Netbook OS

Computer Help and Discussions The Lounge
1

I have a netbook that I am considering various options for.

Specs are: 1.66 GHZ dual core Celeron Atom chipset, 128 MB Integrated Video Ram, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, WiFi, 10.1 in screen etc...

Currently using 7 32 bit & have 45% ram free.

I have thought of various OS, as well as hardware configurations, so I would love to have input on what users think is best!

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- Is 64 bit faster on a netbook than 32 bit?

- Windows 98 (with revolutions pack + kernel ex patch)/Windows ME/NT 5/2,000/XP Pro/7

- Ubuntu/Linux Mint/Google Chrome OS/React OS/Splashtop

- My netbook has 1 GB RAM, but supports 2 GB. Will 1 more GB make a notable difference in speed?

- Would an SSD drive be that much faster on a netbook than an SSD drive?

* Notes

- Earlier Windows versions also include DOS, which you can use to play older racing games that don't work in newer OS without Dosbox or equivalent.

- NT 5 seems to look like Windows ME, with the stability of 2,000 (but not with DOS, I think)

- Earlier OS may run faster/use less ram.

- Kernelex is an open source project that aims to run NT (XP & higher) only apps on earlier Windows versions.

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Which would you choose?

* 32 or 64 bit?

* HDD or SSD?

* 1 GB or 2 GB RAM?

* Windows/Google/React/Linux distro?

I thought it would be very interesting to find out what everyone thinks, & also if you know or can think of any other area(s) to improve performance, let me know!

Example: If I patched UXTheme files in 7 to allow 3rd party themes such as Royale XP for Windows 7, then turned off Aero, will I be able to still "look good with less ram?"

2

I wouldn't use anything older than xp if going with windows. Their old, unsupported, and generally crappy.

I have a netbook with windows 7 starter and it works fine. Netbooks aren't built for speed anyway, but at least with windows all your hardware works perfectly and your battery life should be much better than with linux(as windows is way better at scaling power usage) which is really all that matters with a netbook.

3

* 32 or 64 bit?

* 1 GB or 2 GB RAM?

These are not independent.

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

That is third line down in

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/system-requirements

Windows 7 actually needs 256 Megawords of RAM,

where a word is 32 bits or 4 bytes on a 32 bit machine, and

where a word is 64 bits or 8 bytes on a 64 bit machine.

It is self evident that any 32 bit application will use/leak (Firefox I am looking at you) the same number of words of RAM,

So a 64 bit machine needs twice the number of bytes as a 32 bit machine for a given workload of 32 bit applications.

64 bit applications waste at least half of most words of RAM, but they may occasionally use a little bit from the "spare" half.

32 bit Speccy has just used 7,900 kB of RAM.

64 bit Speccy has just used 8,184 kB of RAM

I expected to see the 64 bit use just under 7,900, but I guess it sees more with system32 as well as SysWow64.

32 bit Defraggler hits a peak of 51 MB and drops to 35,036 kB after Analyse

64 bit Defraggler hits a peak of 70 MB and drops to 37,316 kB after Analyse

I really thought they would be the same.

This suggests that 32 bit Defraggler will NOT defrag system32, but will defrag SysWOW64 whilst believing it to be system32.

Conclusion, 32 bit Defraggler will use half and waste half of 51 MB RAM on a 64 bit machine,

but will take only 25.5 MB RAM on a 32 bit machine.

Whatever your concurrent workload may be, you need twice the RAM to support it on a 64 bit machine.

I love my 64 bit Desktop with a 22 inch monitor and an 18 inch long task bar.

Much more space on the task bar for running applications than my 32 bit Laptop with 1.25 GB RAM.

Unfortunately more than 9 inches of icons in the task bar needs more than my existing 4 GB of RAM.

I know what I need for Christmas ! !

4

To start with netbook processors are not very quick and more or less comparable to a Pentium III CPU.

As for 64bit processors I don't believe they run faster than 32bit however they do have the advantage of address more than 4GB of RAM.

If you have no intention of upgrading your RAM to 4GB or above than I would suggest you stick with a 32bit Operating System for better driver support and software compatibility.

Picking the right Operating System depends your requrements, if its casual browsing and watching YouTube videos then XP is all you really need.

However if you're feeling a little more adventurous then perhaps Windows 7 (with the fancy crap disabled), Android X86 or Ubuntu should suffice.

Richard S.

5

To start with netbook processors are not very quick and more or less comparable to a Pentium III CPU.

As for 64bit processors I don't believe they run faster than 32bit however they do have the advantage of address more than 4GB of RAM.

If you have no intention of upgrading your RAM to 4GB or above than I would suggest you stick with a 32bit Operating System for better driver support and software compatibility.

Picking the right Operating System depends your requrements, if its casual browsing and watching YouTube videos then XP is all you really need.

However if you're feeling a little more adventurous then perhaps Windows 7 (with the fancy crap disabled), Android X86 or Ubuntu should suffice.

Richard S.

Very good to know! Thanks!

Well, this is a dual core atom processor, so instead of 1.66, it is 3.32 GHZ.

I am thinking, maybe like you said, 32 bits is better than 64 for the netbook.

7 runs fairly snappy on it, course that could be due to the 128 mb integrated graphics, + having more than 512 mb RAM (1 GB) + it being dual core.

Seems we solved the 32/64 bit question, leaving me to ponder about the following:

- Update to 2 GB RAM, or keep 1 GB?

- Any better os than XP or 7 to put on it?

6

2 GB of RAM should make a difference ; anything above will have a smaller effect.

SSDs are awesome ; your disk is usually the performance bottleneck, and netbook/notebook drives are usually slow (5400 RPM vs 7200 on normal PCs)

Win7 x64 probably won't install on your netbook, many Intel Atoms are x86 only.

Do not, ever, ever, ever disable Aero if your graphic card can run it. It offloads the work to the GPU instead of having the CPU handle everything.

PS : A dual-core processor @ 1.66 GHz != a single-core processor @ 3.32 GHz. Multiple cores are much more efficient, because they can do multiple things at the same time.

7

2 GB of RAM should make a difference ; anything above will have a smaller effect.

SSDs are awesome ; your disk is usually the performance bottleneck, and netbook/notebook drives are usually slow (5400 RPM vs 7200 on normal PCs)

Win7 x64 probably won't install on your netbook, many Intel Atoms are x86 only.

Do not, ever, ever, ever disable Aero if your graphic card can run it. It offloads the work to the GPU instead of having the CPU handle everything.

PS : A dual-core processor @ 1.66 GHz != a single-core processor @ 3.32 GHz. Multiple cores are much more efficient, because they can do multiple things at the same time.

Hmmmm....

I have aero on right now, & it's running fine.

Your right, it is usually 5,400, & 7,200 are about 2x quicker.

I am not wanting to spend a ton of $$$ on SSD yet though.

But that would be cool, when the prices drop!

I think perhaps maxing the ram to 2 GB may help.

I do love my netbook!

Awesome suggestions...

P.S. I have a 3 cell battery with about 3-4 hr runtime. Have thought about the possibilities with a 9 cell 10-12 hr battery!