Lightweight Windows 7 pre-Beta on Eee PC 1000H looks very promising

Sure, Windows 7 will run just fine on a thick slab of screaming desktop, but what everyone's really wondering is how it'll perform on laptops, or better yet, down-market netbooks. The very same stage that put Linux into the grubby hands of the Wal-mart consumer and forced Microsoft to extend the life of XP just to stay in the game. It's all pre-beta stuff for now mind you, but Laptop loaded up its early Windows 7 build onto an Eee PC 1000H (10-inch, 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB RAM) with decent results. For the most part, it ran "pretty well" with Laptop managing to get the netbook's features working from the XP drivers supplied by ASUS. And just as Microsoft demonstrated, the relatively lightweight Microsoft OS required just 485MB of RAM when Windows 7 was fully loaded, sans applications of course. Hot. There were some problems with graphics performance as demonstrated by jumpy, 720p video playback and video conferencing over Skype. Still, pre-beta is exactly that, pre-beta. Drop a gold-release Windows 7 OS onto an Eee PC convertible touchscreen and Microsoft and ASUS might be on to something come mid 2009.

[Thanks, Avram P.]

[Anghell @ Oct 31st 2008 4:12AM]

Wow, that's very hot indeed.
Very interesting that they're able to use XP drivers for it. Are there any changes in the drivermodel for 7?

[MioTheGreat @ Oct 31st 2008 5:09AM]

The driver models are all Vista's, or at least based off of Vista's. For instance, WDDM 1.1. Though, you'll still be able to use a WDDM 1.0 (Vista) and possibly an XDDM (XP) video driver.

[allislost @ Oct 31st 2008 4:15AM]

I just read an article, on another tech blog, that mentions that this light-weight Windowa 7 pre-beta cannot be worn as a hat.

[From My Cube @ Oct 31st 2008 4:39AM]

its a good thing i still have my fro cap then


http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelewis/2287255886/

[BlissX @ Oct 31st 2008 4:25AM]

That wallpaper: WANT!

Microsoft and Apple may have their differences, but they usually churn up some wonderful desktop pics.

[ShadowMaker @ Oct 31st 2008 6:48AM]

I remember when the whole OS fit into less than a MB of RAM. How old does that make me?

[JohnM @ Nov 1st 2008 7:03AM]

ShadowMaker: Not as old as me then, because I remember when the OS used less than 4KB! So how old does that make me?

[schmitty338 @ Oct 31st 2008 10:05AM]

@ShadowMaker

...about 20.

[jd @ Oct 31st 2008 10:18AM]

os never fit into ram. it was a chicken and egg questions.when the ram gets bigger the os gets bigger. it is like the US economy, the bigger the GDP the bigger the deficit.

[rawhead @ Oct 31st 2008 12:11PM]

@jd

Beg to differ. You could actually fit Mac OS 7-9 on RAM and boot from it ;-)

http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/23/create-a-ram-disk-in-mac-os-x/

See post and comments there.

[GeekPI @ Oct 31st 2008 1:14PM]

Here's a gallery of all the wallpapers of Windows 7. There's some pretty nice ones there

http://geekpi.com/images/win7/wallpapers/win7/

[Santala @ Oct 31st 2008 4:30AM]

485MB?!? That's supposed to be a small amount of memory used? Don't most of these things have 512MB to play with? How much does that leave for running anything? 27MB? How's that enough for anything.

[Orpheus @ Oct 31st 2008 4:32AM]

I think the standard for netbooks these days is 1GB.

[ilh @ Oct 31st 2008 4:40AM]

"just" 485Mb of RAM used...rules out the 701 without swapping the RAM then.

There's a couple out there at 512Mb of RAM but most are 1Gb due to the XP license limit so who knows, they might come with 2Gb if the 7 license doesn't have that kind of limit.

[Daza @ Oct 31st 2008 4:40AM]

Guarantee you that when Windows 7 launches the minimum RAM you'll find on a netbook will be 2GB, if not 4GB.

[patriotsn1 @ Oct 31st 2008 4:42AM]

If you're still running on 1/2 GB RAM you have no friends.

[Hiro @ Oct 31st 2008 4:47AM]

Yes 485MB is a small amount of memory used this day in age. 1GB of ram will only set you back $13 retail

[LarryLarryLarry @ Oct 31st 2008 5:24AM]

I was so suprised by 500MB being called "lightweight" that I checked my Mac OS 10.5.5 and it's using about 505MB. Is Leopard considered a compact or resource-friendly OS?

HA HA HA!

Of course not. There's nothing special about the Windows 7 RAM footprint, nothing whatsoever. Just bad reporting.

[Jakob @ Oct 31st 2008 6:35AM]

Larry Larry Larry.. (notice the spaces) I thought all Apple fanatics claimed Mac OS X was so much better in every aspect, right now (again notice the beta stage) Windows 7 equals Mac OS X Leopard's RAM usage.

[giuliop @ Oct 31st 2008 7:05AM]

"Yes 485MB is a small amount of memory used this day in age. 1GB of ram will only set you back $13 retail"

That's not the point. The point is that 1GB of memory, despite the fact that you find it anywhere, it's a f***ing huge amount of memory. It's wasted space, filled up by sloppy to plainly dumb programming by Microsoft's "engineers" (not that Apple's are much better, mind you). The point is that we could have ridiculously cheap machines that could do everything much, much faster; instead we have super-fast machines that crawl and give "decent results" even if they have that kind of memory and can carry out more than one billion and a half operations a second: do you have a vague idea of what that means? I guess not, after all processors are so cheap these days.

Wake up, people. Those who prefer the blue pill go ahead and low-rank me.

P.S. For those who think I'm talking BS: see what a well-coded OS could do about 10 years ago, with 64MB of RAM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VDYdaXApNk (at about 2:10, for the impatient ones)

[Deeznuts420 @ Oct 31st 2008 8:25AM]

youre making old ass matrix references.....who's the crazy person now??

[JMMGoalster @ Oct 31st 2008 11:22AM]

@giuliop

Yes, that was awesome for 10 YEARS AGO. Technology advances. Try putting a modern TCP/IP stack or a modern Kernel on a 10 year old machine. The fact is that it wouldn't even run because machines back then were 16bit. Modern machines are 32 or 64 bit, which means every single pointer allocated takes over double the space, which alone takes up a ton more RAM. Machines now take up more RAM because they do more than machines 10 years ago. If you want a small footprint, go back to Windows 3.1 or the original Mac OS. RAM is cheap, 500MB of RAM usage for a modern OS is great.

[giuliop @ Oct 31st 2008 11:28AM]

What is The Old Ass Matrix?

[VampireHunter Z @ Oct 31st 2008 1:10PM]

I don't get what all this bitching is about. To put things in perspective cellphones are already over 256MB RAM and are about to hit 512MB. I would expect a netbook to pull alot more weight than a phone, so 1GB/2GB RAM shouldn't be surprizing.

[DarkLight @ Oct 31st 2008 6:16PM]

(Low rank me before you read)

Gah! You all suck! (except the OP)

I'm running a very feature rich Linux (with Compiz, no less) on a 5 year old computer with 256MB of RAM. Despite having much more features and bling bling, it even runs faster than XP...

Lightweight my arse, micro$ofts code is trash, like it has almost always been....

[giuliop @ Nov 1st 2008 8:33AM]

@JMMGoalster

What a load of bullshit.

LOL, 16-bit machines, 10 years ago? Are you living still in 1999? See, I knew you had something to do with the Old Ass Matrix.

No, 10 years ago machines were already 32-bit. Windows 95 (in, uh, 1995) was a 32-bit operating system, as BeOS, in 1998, was too.
And no, memory and space usage doesn't inherently double in the transition; you made that up.

So, let me get your "reasoning" straight: we have machines that are, what, 10 ten times faster than 10 years ago? Yet, in your opinion, a "modern" TCP/IP stack (which, BTW, does not differ from a 10-year old stack in the least) and a "modern" kernel should run slower. So the "modern" kernel is, let's say, 12 times slower than the old one. And that's because technology is advancing. Right.

You like the Old Ass Matrix, you live in it. Cheers.

[gamer24 @ Oct 31st 2008 4:44AM]

Also remember by the time windows 7 comes out it, RAM will be even cheaper then it is now. So having 2gb or 4gb in a netbook wont cost what it does today.

[Pizzahut @ Oct 31st 2008 4:52AM]

Windows 7 = Vista Pro! 2GB will be minimum and probably 4GB to be more practical.

[Phoenix @ Oct 31st 2008 8:46AM]

@pizzahurt
did you even READ the Engadet article?

[Jeff @ Oct 31st 2008 9:51AM]

These days the coolest blog commenters don't even read the article, they simply head to the comments section to preach verbatim they heard from their fellow Joe the Plumber

[roach @ Oct 31st 2008 10:57AM]

@ game24
My four year old Tablet PC which is lower spec than this netbook runs Vista just fine. And this is my daily use and drawning laptop.

[Passarinhuu @ Oct 31st 2008 7:46PM]

@roach

Dude, you work in slow-motion...

[Duscrom @ Oct 31st 2008 4:50AM]

Wait. why are you trying to run a 720p vid on a 1.6 Ghz CPU with no real GPU acceleration?

[Nihility @ Oct 31st 2008 4:57AM]

Works fine on the XP version. It's a good benchmark.

[Nihility @ Oct 31st 2008 4:55AM]

Basically it's slightly less heavy than Vista and, according to the article,Vista runs on an eee pc just fine as well. I don't know what constitutes as "just fine" but 7 also takes less RAM than Vista. Unfortunately 7 is not capable of running 720P which XP can.

I guess it's a step in the right direction. I'd like to see all netbooks use a dual core atom though. Current gen is just too weak. Skype video is a good test, at a minimum you should be able to have 2 way video.

[Glen @ Oct 31st 2008 5:06AM]

@Nihility - "Unfortunately 7 is not capable of running 720P which XP can" ... um, sorry?? Is 7 released and have you tried this? It *probably* didn't do crappy 720 because of the crappy XP drivers running in compat mode.

[Nihility @ Oct 31st 2008 5:37AM]

1) I'm obviously talking about the pre-beta "a step in the right direction. However that my not have been completely transparant.

2) "It *probably* didn't do crappy 720 because of the crappy XP drivers running in compat mode"
The graphics on it doesn't decode the actual video, just the CPU does that. So that's probably not the reason and considering how vista doesn't run 720P as well you're just being silly.

3) Still a valid benchmark and atom is uber lame.

[MioTheGreat @ Oct 31st 2008 1:05PM]

>The graphics on it doesn't decode the actual video, just the CPU does that.

Untrue. Most graphics hardware these days will do some measure of hardware acceleration for you.

[patriotsn1 @ Oct 31st 2008 5:06AM]

Maybe we should wait until something more developed than a pre-beta version of an entire operating system exists before we start assuming that performance won't improve....

[Rotaryfan @ Oct 31st 2008 11:47AM]

if 7 goes the way of vista, it could get worse as it is finalized.

hopefully no useless features will end up in a netbook version, because they certainly will on a desktop version. like multi touch support. how many people need that?

[Monkeydog @ Oct 31st 2008 5:11AM]

It may just be because I am stubborn when it comes to upgrading(if I can do everything I need already, why upgrade to a beefier OS?) and quite the minimalist...

But...that still sounds like far too much RAM usage and need for me. Maybe I'm spoiled by Linux and XP's relatively low RAM need...but what exactly is all that ram getting used by? and to do what?

[Hiro @ Oct 31st 2008 5:20AM]

You should try out Windows 95, it only needs 8MB of ram

[Monkeydog @ Oct 31st 2008 5:23AM]

I still have 95 installed on my old computer. (although sometimes I play with Linux on it)

Which is pretty much only used nowadays to play SimTower and be nostalgic.

[Hiro @ Oct 31st 2008 5:32AM]

Have you tried Windows 98? It only requires 24MB of ram

[Monkeydog @ Oct 31st 2008 5:34AM]

24mbs?

Who do you think I am, some kind of Richard Branson type character?

[Buzz @ Oct 31st 2008 5:26AM]

Ahem...what's the point of running 720p video on a 600Px high screen ? (other than a rather inaccurate benchmark).

What exactly does Windows 7 bring new to the OS game that would convince a non-Linux user to switch from XP on a netbook ? for a Linux savvy the advantage of Linux distros is that they can be remastered to fit a specific user and netbook's needs. Imho Microsoft simply can't touch that...

and yes, 485MB RAM is *not* lightweight, no matter how cheap RAM gets ! Personally i use XP as my main OS but Linux alternatives for old workstations or new netbooks far outclass MS. Puppy Linux for example comes loaded with everything u'll ever need on a netbook, all in 90Mb ! And on an old machine startup times for the OS as well any application that has equivalent version on Windows (such as Pidgin, Opera, Firefox, Abiword) is at least half !

Netbooks won't pass the 2GB Ram barrier any time soon simply because some manufacturers are interested in keeping things cheap. Besides, as far as i know current processors employed on netbooks are x86 only, so no RAM over 3.5 or whatever the limit is...
Sure, things will change by the time Windows 7 is out, but i doubt that much...

[ITRanger @ Oct 31st 2008 7:46AM]

Having watched the Linux scene for many years and having a number of builds on various machines since I work in IT, you will never escape the fact that Linux is too rough around the edges for normal users other than enthusiasts. As can be noted by the number of returns for the Linux Netbook models.

Having become very used to and happy Vista, and still having a number of XP builds lying about, I really don't want to go back to XP. In fact I always run XP under MS VPC on Vista if I need to.

Vista on a Netbook is too slow at the moment, so I would be very happy to be able to run Windows 7 and so would many users.

The MIE shell on Ubuntu for the HP Mini 1000 looks interesting, and if done well might convert a few more people to Linux, but generally I think much of the Linux implementations have a long way to go due to the open source nature.

Linux on a netbook needs a major company like Google behind it to give it a better user experience.

[Macdelaney @ Oct 31st 2008 9:46AM]

Also, Poulsbo, which is something I would like to have in my netbook, only supports 1Gb, I hope that changes soon or a nice poulsbo alternative pops up.

[Gobelet @ Oct 31st 2008 5:27AM]

I have Vista on my MSI Wind, which has pretty much the same stuff inside (Atom 1.6 GHz, 1GB of RAM...), and it works wonderfully. Reviews showed that it goes even faster than XP on most benchmarks, and I noticed my computer boots faster on Vista than my friend's Core 2 Duo Toshiba Laptop. It's no surprise Windows 7, having a lighter kernel than Vista, works.

Plus, if it runs slow at the time, it's probably because it's a debug build, with symbols activated.

[Justin Nolan @ Oct 31st 2008 5:47AM]

Damn, I'm very tempted to install this on my 901 now. Only thing is I JUST installed Ubuntu-eee (and fell in love). Hmm... maybe I can put an SDHC card to good use.