My Dell Inspirion 6000 is an aging laptop dating back about 4 years. It runs on an Intel Pentium 1.6 GHz processor with 2 GB of DDR2-667 RAM, an ATI Radeon Mobility X300 and a 5400RPM 80 GB hard drive. Windows 7 x86 went on it today, replacing the old Windows XP that it has been running. It was very usable, even more so than Windows XP, I dare say.
The installation took about 20 minutes, with the slow timing attributed to the slow hard drive. Graphics and WLAN drivers were obtained from Windows Update right after the installation completed and hit the desktop. Within 45 minutes from inserting the Windows 7 DVD into my drive, I had Office 2007, FoxIt Reader, Windows Live Messenger, FileZilla, KeePass, Wireshark and Eraser installed, almost a fully functional system for the stuff I do on my laptop. Since Windows 7 has a build in a firewall that supports both incoming and outgoing filtering, I didn’t need to install a 3rd party firewall, which are notorious for having a huge negative impact on system performance.
My old notebook is comparable to a modern day netbook, and if the netbook market is what Microsoft has in mind with it’s release of Windows 7, it would definitely find acceptance in it.
Cool!
Now that my iPhone does what I used to use my Netbook for, was thinking of W7 for it. I wonder if it would work well on this pre-Atom thing…
how many win7 keys do you get?
One problem I’ve had with old laptops is that they tend to have a vastly diminished battery life, thus ultimately relegating them to an unportable life (unless there’s a power socket available)
Currently I have requested for two Windows 7 Ultimate keys, and one Enterprise (multiple activation) key. Enterprise alone is enough to go around, not sure what the limit is.