Anyone run Win7 on a netbook?

[mormit]

Quick background. My mom was injured in a car accident last week and is bedridden for probably a few months. I'm thinking of getting her a netbook so she can use it for email/web/Skype.

I'm thinking the quickest and easiest thing to to is pick one up that already has Win7. Get rid of McAfee if it's burdened with that and throw on something decent like Avast.

I use a HP 110 netbook with Ubuntu and am very happy with it so getting a cheap netbook and installing Ubuntu/Mint/Chrom OS is another option but a bit more upfront work.

Anyone use Win7 on a netbook and can I drop this into the hands of my zero-tech mom?

 

[Pablo]

The netbooks I looked at just today (Target and Costco) had some form of Win7 on them. They were OK, only 1 MB RAM. A bit sluggish, but seemed fine for text stuff - video may be a whole 'nuther can of fish.

My question (and none of the salesweenies could answer) - can more RAM be added? (I got the feeling - NO)

Hope your mom gets better quick.

 

[StevieC]

Mormit,

Sorry to hear about your mom. I hope she feels better and heals quickly.

Win 7 basic/starter runs great on the Net-Book's my soon to be MIL has one with Win-7 on it. She recently had surgery and hasn't been able to leave the house much and this was perfect for her.

Steve

 

[SrDriver]

I am headed on a long vacation and picked up a Toshiba Netbook (NB 255-N250). It has an Atom 455 processor (both the 450 and 455 processor support 64 bit OS). One gig of ram and a 250 gig hard drive.

I un-installed the usual trialware and the trial of Norton Anti-Virus + went to Norton's web site and downloaded and ran the complete removal tool to get it all off. McAfee and AVG have a complete removal on their web sites too.

I then installed the free Microsoft Security Essentials and Google Chrome for a web browser.

I made a bootable Thumb Drive with a 64 bit version of Linux Mint on it and setup the Netbook in a dual boot mode as I am mainly a Linux user.

I also stuck Sandboxie free version on for the web browser in Windows.

Windows 7 Basic version is stripped down for Netbook use and works well in my opinion.

 

[SrDriver]

Originally Posted By: Pablo
The netbooks I looked at just today (Target and Costco) had some form of Win7 on them. They were OK, only 1 MB RAM. A bit sluggish, but seemed fine for text stuff - video may be a whole 'nuther can of fish.

My question (and none of the salesweenies could answer) - can more RAM be added? (I got the feeling - NO)

Hope your mom gets better quick.


Depending on the brand of Netbook you buy you can add more Ram but the thing is that you must buy a 2 gig stick and remove the one gig one.

Be careful what brand of Netbook you buy as some of them are not upgradeable to 2 gigs!

I had thought of upgrading mine but Windows 7 Basic works fine once you get rid of the unnecessary software vendors stick on computers today.

Have played video via Wi-Fi at home and Flash works OK.

The purpose of a Netbook is for web browsing, email, and light use and for that purpose mine fills the bill + I don't need to drag the Laptop along.

 

[Nick R]

The ASUS ones are the best imo, that or the one Samsung makes. Both are great. Not a huge fan of the HP ones.

ASUS, Samsung >>>>>>-------------HP----Sony-Gateway-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dell

 

[dishdude]

I have a Dell Inspiron Mini that I picked up last fall with Win 7 on it, I love it!

 

[mormit]

Thanks for the help all.

I know Win7 is great on more powerful machines but my concern was if it worked well on netbooks. Sounds promising. My wife likes it a lot on her laptop that has at least four times the resources as a netbook.

My netbook runs fantastic on Ubuntu even with only 1 Gig of memory. It just never uses more than a third of that. Very quick. More DIY option though.

Sounds like I can get her a good little internet ready machine by dropping the unneeded stuff and adding Avast and Skype.

 

[Eddie]

Running an ASUS 1005HB netbook. Win 7 and 1GB ram ans seems to work well.

 

[FloatingBrick]

I bought my wife an Asus eeePC withe Atom N450, 1gb of ram and a 250gb HD running Win 7 Starter. She is back in school for her master's and uses it in the classroom.

Unfortunately, she just spent a week in the hospital - she had it with her and used it a good bit. For email and browsing, it's great, and her's streams video just fine. The size is perfect for lying in a hospital bed and staying connected.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Yes. Asus with the AMD CPU and ATI graphics & Win7 Home Pro. $379 at NewEgg w/o OS. Nice unit.

Works very well. Not a speed demon, but it does basic tasks, such as Skype, web browsing, TweetDeck, etc...A-OK.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: Pablo
The netbooks I looked at just today (Target and Costco) had some form of Win7 on them. They were OK, only 1 MB RAM. A bit sluggish, but seemed fine for text stuff - video may be a whole 'nuther can of fish.

My question (and none of the salesweenies could answer) - can more RAM be added? (I got the feeling - NO)

Hope your mom gets better quick.


Most of them can take up to 2 gigs. I've got 2 gigs in both the wife's and my Netbook.

Running XP in both and dual boot to linux with mine.

I have seen Win 7 starter in a few netbooks but would rather have the full home or Win XP. Starter is not something I'm interested in.

Bill

 

[cryption]

I have 7 pro on my Acer aspire one with an atom 1.6 and 2 gigs of ram. I have a Runcore SSD (much faster) and it runs like a dream.

http://www.runcore.com/

That SSD turned my netbook from a backup computer to the one I use most of the time.