the same machines running Win XP and there was no contest. We are talking 3-4 seconds to launch a program in XP vs. 12-15 seconds for Win 7. Also a similar difference in creating and saving a file in MS Works. The machines were not connected to the internet, so I could not test things like YouTube video, etc…

All I can say is that Microsoft has much lower standards than I do, and the netbook makers are hamstrung by licensing agreements. One can only hope that Google does a great job on Chrome OS, or somebody else comes up with something. Needless to say, I was all fired up about getting a netbook with Win 7. Now, not so much.

“MS seems to have got this one right, except for netbooks. That is unless they were trying to kill netbooks, in which case they may have succeeded.”

Not necessarily, I have read alot of articles in which people have Win7 up and running with no problems on netbooks. I’m not sure but Loyd may have written one about this all ready on another site.

Yes, all my settings for folders and views were gone and stuff like that needed to be redone, but I looked at it this way-its a new OS-time to have fun and go exploring, see whats out there, and maybe find that there is a better way. After all you really didn’t want everything to look the same, right?

The only real issue I had was Win7 didn’t have a compatible driver for my Linksys USB wireless adapter, but all I had to do was install the one from my cd and all was good.

Have Fun and you doing a great job!

The impression I got is that someone was pressured to release Vista by a certain deadline instead of when it was ready. I also found it interesting that the top members of the Vista team abandoned ship almost immediately after launch. I used to have a link to the article, but it got lost somewhere along the way. The bottom line is that Vista was not ready when released, and even in its current form it is a marginal OS at best. In my opinion, it would tie as the worst MS OS along side DOS 5.1, Windows 1.0, and Windows 3.0.

Vista is somewhat of a moot point now any way. Once the economy recovers a bit more, and people discover Win 7, Vista will be just a bad memory.

Just a side, and somewhat related note. I have been using Microsoft Security Essentials for about a month now, and highly recommend it. I am no security expert, but by all reports it does a good job, and it runs almost invisibly. Even scans are not very taxing on the hardware. Much better than anything else I have tried so far.

“They knew the drivers were not ready and they released Vista anyway.”

Is it Microsoft’s responsibility to make drivers for someone else’s hardware? If so, what’s the limit of their responsibility? Is it to support every device that has ever been created for a Windows PC? I believe the drivers are primarily the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers. Microsoft stepped up where those 3rd parties left off and filled in the holes, but it’s unrealistic to expect them to bear that burden completely and postpone the OS. This same thing happened with XP, but I don’t remember a lot of people back then blaming Microsoft for their printer drivers not working.

I also mostly agree with triplex. PC gaming is slowly on it’s way out. The economic downturn has helped some people realize that forever chasing the next upgrade is just not all it’s cracked up to be. The market will eventually get so small, that major developers will simply ignore it.

I must disagree with Brandon Champion that Microsoft’s punishment was undeserved. They knew the drivers were not ready and they released Vista anyway. They may have made their quarterly number projections upon release of Vista, but it cost them dearly.

On the plus side, Win 7 does seem to be a winner. I have only used the RC Build 7100 so far, but have had zero problems with it. It is not a great deal faster than Vista, but certain features such as Aero actually work on lower end hardware as was promised in Vista. My cheap Emachines D620 laptop($270 Acer in disguise) came loaded with Vista Home Basic x32, and to say it ran abysmally would be kind. With Win 7 x64 RC, and an upgrade to 4gb ram, it is actually quite a nice machine. I had originally planned to run Linux, but could not find a distro that ran on it’s odd video and Wifi hardware very well. When the RC license runs out next March, I will probably just get an OEM disk of Win 7 x64. I can always run PCLOS in Virtual Box as I do now.

“Compatibility issues also drove folks nuts. And the fact Vista was put on cheap laptops that couldn’t run it did not help matters either. I’m sure after a few years many of those things were resolved, but that wasn’t the customer’s problem.”

UAC was annoying in Vista and, in my opinion, taught every single user that dialog boxes aren’t worth reading and that they are to be immediately clicked on the most positive-sounding option so life may continue. They tried to increase security, but effectively taught users one of the most unsafe habits in security-land.

As for the incompatibility issues and being installed on less-than-capable computers, the blame lies with 3rd parties. Microsoft made quite an effort to get 3rd party device makers to support Vista, but many of them quietly sat on their hands, knowing Microsoft would bear the blame, while they would reap the profits from all the people who had to go out and buy the newest, Vista-compatible hardware. Microsoft took a completely undeserved kick in the nuts.

I’m happy that iMac-like all-in-one PCs will be more readily available and affordable for normal home users because I do believe there’s value in their simplicity. I don’t agree at all, however, with your view on gaming. Suck it, consoles!