Windows 7 versus Windows XP on the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA Netbook

Thoughts and Conclusion

Many in the industry are counting on Windows 7 to bring the netbook market to the next level. Having netbook manufacturers ship netbooks with 7+ year old Windows XP pre-installed surely deterred some from joining the ranks of households with the small, light and portable netbooks. It seems Microsoft has addressed most of the pitfalls of Windows Vista on a netbook by increasing battery life and performance to be very close to that of the lighter weight Windows XP.

We were happy to see that we did not experience any performance issues running Windows 7 on our ASUS Eee PC 1005HA seashell netbook. On some of our earlier netbooks we’ve reviewed, we noticed an occasional delay in responsiveness while simply typing an email. We did not notice any of this while running Windows XP or Windows 7 on the 1005HA.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the ASUS 1005HA was able to score a 2.2 on the Windows Experience Index’s graphics test. This was enough to allow us to enable Aero on the desktop. We did notice that Aero is automatically disabled when unplugged in battery saver mode which makes sense if you are going for the longest battery life possible.

Our tests have shown that even the Release Candidate of Windows 7 Ultimate can be run on a netbook. We look forward to seeing what Windows 7 can do once it is released to the public come October 22nd!

Legit Bottom Line: Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system can and will be run on netbooks without a significant performance difference in most areas when compared to Windows XP. Consumers will be able to enjoy the enhancements had since 2002 without fear of turning their netbook into a clunker!