Windows 7 Tested on Wind and Mini-Note

The Asus Eee PC has already had the Windows 7 treatment and it ran pretty well on the new Microsoft operating system, the pre-beta version anyway. Next netbook up to take the Windows 7 test was the MSI Wind and sure enough, it ran the OS well and passed the test with flying stars. Of course, feeling a little left out and sure that it could compete with it’s Atom based netbook cousins, the HP 2133 Mini-Note came along shortly after and has also been tested running Windows 7. Unfortunately the results aren’t quite so impressive for the HP netbook.

The MSI Wind U100 was tested by Lee Mathews, who previously tested Windows Vista successfully on his Wind.  The test was positive generally with Lee commenting that he “was a little disappointed to have the same missing drivers (wireless, LAN, display) but the original MSI XP drivers worked just fine” but his general summary of this netbook experiment was that considering the edition of the OS installed on the Wind – Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, the MSI netbook was “running great”.

Now for the less impressive test. Over at HP Mini Guide the guys have tested the HP Mini-Note in similar fashion, loading the 2133 up with Windows 7 and letting it run and unsurprisingly, the Mini-Note struggled to run very far. To be fair, the HP netbook isn’t a powerful Atom based netbook like the Eee PC and the Wind, coming fitted with a VIA C7-M processor, so less was expected of it. The install took 25 minutes and the result was that Windows 7 ran a little faster than Vista on the HP but, not as fast as Windows XP.

Overall it’s encouraging to see Windows 7 running at all on netbooks without a specific mobile edition and the Wind/Eee PC results are a good indication of what an Atom based netbook can cope with.