Windows 7 Versus XP: Which Belongs On Your Netbook?

[benkraft]

Windows Vista was never really an option for netbook users, but the release candidate of Windows 7 piqued our interest. Can Microsoft finally retire Windows XP in the netbook space? Even now with RC1 available, the answer seems tied to driver development.

Windows 7 Versus XP: Which Belongs On Your Netbook? : Read more

 

[apache_lives]

LMAO just as i thought - its a vista renamed and flashed up a bit more

i know - BUY MORE RAM - just might help a little? who knew!

 

[duckmanx88]

[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]LMAO just as i thought - its a vista renamed and flashed up a bit morei know - BUY MORE RAM - just might help a little? who knew![/citation]

did you even read the article? look at the results. read Benjamin's conclusion. its the moder interface of vista with the functionality of xp. and this is only an RC. who knows what'll happen until the October release.

 

[l0st_ins0mniac]

vista sucked ill stick with my xp 02 and 05 till i hear a bit more about win 07

 

[mitch074]

personally, I've found the solution:

neither. I'm a running a Tux on me netbook. I pity da foo' running either da decrepit or da unwashed behind da ears OSes on them netbooks.

 

[harshavardhanr]

Windows RC1 installs the ULTIMATE edition by default whereas netbooks that come installed with Windows 7 will have the STARTER edition installed. The Starter edition should be able to perform better and last longer on netbooks because it is (supposedly) optimized for them. Also, it will have far fewer services running in the background compared to the Ultimate edition.

Hence, the conclusion, THE ABOVE COMPARISON IS POINTLESS.

 

[bigdaddycool]

Windows 7 is much improved on Vista. Using Vista on a laptop is ok if you have enough cpu power/ram mostly to back it up.

Windows 7 on the other hand in a real world test, say opening up like 10 internet explorers, photoshop and other things....... windows 7 will be alot snappier then Vista, also it uses less ram and less gpu power.

Ontop of that, by default Windows 7 selects the most appropriate power setting for the processor you are using.

Take notice, low-mid range cpu's will be set to Balanced, where as high performance cpu's like quad cores will be set to High Performance by default.

Microsoft took Vista (good gui product a lil run down running wise) and for a better word tweaked it out...... much like tuning a car.

The result is impressive I say for notebook and desktops. However, they really do need to fix their minor network issues and IE8 issues.

 

[YGDRASSIL]

Ultimate edition on a netbook and then complain about battery life. Hmmmm. Tommy is really losing it now. Wonder why I still come back here after the old good Tommy was brutally murdered.

 

[empstar]

"after the old good Tommy was brutally murdered."
wahahaha

 

[Inneandar]

It would be nice to see some more 'practical' benchmarks like boot time, app launch times or media playback preformance imho... The conclusion already more or less indicates that win7 felt smooth, but this ain't something you're gonna prove running synthetics. I installed win7 recently on an old laptop (p IV, 512 Mb ram!) and to my opinion it is smoother than the xp previously on it (older install, admittedly). Together with the added functionality, this certainly tips the balance for me.

 

[pbrigido]

Very good article! I was wondering with regards to the battery life difference between Win 7 and XP if all settings were set to a similar mode. The huge difference between the two OSs seems to be much larger than it should, even without the most current drivers for 7.

 

[Guest]

I hope Tom's does another test on the SAME(!!) system, when drivers are updated and the completed version of Win7 comes out.

The lack of a completed version of Win7 and un-optimized drivers makes this test more or less useless. Unless you factor in the obviously missing link in the test.... Windows Vista.

 

[Guest]

You shouldn't really get hung up on the idea that this is a beta of Windows 7. To all intents and purposes it is as close to final code as you'd need to get to benchmark. Take a look at paul thurrott's analysis of it to get a better understanding of just how far on Windows 7 is.

While I found the article really quite useful, it answered some questions I had. What I'd really love to know is just what the differences are when running games, surfing and doing the kinds of things you'd really be doing on a Netbook. Photoshop is really a meaningless benchmark for a Netbook, while it may reveal something about multiple cores and a strained system, it isn't really reflecting how the vast majority of Netbook users will be using the system. How about streaming flash in HD on Youtube, these are the kinds of benchmarks that I'd like to see, even if they end up being subjective opinion from the reviewer.

I'm lucky enough to have Ubuntu, XP, Vista and Windows 7 all running on same hardware to get a sense of what they all perform like, but this is on beefy hardware. Understanding what it's like on 1gb and a very modest processor is valuable stuff for those looking for that ultra portable.

For me, it'd be a deal breaker if I couldn't stream Youtube and other higher res video on the web. But if I knew that with XP it just worked ok,but was a little glitchy under Windows 7, that would again be really valuable information about which OS I would want to put on a Netbook.

I guess the best approach would be for people who already have XP to just slap it on their own Netbooks, run their own benchmarks that are meaningful to them and compare to Windows 7 and Linux. Time consuming and a shame tomshardware can't do it for us

 

[Guest]

Or.... You could get Linux, and get a full-featured and beautiful looking OS that comes with open-office, and pretty much anything else you could ever need via package managers and repositories. As much as Linux doesn't get a lot of help from the hardware vendors, you have to admire them, they can create a hacked hardware driver for a new device faster than most of the hardware vendors were able to create drivers for Vista.

 

[coolkev99]

[citation][nom]linus_torvalds_fanboy[/nom]Or.... You could get Linux, and get a full-featured and beautiful looking OS that comes with open-office, and pretty much anything else you could ever need via package managers and repositories...[/citation]

Speak for yourself

 

[Guest]

coolkev: Please explain what you need that Linux doesn't have, that you will be doing on a netbook? Please tell me you're doing video rendering, audio production, or some other number-crunching task on a netbook, please. Or better yet, games, tell me that Linux doesn't support your favorite game title that a netbook couldn't even run anyways.... Netbook aren't meant to be full-fledged computers, which means that Linux with it's outstanding web-browsers, office apps, and IM clients, is really all you need...

 

[Guest]

Linux users: if Linux is so great and secure and mighty, why is it that every few weeks a new kernel must be installed?

The fact that drivers are "hacked" screams security exploit to me, hmmm. Maybe Linux coders should stop preaching a free government welfare style system and instead band together and do something like an "evil capitalist" and release a common commercial product. Maybe then Apple, Microsoft and hardware manufacturers might take you seriously instead of seeing you for the angry kids you truly are. Heh.

 

[erloas]

[citation][nom]techpops[/nom]You shouldn't really get hung up on the idea that this is a beta of Windows 7. To all intents and purposes it is as close to final code as you'd need to get to benchmark.[/citation]
The point was mostly that while the OS might be almost done none of the drivers really are. Considering that so much that goes on with a computer is based on the drivers then having unoptimized drivers is going to make a big difference.

 

[aft_lizard01]

There is an install trick that will allow you to install starter on it. Either that or throw an extra gig of ram on it to help compensate for the extra services that are running in the background in Ultimate.

FWIW I gain 50% battery life on my Fujitsu Lifebook with additional tweaking that XP simply doesn't have, which includes display dimming to a level where XP can't touch.

 

[Mikee99]

The battery life test was not very fair. Obviously, if you are running Aero, you are going to be using more GPU resources. That is going to reduce your battery life. XP does not use hardware acceleration in the same way, so unless Aero was disabled (and according to those screenshots, it was not), that battery test should not be viewed as a negative. I'm curious to see what the battery life would be like with aero disabled, and I'm suprised that Tom's Hardware of all places would not even try it.

One of the major under-the-hood changes to Windows 7 was how it scheduled CPU tasks to improve battery life. If you're GPU is constantly processing data, it's going to offset any performance improvement you gain.

Honestly, it doesn't matter whether you have Ultimate or Starter on it. The only performance improvement you would obtain would be from less services being enabled by default. However, considering that most of the benchmarks are very close, I think that speaks great volumes for how good Windows 7 is. Remember, you are comparing it to an 8 YEAR OLD OS.

 

[dman3k]

Linux on netbooks? What is this about some distributions such as Ubuntu being a battery vamp?

 

[aft_lizard01]

I think the big point is that most consumers aren't going to have the knowledge to be able to tweak services to gain performance and battery life. That is why a OS version like starter are so tempting, consumers for the most part are computer illiterates and expect everything to be perfect out of the box. So you should do a comparison as close to each other as possible without further work by the consumer.

 

[IronRyan21]

Windows 7 should have been based off of XP, not Vista.

 

[cregan89]

Drivers are definitely causing you a lot of issues on that netbook. My Lenovo T61 gets excellent driver support through Windows Update on Windows 7 RC and it's battery life is much longer than it was on XP. I was getting about 2 hours of battery life with XP and over 3 hours of battery life on Windows 7. Windows 7's battery performance is actually probably my favourite improvement in Windows 7 so there is definitely something wrong with your setup.

 

[jstall]

I am running Windows Vista (basic) on my LT3103u Gateway netbook and it runs damn well, I will be upgrading to Windows 7 when it's release.