Windows 7 Installed On ASUS Eee PC 1000H & MSI Wind: Video Demo

One of the more topical claims from Microsoft during the PDC was that Windows 7 would have no problems running on lower-spec hardware such as netbooks.  Of course, there's nothing like a challenge to get geeks motivated, so we're starting to see the first installs of the upcoming OS on today's budget ultraportable hardware.  Laptop Mag picked the ASUS Eee PC 1000H, while DavGerm4 used his MSI Wind (you can see the video after the cut; via jkkmobile); both are tentatively positive about the experience.

Start-up time for the Eee PC came in at 58 seconds, which is similar to (or maybe a little less than) XP on some of these 1.6GHz single-core Atom machines, but slower than Linux.  However the only version of Windows 7 available to play with is a pre-beta, and there's talk that the next build will see start-up times halved compared to Vista.

As for how well it runs, everything but high-def video and video web-conferencing run smoothly – again, the early pre-beta build will have to take some blame for this – and only half the 1GB of RAM is consumed.  Laptop Mag single out the new Network Manager as particularly praise-worthy, being a far more user-friendly way to handle multiple connections (as you might experience with a high-mobility device like a netbook).