Lovin it

Submitted by mdkplus on Sun, 09/27/2009 - 6:36pm

Through my acedemic dept. at TJC I obtained and installed Win 7 pro on my Acer Aspire One with the 1.8 Atom, first with one gig ram, finally upgraded to 2 gigs. The only problem I've had is when I loaded Adobe DW and FW along with After effects at same time, Eventually one of them would crash. Still happens with 2 gigs of ram, but not as frequently until you get into some pretty mem intensive AE projects. A simple fix was to use a 8 gig USB 2.0 stick and take advantage of readyboost (which will add up to 4 gig mem), something I couldn't do with XP. Another drawback is the smaller screen res makes me have to scroll more often, which I heard is going to be increased on the newer Win 7 netbooks coming out, from the current 600 high to  800. As far as speed performance I don't notice any annoying slow load times, and a snappy 10 or so sec. boot up. Acer already has the updated drivers for Win 7 on their website which made me a happy fan of Acer's tech support department. I didn't need any, and let Autoupdate take care of the rest. The whole system is appearing to be well thought out, no doubt with thanks to a year of eager Beta-testers feedback.

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I've been playing around

Submitted by ScottProdigy on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 6:40am

I've been playing around with many "test" systems (sorry I don't remember the WEI on each):

Core 2 Duo 1.8ghz 3gb DDR2 800 250gb SATA 3G Radeon X1600 - runs VERY fast, and smokes Vista and XP in performance. Components are nearly 2.5 years old, so I was very excited to see this.

P4 3.2ghz 1gb DDR2 533 80gb SATA Intel Integrated GFX - "Vista Capable" system, 7 flies on this hardware as well and maintains the Aero interface even with the integrated Intel GFX.

Now getting more adventurous:

Pentium M 1ghz "Centrino" platform, 1.5gb DDR 333 30gb IDE Tablet PC - Older Tablet PC that shipped with XP circa 2004. I found a wiki that was written for Vista, which certainly helped get all of the drivers and software working (some in capatibility mode.) Uniquely impressed with the tablet features, many that are new and improved. Navigation, speed and use of 7 makes this PC much more functional than it was with XP, so much more that I've kept 7 on this system for my beta testing. Only downside is Aero disabled due to the internal graphics.

Pentium 4 Mobile 2.6ghz 512mb DDR 333 40gb IDE Sony Vaio - Machine booted and still had about 100mb or so of memory remaining in the performance section of Task Manager (also had Avira AV installed with default 7 settings.) Wish I had an extra 512mb laying around, as this machine worked REALLY well even without it, but peace of mind knowing 7 requires 1gb. All drivers were found with the default install as well!

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But this story is really the

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 3:08am

But this story is really the beginnings of pissing me off. It appears MS has yet again given in to demand from companies like you guessed it Intel. 

Come on what I'm getting at is why would they come out and tell us that Win7 Starter edition would only be shipped to developing nations and then suddenly they are announcing a release here in the USA.

Microsoft you are a disappointment. I have no problems with you wanting to make a buck but why did you even bother to make a hobbled down WIN7 Starter edition in the first place? Don't tell me you were paid off by companies like Intel because it wouldn't run on their least powerful weakest hardware unless this was done isn't it?

I say that if 7 doesn't work on it then XP would probably be very slow on it. If XP is slow on new hardware then that hardware needs to be replaced with new higher performing hardware. You can't tell me that ULV hardware can't be made that is even somewhat speedy. At least as fast as an AMD Phenom, I have had calculators faster than Phenoms... Just kidding.

And for crying out loud Intel if your IGP is so great then why not use it as the minimum graphics part you make? If an IGP can do some 3d gaming then it'll be enough for Windows 7 and if it's enough for Windows 7 why make that stupid hobbled starter edition. Microsoft you are just wasting money on developing software that is not necessary. Only cheapo companies are going to buy your OS and bundle it with PC's and the end user is the one that's going to get hurt. In order to get a real OS the end user is going to have to pay for an upgrade. And really thats kinda funny that when I bought my laptop an Anytime Upgrade disk came with it. Microsoft you guys are a bunch of crooks. 

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Not exactly low-performance, but...

Submitted by zstadt on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 4:58pm

Dell XPS 400, purchased in June of 2006: 2.8gHz Pentium D Dual-core, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 250GB HDD, 8800GT OC2 w/ Thermaltake DuOrb.  Everything runs perfectly, although I can't get my printer to work properly...

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Yeah I'm running Windows 7

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 3:50pm

Yeah I'm running Windows 7 Beta on a crappy and old computer I built in way back in early 2008. A 3ghz E8400 Core2 Duo Penryn Chip and 8gigs of DDR2 800, EVGA Nvidia GTX280 GPU, 1.5Tb and 500Gb 7200.11 Seagate Baracuda drives for storage, Xfi Extreme Gamer for sound, Asus P5N-D 750i SLI mobo, 20x Lite-On DL DVD burner, ThermalTake V1 HSF for cpu cooling, Ultra Pro800 PSU W/ActivePFC, it's all wrapped up in a Cooler Master Cosmos 1000case that I modified by cutting two holes in the side panel for two additional high airflow 120mm fans to blow on the vidia card and the memory,Logitech Desktop Wave wired keyboard, G5 laser gaming mouse and Z680 5.1 speakers and a LG 22" monitor.

On this archaic and ancient computer Windows 7 seems to run rather well and so does Chrisis and FarCry 2 and Warhead and GTA4 at 1680X1050 with all settings maxed out every game I have runs very well. I doubt I can say the same thing when I upgrade my display to a 24" 1920X1080. 

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I ran the beta on my 2002 hp

Submitted by brainwins on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 3:30pm

I ran the beta on my 2002 hp notebook. It was somehow slow, but I was really surprised that it worked. I was able to work on a future Microsoft OS on an almost 7 year old notebook.

I give credit to Microsoft for going from the Vista-enabled fiasco, to a Runs-on-(almost)everything mindset.

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Lowest performance platform

Submitted by ogremustcrush on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 3:27pm

Lowest performance platform I've used it on is my 1.2Ghz Core 2 Duo ULV Tablet PC. It does have 3GB of ram though, only thing really that slow on it is the processor. I also have it running on a 3Ghz core 2 duo w/ 4GB of ram, 1.9Ghz X2 with 1GB of ram, and a 2Ghz Pentium Dual-Core with 2GB of ram. It runs pretty well on all of them. I had been running Vista on the tablet previously, and Win7 makes it feel like an entirely different machine. If you ask me, the performance on modern machines with 1GB or more of ram or more is pretty much equivilent to XP, although it is much nicer and doesn't feel like a 10 year old OS.

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