Review: Windows 7 on the Acer Aspire One

I’ve been playing with the Windows 7 beta release for a number of weeks now after installing it on the Acer Aspire One, and here are my views/thoughts on the experience. Not only will I be giving my initial impressions on the new software, I’m going to tell you how well or bad the Acer Aspire One performed with the new version of the Windows OS.

Before anything, I think it should be noted that I used the “bootable USB flash drive” method to install Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One. Now, I’m not sure if that really does anything to goof up the software or any part of it when you’re installing, but I won’t deny that there were some hiccups before/during/after installation that I’m sure at least a few other people out there who used other methods to install Windows 7 (via external USB DVD drive, etc. if there are others) did not experience. In any case, the bottom line still is that I got Windows 7 on my AAO, and I’m here to share the details of what happened with you.

Booting up Windows 7

Before we get to the boring fun stuff that I did with Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One, I’m going to tell you all about the boot up process very quickly. After pressing the “On” button on the AAO, I usually had to wait anywhere from 45 seconds to nearly a minute and a half to finally get to the desktop and have the Windows 7 Start key functioning (indicating that the whole system is ready for action). The fastest boot times I had with Windows 7 were considerably shorter than those that I got with Windows XP. So that’s a win for Windows 7, since it allows the user to get to work more quickly than Windows XP.

Once I was in Windows 7, I was surprised to find out that I didn’t have to install any drivers. The display resolution was already maxed at 1024 x 600, the built-in speakers were working, the built-in webcam showed my face, and even the Ethernet functioned without any problems once I connected my DSL. I was happy because even if I didn’t install the “necessary” drivers, it “just worked.” Or so I thought. Like many others, my Aspire One’s Wi-Fi didn’t work in Windows 7. Fortunately, the guys from over at Liliputing pointed me to a solution (as did many other readers) so I fixed my Wi-Fi problems in no time. So then, everything about my AAO in Windows really “just worked.” And I did the monkey dance.

Speed, Performance, Stability

But back to reality – while all of my hardware worked, was the software itself actually any good? There was only one way to find out: do some tests.

While using the Acer Aspire One, I also had a dual core laptop with Windows 7 installed with me, and I used it to measure how well Windows 7 performed on a netbook.

I tried out the many built-in applications, including the new iterations of the Windows Calculator, Paint, and WordPad. I have to say, the new Paint was a quite a huge improvement over the old one, offering many more options and customizations to illustrations and images, albeit still being not enough for those who want to get real image editing done on a computer. WordPad too improved a lot, being more like a basic version of Microsoft Word now than something that just opened .doc files when you didn’t have Office installed.

A few other notable built-in applications that are worth using/keeping: Windows Defender, Snipper Tool, Windows Media Player, and Internet Explorer.

What’s that? You think I made a typo there in putting Internet Explorer along with the other “keeper” applications? No, actually I didn’t. Internet Explorer turned out to be pretty speedy, comparable to Firefox and Safari speedy, in the new version of Microsoft’s OS. In some situations Firefox was still the faster browser of the two, but Internet Explorer was no longer the annoying and slow browser that it used to be. And I’m sure my impression of Internet Explorer will improve even more when I get to try version 8 in Windows 7 (last time I checked, you can’t install Internet Explorer 8 RC1 on Windows 7.)

All the other programs that I tried to install worked without problems. These were also fast, although only slightly, and these include GIMP, Skype, and Yahoo! Messenger. Basically, instant messaging, image editing, and word processing (or text editing) programs that a typical netbook user uses. It’s like having your netbook given a new life. And it gets better.

Multitasking and resulting errors (or lack thereof)

I didn’t have any problems with multi-tasking on Windows 7. In fact, my 1GB RAM equipped AAO performed satisfactorily. Windows Aero was also on, by the way.

And not once did I experience a BSOD with Windows 7 on the Acer Aspire One. Some programs did crash, though, mainly games like Crazy Taxi, Grand Theft Auto, Counter-strike, and others that taxed a bit on the graphics. Turning Windows Aero off seemed to fix it a sometimes, but without a dedicated graphics chip onboard and only a small amount of RAM, games were better avoided on this netbook.

Battery Life

As for the battery life, I only got a little bit more of it with Windows 7 compared to Windows XP. With the standard 3-cell battery, I can’t say I got more than 20 minutes more battery life on Windows 7 with the Acer Aspire One. Your best bet for longer battery life would still really be an expanded 6-cell or 9-cell battery. Anyone who would use that would no longer have any qualms about battery life, for sure.

Verdict

Even though Windows 7 is still in beta stage, it already works surprisingly well, and offers a number of improvements over its predecessors, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Even on a moderately specced netbook like the Acer Aspire One, one will find Windows 7 a joy to use, and the fact that it offers some cute eye candy doesn’t hurt either. If you still haven’t tried Windows 7 on your netbook after all this time, don’t worry, for it’s expected to become officially available at retail in only a few short months. By then, all the little bugs will have hopefully been squashed, and the performance will improve even more, which is better for us users no matter which way you look at it.

Check out our gallery of Windows 7 screenshots below.