Running Vista on a netbook? Crazy?

I am tripping over left and right with MSDN Vista copies but I only have a handful for Windows 7 that I plan to use for more important PCs at home.

I ordered an Asus PC1005HA-PU1X (N280/GMA 950) and will upgrade to 2GB DDR2-800 RAM.

How crazy would I be to run Vista (32-bit, 64-bit, Pro, Home, Business, or Enterprise - whichever you recommend) on this netbook? I've never had an issue with Vista on any of my laptops or PCs. If you talked to my co-workers and friends, they'd lead you to believe Vista is pure evil and W7 is the savior - yet we use Vista at work and I've never had a problem in over a year.

I can spare a W7 32-bit install, but I wanted to hear from other enthusiasts first.

Will I get more performance using 64-bit over 32-bit? Is Vista that much worse on a netbook than W7, even if I upgrade Vista to SP-2 and disable Aero?

 

You can't use 64bit vista on netbook because it doesn't support 64bit OS. Intel atom is 32bit processor. There are quite a number of people who run vista ultimate on netbook and its pretty good, but windows 7 on netbook is much better. You'll get full aero on any netbook in windows and there's pretty much no difference if you turn on or off the aero effects.

 

It's possible, but not advisable. It will run a lot slower than Windows 7 on that hardware. If you had 2GB of RAM, like you are planning on, it would be alright.

AFAIK, the performance difference isn't noticeable unless you have 4GB of RAM or over and are running lots of intensive applications. Obviously when you are doing things that will need more than 4GB of RAM, the whole 32 bit and 4GB will come into play.

Oops, true, I forgot about that.

 

I forgot the N280/N450 wasn't the same as the N330 (dual-core).
Has anyone documented boot times/operation times for XP, Vista, and W7 on a netbook?

Should I just go for W7 32-bit on the netbook?

 

if you have 2gb ram, it should work fine. a bit slow, but fine. depends a lot on the hdd you have in.

 

The N450 supports 64-bit.

 

I had Vista 32 Ultimate on my Asus 1000h and it ran fine with 2gb RAM. Now I upgraded it with an 128gb SSD drive with Windows 7 HP 32bit ad it runs well too. Funny how Asus has support for Win7 and not Vista for this eeePC. The main problem with both is the ACPI driver which you can find a solution online.

 

You have the student version of MSDN or what? The normal version can just request more keys if you need them.

Note these are licensed for development use and not productive systems or home use!

 

My advice would be to simply go with Win7 since it's far more optimized in comparison to Vista, and will work much better on a Netbook.

 

Yea I have student MSDN access, so there are a limited number of keys.

 

How many computers do you have?

My brother has MSDN student also and he got 8 keys.

Windows 7 Professional 32bit and 64bit each in 2 languages
Windows 7 Enterprise 32 bit and 64bit also in 2 languages each.

Enterprise is just like Ultimate so that is what he is using.

You dont need to stick with this also. You can install Win 7 Professional 64bit English 4 times if you want.

 

I did see W7 pro in x86 and x64 in Chinese Simplified, but would I be able to use it in English or will it automatically turn my install into the Chinese language?

Our MSDN access doesn't give us W7 Enterprise for some reason, so there are only 4 keys for W7

 

I have a n230 desktop board that ran 64 bit vista for about 5 minutes. Then I installed Linux

 

It should work yes. Just use the ISO of W7 pro english and the key that you got from the Chinese version. Never tried it for Chinese but it works like that for german, english, turkish and french. Dont think chinese is different.

 

Windows 7 ultimate on netbook can boot in about 15-20 seconds on a netbook from pressing the start button to usability.