Aspire One + Windows 7

Microsoft has always had a calling certain key areas in computing. The most recent development has been in the netbook arena, where devices, services, the Internet, and cloud computing all converge to make a beautiful computing experience. To be useful, a machine to run such a thing would have to be huge, right?

Wrong. I swiped the Aspire One from James, and took some time to play with it before asking the question "Would 7 run on it?" Last week, PDC attendees were granted access to an early build of Windows 7 that is surprisingly and refreshingly stable. So fate had me install Windows 7 on the Aspire One.

The install was quick and very similar to that of Vista's installer. After the second phase of installation, the sound card and video card were detected, but only the video card was properly installed. On my other laptop, neither the video or sound drivers were working properly. Score one for the little guy.

Upon boot, an item to note for the laptop/netbook crowd is the commitment by Microsoft to greater DPI scaling ability. In the personalization menu, we now have a choice to make our scaling "Medium" or 125% increased. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but sacrificing screen real estate for portability, you also need the readability.

A few things that don't work:
Wireless. The wireless is not detected at all for the Aspire One, and the work around so far is to download the Vista driver from the manufacturer's website, then install and you should be good to go.
Sound. Sound is there, but the driver isn't what it needs to be, so certain sounds will have a popping noise to them. This is corrected by getting the Vista driver or using Windows Update after securing the wireless.
Media Center. Media Center is a little jerky even though Aero is completely enabled and working. I suspect this is due to the video card itself and not the drivers.

Thanks for reading our blog.
-Dena