Windows 7 Starter Edition

My hand was iching.... Can't resist the temptation to leave my daughter's Asus Eee 900 alone, running Windows XP. I really need to give it a shot and see how Windows 7 is performing on a Celeron 900 netbook (not even ATOM)

Let's look at the spec, nothing special.

Asus Eee 900

- Celeron 900 processor

- 1GB RAM

- 4GB SSD + 16GB SSD = 20GB SSD

- 10.1" LCD panel with 1.3Mp Web Cam

First up, I downloaded the Windows 7 Starter edition from MSDN ;)

I copied the ISO file into my DELL E6400 (Win7 x64) and load it up using MagicDisc; Daemon tool had lost my favour after it started to charge for the software and burried the FREE version deep down in the forum.

Next,... wait a minute. Great. I forgot to bring my USB DVD-ROM drive. Ok, need to switch to Plan-B. I will have to install the OS using a thumbdrive or a mobile hard disk. I have no done it before (via USB storage) but what the heck, I started googling and within seconds, voila, I found this site to be very helpful and started following the procedures after backing up those data in my mobile hard disk. Kudos to the writer, it was just barely 20 minutes and I am ready to rock & roll. My mobile hard disk is bootable and has all the Windows 7 CD contents in it.

Time to change the BIOS of the Asus Eee. I booted up the Asus Eee (make sure it is connected to power) and start playing with the BIOS configuration. I changed the boot up sequence to enable my USB mobile HDD as the primary device to boot up. Once that is done, I just need to save the settings and the netbook will reboot.

The netbook automatically booted up from the mobile HDD and started the installation sequence. The installation was a breeze but again, hindered by the computing power and slow USB connectivity, it really take a long while (appox. 1 hours) to complete the installation. Nothing too fancy or surprise here, it's the same process as per Vista.

Upon completion of the installation, do remember to disconnect or reject the media (in my case, the mobile HDD) before the first restart. It took a couple of minutes before the netbook finally showing the configuration screen (asking for user name and password), once past that stage, you're at the desktop of Windows 7 starter.

I had a quick check and first thing came to my attention was the screen resolution. It is running at 800x600. Asus Eee 900 screen res should be 1024x600 and this requires a quick fix. I fired up the Windows Updates knowing most fixes and drivers shall be available online and as expected, just a moment later, the drivers are downloaded (Intel GM910) and installed, well, not after 2 reboots to get it all installed.

Windows 7 starter is running reasonably well on the Asus Eee 900 now. The CPU usage is constantly hovering around 9%-20% with one IE instance running with a download in progress. However, I had witnessed that the CPU utilization hits over 90% and stayed there when I am installing a driver. This should be normal since Celeron 900 is a single and rather old processor.

Of the 1GB memory that this unit is having, 512kb+ is being allocated as Cache while 640K is available with about 100K Free. I would say, this is rather sufficient for executing those run of the mill applications.