Windows 7 Starter - Waste of time or not?

dulpit

Hey all,

A few weeks ago I foolishly broke my laptop's screen and decided I'm going to replace it with a PC (i.e. desktop).

However, something small and portable would be handy to have too, so I was thinking I might pick up a cheap netbook. From initial searches online, the cheap and cheerful ones have 1GB of RAM and run Windows 7 starter.

If I do get one of these netbooks, all I'll be using it for is surfing the interwebs, maybe some music or a TV show, and possibly some office work (mainly word, and mainly just to open files to print)

Would Windows 7 Starter be sufficient for all this? Or would I be better off getting something else? Or (and I know I'm in the wrong forum for this) would a typical atom netbook with 1 GB of RAM be better running a Linux distro?

cookie1977

Personal opinion. A linux distro would offer more than windows 7 starter (windows 7 home would also run fine on it) but it's not that bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

I'd plum for Fedora distro or if you're not too familiar with linux then go for ubuntu

FGR

The other point is whether you'd be happy browsing on a netbook. The screens are exceptionally small on them.

Capt'n Midnight

What make / model - ask on laptop forum or on adverts.ie in case soneome may have a replacement screen

starter doesn't have the 3 applications at a time limit anymore

and it has a hard limt of 2GB memory but so do many netbooks

set system fonts to verdana so you can squeeze every last pixel out of the screen - there are lots of netbook tips

linux has advantages but if you take into account that windows versions of netbooks are usually higher spec, you aren't saving much at all , and besides you can install linux any time you want

superfish

hi op I recently purchased a toshiba nb 500 from argos it has 16ghz atom processor 1gb of ram and a 250gb hard drive it cost 259 euro I bought this for when im out and about as my laptop is too big, I can honestly say its a fabulous machine the screen size is not an issue if you download a browser like safari or the new mozilla which is highly customizable and you can have just one narrow navigation bar at the top then what you do is auto hide the taskbar so you get the full screen for browsing.

the cons of windows starter are 1. you cant change your desktop background (although there is a program you can use to bypass this) 2. you cant create a network. if you can live with this fair enough, I could not so ive upgraded it to home premium.

I find this to be a very fast efficient little machine with a fullsize keyboard, i have not turned on my laptop or home pc since I bought this as its just so handy and I can honestly say the screen size is no issue

here is a link to the spec http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/mini-nhttp://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/mini-notebook/NB500otebook/NB500

superfish

sorry to be a troll lol but stay away from the msi wind u130 as I had one before they are cheap but just dont perform you would end up bouncing it off the wall pure trash and tiny screen and tiny keyboard

Overheal

Netbooks shouldn't be considered a PC replacement more than they are a PC companion so getting the Desktop first is a smart move. Netbooks really aren't great for multitasking.

Don't bother with installing Office on the netbook though, just use Word Viewer:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

superfish

Overheal wrote: »

Netbooks shouldn't be considered a PC replacement more than they are a PC companion so getting the Desktop first is a smart move. Netbooks really aren't great for multitasking.

Don't bother with installing Office on the netbook though, just use Word Viewer:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

very true I removed my trial of office 2010 and installed open office org instead it runs a lot better this way

Overheal

OpenOffice is good but big, WordViewer is similarly free, but light.