netbooks os

How to install Windows 7 on Netbooks

October 22nd marks another day in the history of Windows Operating Systems. Windows 7, which I honestly haven’t tried yet, is officially released for everyone and available for purchase for as low as $199.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium Edition – the cheapest and most commendable version for your netbooks. Also available are the Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate Editions for $299.99 and $319.99 respectively. The Starter Edition is not on the list, sorry.

Windows 7 offers many improvements such as:

• Faster Performance
• Desktop Enhancements
• H0me Media Streaming
• Windows Search and
• Better Device Management

Microsoft understands the lack of Optical Disc Drive on Netbooks so they provided an option to download the ISO copy of the purchased version, and create a bootable USB flash drive. Tools to achieve this, which is the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool {WUDT}, is also available for download. So basically, all you need to have to be able to install Windows 7 on your netbook is a copy of Windows 7, and the tool.

How to install Windows 7 on netbooks:

1. Purchase and download a copy of Windows 7, version of your choosing
2. Download the WUDT
3. Install the tool on your netbook
4. Click the Windows Start button, and click Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool in the All Programs list to open the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool.
5. In the Source File box, type the name and path of your Windows 7 ISO file, or click Browse and select the file in the Open dialog box.
6. Select USB to create a copy on a USB flash drive or DVD to create a copy on a DVD disk, then click Next.
7. If you are copying the file to a USB flash drive, select your USB device in the dropdown list and click Begin copying. If you are copying the file up to a DVD, click Begin burning.
   {Microsoft}

System Requirements

• Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit)
• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• 50MB of free space on your hard drive
• DVD-R drive or 4GB removable USB flash drive

Moblin to come pre-installed to future Asus Netbooks

When Asus Netbooks came to the world, the tiny little computer breathes by the help of Xandros that comes pre-installed as the primary OS. It is light and at the same time lets you use your netbook to surf the internet and do some office tasks from out of the box. Now there’s a rumor that Asus might consider moving to Moblin.

Moblin is an operating system that is specially designed for netbooks that delivers faster boot time and amazingly beautiful user interface and that’s all I know.

via liliputing

Sound Not Working on Easy Peasy 1.1 [Solved]

Easy Peasy is a Linux distro fully based on Ubuntu, designed specifically for netbooks. To the uninitiated, it is the formerly known as Ubuntu EEE. And while I now have my Asus 1000HE, I decided to install Easy Peasy 1.0 on my old EEE PC 701. But my initial attempt did not bring me luck on the sound part.

In the Easy Peasy Live USB, everything works normally from sound to wireless. But when I installed the OS to the SSD, sound seems to conflict with other processes. I was unable to fix it before so I moved back to using XP.

When the Easy Peasy 1.1 was released, I decided to give it another try and out of the box, sound still doesn’t work. But I was able to configure it and it now works perfectly.

Here’s the setting that works for me which probably work for you too.

In the Preference > Sound, I selected the following settings.

And on the Volume control, make sure that Playback is set to ASLA PCM and Master is not on mute.

I hope this article helps you too.

In the meantime, I need to find a solution to the wifi. Fn + F2 doesn’t seem to work… The LED is also on whether the wireless is active or not.

My Moblin 2.0 Beta Experience

Moblin 2.0 is a Linux based operating system designed specifically for Intel Atom based netbooks. It is one of the lite OS around that promises ease of use and completeness at the same time. I just downloaded a copy of a Live USB image so I gave it a shot to have some little testing.

After I byte-copied the .img file to my 1GB USB, I booted up my 1000HE with the newest Live USB I have. So far, Moblin 2.0 has the coolest user interface I have experienced, showing very minimalist icons and windows. Apart from the UI being cool, it also very user-friendly, collecting each application shortcuts in separate categories to guide users where to go to. When it comes to boot speed, it is also pretty fast.

One thing I tried to test on first boot was the wifi and internet connections. Moblin seems to detect a Wi-Fi network and it tells that I am connected. But when I tried to access online websites like my blog, it seems like it’s not connected and instead will still try to use the wired connection even if it is disabled. Though the problem might not be the OS. I didn’t try to troubleshoot too.

Another feature I tested was the video and multimedia. MP3 files are welcomed by the multimedia player, however, the video files that used to play on VLC player didn’t even produce a little sound.

And last thing, I know this is for atom based netbooks only so when I tried using the Live USD on my Eee PC 701, it gives a kernel error.

Oh! And by the way, to those who complain about their flash drives being corrupted (being asked to format the drive) after the Live .img file has been copied, don’t mind the error. You flash drive is fine and it will still boot. But you can never add new files to the drive in Windows.

Google Chrome OS might be here by end of year

Google Chrome OS is an operating system being built specially for netbooks (i hope it’s an instant-on/quick OS). It was announce earlier this week and after that, some leaked photos proved its existence.

The Google Chrome OS is an open-source project and you know what it means. Basically, this means that source code of the Google Chrome OS is available for developers. And while Google Chrome OS is not yet finalized, different versions might also be released and available within the year. But take my words with grains of salt.

Liliputing has a more detailed thought.

Who’s not excited to try this new OS? I think this is indeed a good news for us, isn’t it?

FAKE: Google Chrome OS is real, photos leaked

Yes folks! The first ever photos of Google Chrome OS were posted today. Apparently, the photos were stolen while a Google Rep left the demo unit unattended in front of a devil’s eye.

Visit the authors blog for more details and explanation behind the photos.