[nd4spdbh2]

Well as the title states i popped win 7 pro on my netbook. Keep in mind this netbook just like every other netbook is not what you would call a power house... 1.6ghz atom 2gb of ram, an a slower 8gb STEC ssd.

I used vlite to strip it of some stuff, and installed via usb stick. I went into it with the same mindset as i did with vista back in the day on my main rig... oh god this is gonna be slow and broken especially on my already slow netbook. Now i tried vista out back before sp1, hated it and never looked to it again, and because of that i figured win 7 was a semi tweaked vista with a slightly different gui. Boy was i wrong.

I seriously could not believe it, right out of the box win 7 ran smoother and quicker than my super slimmed down super tweaked xp! It feels flawless now with the latest drivers and honestly even faster with the minor tweaks i have done. I simply cant believe it. Its like MS took the stability and quickness of xp, the good from vista, and wrapped it in an even quicker sleek gui.

There is no way that a gui like this should run so smooth and quick on such a low power machine yet it does... i dont know how it does... but dare i say MS actually got something right... no what am i thinking MS doesnt get stuff right... but then how does that explain my awesome experience with win 7... i dunno its a paradox.

Oh btw... using 3.5ish gb with a full fledged install, office 2003, firefox and aim, no page file!

[kovboi]

wow, that's a lot of free space. can you post what you stripped from the installation with vlite? i also have a dell mini 9 with the 8 gb ssd and this has me seriously thinking...

[ChinStrap]

also, maybe post how you got vlite to work w/ 7.

i couldnt get it to work for the life of me.

[DaveHCYJ]

Originally Posted by nd4spdbh2

i tried vista out back before sp1, hated it and never looked to it again

Its a shame so many people got a bad impression of vista before SP1 fixed the majority of the issues.

I'm very glad they got it right the first time with Win7 though! I upgraded my (now aging) laptop from Vista SP2 to Win7 and I think the performance increase is going to let me squeeze another year or two of life out of the laptop.

I too would be interested in your vlite experience with Win7 -- I've got somewhat of a bad taste for vlite after having to do a clean install of vista to move from SP1 to SP2.

[nd4spdbh2]

Originally Posted by kovboi

wow, that's a lot of free space. can you post what you stripped from the installation with vlite? i also have a dell mini 9 with the 8 gb ssd and this has me seriously thinking...

Originally Posted by ChinStrap

also, maybe post how you got vlite to work w/ 7.

i couldnt get it to work for the life of me.

I used this guide with the exception of selecting windows 7 pro, because well i was using a win 7 pro iso and will be activating with a win 7 pro key.

The preset file is kinda hidden in the guide just read through the whole thing.

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/wind...hdd-space.html

Ull end up with an install thats ~5ish GB.... if you disable the page file, and change recycle bin size down to like 128mb ull get alota space back espically if you have like 2gb of ram.

Im using 3.45GB with office 2003, firefox, and aim installed.

EDIT check out the screen shot. and btw... win 7 paint is fancy haha.

[bLack0ut]

are you comparing Win7to a fresh installation of tweaked, slimmed down xp or a stale one?

[johnz]

Everything I've read has said that Vista is better on netbooks than XP is. Win7 goes even further, and is better than Vista in that regard.

[nd4spdbh2]

Originally Posted by bLack0ut

are you comparing Win7to a fresh installation of tweaked, slimmed down xp or a stale one?

compared to a literally fresh tweaked slimmed xp install... two weeks ago i screwed some stuff up, said meh ill just image back to an image i made when i originally installed xp. so the install was 2 weeks old.

Originally Posted by johnz

Everything I've read has said that Vista is better on netbooks than XP is. Win7 goes even further, and is better than Vista in that regard.

Eh vista on a netbook would be like pullin teeth! ... u dont hear ppl on the netbook forums going oh vista rocks on my netbook. its all xp, osx, and now win 7.

I got a good 2 hrs of play time on my netbook with win 7... ya theres no way im going back to xp... win 7 is so much smoother, faster, and better its not even funny.

[kovboi]

Originally Posted by nd4spdbh2

Eh vista on a netbook would be like pullin teeth! ... u dont hear ppl on the netbook forums going oh vista rocks on my netbook. its all xp, osx, and now win 7.

same here, never seen anyone say that vista on a netbook is a good idea.

so i just tried this technique and initially ended up with only 1 Gb of free space. after reducing the recycle bin, turning off the page file and hibernate, my install size dropped to 3.45 Gb. that's still larger than yours, however, as it doesn't include anything but the base windows install. i'm gonna try vlite again and strip out some more stuff i never use like the windows games.

btw, i'm installing win 7 hp rather than professional, though i imagine it won't make much difference.

[johnz]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...sta+netbook+xp

Edit:
This is one example I can remember. I've seen others around the web also.

[nd4spdbh2]

oh ya i forgot to mention i also turned off hibernation.

Btw i went through and did some tweeks to win 7 and firefox... even faster now.

[kovboi]

after several tries, i still can't get anywhere near your amount of free space. after installing firefox, openoffice, antivirus, and ccleaner, i'm using 4.49Gb (2.65Gb free space). i might give it one more try tonight.

btw, why does the taskbar in your screenshot look like vista? are you using a custom theme?

[nd4spdbh2]

Originally Posted by kovboi

after several tries, i still can't get anywhere near your amount of free space. after installing firefox, openoffice, antivirus, and ccleaner, i'm using 4.49Gb (2.65Gb free space). i might give it one more try tonight.

btw, why does the taskbar in your screenshot look like vista? are you using a custom theme?

right click on the task bar. select small icons, and change the task buttons option to combined when taskbar is full... gets you a coupla more pixels in vertical height thats so precious on these netbooks.

[kovboi]

ok, got everything installed that i had with xp (firefox, openoffice, skype, picasa, mobipocket reader, antivir) and still have 2.79Gb free. not too shabby. :thumbup

[nd4spdbh2]

how much is being used? kinda hard to figure that out with just a free space figure

[kovboi]

here you go. my mobipocket reader install takes about 300mb because i subscribe to about 25 news feeds for my cybook, but it crashes if i install and run from my sd card. my nlite'd xp install left more space and i'm not sure that the performance with win7 is any better, but i'll just have to use it for a while to see...

[nd4spdbh2]

WOW i just noticed that windows 7 didnt align my partition when it installed which reports say it should (must be because i was messin round with settings when setting up windows) a 64KB offset has proven to provide much improvement espically on small ssd's because your not always writing to two blocks... gonna have to backup and align!

[kovboi]

yeah, i thought it did that automatically. stupid question: how do you check?

[nd4spdbh2]

start up a cmd prompt while windows is running.

type diskpart

type "list disk"

type "select disk N" where n is the number of your disk

type "list partition"

and look at the offset... if its 31kb its not aligned... if its 32kb its aligned and theres really no need to go back and align to 64kb as there is negligible difference.


EDIT... sweet everything went super smooth using acronis to make a backup image of win 7 on my netbook, so i could reformat and align the drive to 64KB (128 sectors) then reimaged the hd without disrupting the offset.... thank god it went smoothly... i really didnt feel like reinstalling win 7.

[kovboi]

my offset was 32kb, so the ssd is aligned properly