14 DAY TRIAL // One of the peak points of the newly detailed Windows 7 is its low system requirements. It’s a well known fact that Windows Vista needs a lot of computing power compared to Windows XP and, since the market has been filled with a lot of netbooks, which are less powerful machines, Microsoft did a great thing with the creation of an operating system able to run on computers that feature less RAM and lower hardware performance than that regularly found in stationary PCs.
Since testing Windows 7 on a netbook could be considered an extreme performance test for both the machine and the operating system, Microsoft installed it on such a device and demonstrated that the OS only needs half of the installed RAM. Of course, no other application was running.
The guys from Laptopmag felt like trying the maneuver for themselves and installed Windows 7 on an ASUS Eee PC 1000H. According to them, the system handled the new Windows quite well, which seems rather impressive for a 1.6GHz Atom processor and 1GB RAM, yet Microsoft did say the new operating system would only need 500MB of RAM.
Laptopmag also tested the Eee PC with Windows Vista a few months ago, and the netbook wasn't doing too bad back then either. The boot time for the default OS is of around 40 seconds for the machine, but it managed to score 58 seconds when booting Windows 7. Even if not surprising, we shouldn’t forget that there are systems which need one minute to boot Windows XP.
The netbook seems to get along pretty well with Windows 7. According to the Laptopmag article, a great thing the OS features is an improved Network Manager, which allowed for uninterrupted Skype chatting while simultaneously writing an article, editing images and uploading a few files. Some problems were experienced at high definition video playback, but the overall impression was a very good one.