Windows 7 on Atom

Netbooks. Yeah, I’m moderately obsessed with them. So however is most of the rest of the industry, seeing netbooks as the first small step toward the ubiquitous internet that’s been predicted for most of the time I’ve been alive.

One of the oft-mentioned limitations of the netbook platform as it currently stands is the choice of operating system. While many find Windows XP preferable to the myriad Linux options, Microsoft’s offering is starting to show its age, and can be quite cumbersome for the highly mobile who connect to many networks and devices. While Windows Vista does have an improved networking experience, its draconian hardware requirements leaves its performance on Atom sorely lacking.
Linux is a natural partner to the netbook, if only we can convince the market. For the moment however, buyers seem to be looking to replicate their Windows desktop experience on their netbook – just smaller and more streamlined.

The release candidate of Windows 7 looks like the most promising answer. With Vista’s failings so fresh in the mind’s of consumers, it’s probably not surprising that many netbook owners are unaware that Windows 7 will not only run on a netbook, but perform well.

Aero interface running well on Intel GMA 950

On a clean install of Windows 7, the driver support is simply exceptional. Most netbook hardware is automatically detected and bluetooth, wireless, display and other drivers are already present. Most netbook models will require the Vista or Windows XP version of their touchpad drivers installed to enable full multi-touch/scrolling support, and quite often the manufacturers software will need to be installed to fully enable the use of hotkeys. This is still a far cry from Windows XP, which can sometimes be lacking fundamentals such as USB support on newer chipsets before drivers are installed.

Performance is surprisingly good. On the Intel GMA 950 graphics included on most netbooks, Aero is fully enabled and graphical effects display with a minimum of lag. On a HP Mini 1000 with the standard 1.6Ghz Atom CPU and 1GB memory I am running at the time of writing:

WordPad
Google Chrome, 4 tabs
Windows photo viewer
Psi – one chat, one chat room
PuTTY – one ssh session
Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop

All of this running, and no slow-down yet

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop is a cross-platform email client for the Zimbra mail server, an open source Exchange replacement. There’s unfortunately java involved, and it’s consuming a whopping 300MB of my memory entirely on its own – by anyone’s standards, a fairly heavy piece of software to be running for mail. With all of this running, I was able to play back a YouTube video smoothly without noticing any lag or performance problems at all.

As far as Windows 7′s feature set goes, its improved networking really benefits a highly mobile device like a netbook. Connecting to many wireless networks and having the machine reconnect to the one you actually want is pretty close to seamless. Windows XP has a nasty little habit of connecting to the weakest strength wireless network just to spite me. I was disappointed to find out that I couldn’t enable BitLocker drive encryption due to the lack of a TPM chip in the device I was using. Whole-disk encryption seems like a natural precuation to take on a device that could be so easily lost or stolen.

Many have referred to Vista as ‘XP Service Pack 4′ in the sense that it is simply a visual overhaul rather than a new evolution, and Windows 7 similarly feels like ‘Vista done right’ rather than anything new and revolutionary. Despite this, it’s still great to see that Windows 7 holds such promise for lower-powered devices.