Running Windows 7 on an Asus eee PC 900a

I bought this new from Best Buy back in early Jan 2009, and decided to upgrade the slow SSD and the 1GB RAM to a 2GB stick. The processor is the Atom 1.6GHz fyi...

Upgrades were:

SUPER TALENT FPM16GRSE Mini PCIe 16GB Mini PCIe (SATA) MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD)

CORSAIR 2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Laptop Memory Model VS2GSDS667D2

(Both from Newegg)

A little under 30 secs to sign in screen,
+7 more to load the desktop
= around 37 second startup time.

14 second shutdown time.

Overall, I'm quite surprised and satisfied with the performance of the OS on such a little machine.

if you're curious, song playing: Thao Nguyen - Bag of Hammers

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• windows 7
• asus eee pc 900a
• asus
• eee pc
• 900a
• netbook
• loading time
• fast
• demo

[BranmasterG]

How do you add a os on the eee pc without a cd drive? Is there a chip that you have to upgrade yourself?

[malignifier]

@BranmasterG you install it off of a usb flash stick.... first you go into the BIOS and set the usb drive as the primary boot-up source, then voila, it will install whatever OS you have loaded onto the flash stick

[GamerGuy51]

im running 7 pro now and it screams for a little bugger. boots faster than my quad core...only 35 secs. upgraded to 2gb ram and 64gb ssdd. battery upgrade next. any suggestions?

[malignifier]

i wouldn't upgrade my battery because you can pull a lot of battery life out of the stock one if you adjust the brightness and turn off the wifi when not using the internet, and because the compatible batteries with more cells protrude from the netbook.

[malignifier]

btw if you're using the 900a and wonder what is bottlenecking the performance, there is little doubt that it's the crappy slow read/write SSD they put in that thing. upgrade to one with a fast read/write and you won't get those "ticks" every few seconds.

[daecwzcz]

WOW :) I must, with shame, say that it was faster than my beloved Easy Peasy/Ubuntu 8.10 Linux.

What about viruses? Is it feasible to run windows without antivirus? And is it slow to run antivirus on such a machine?

How about network drivers and special keys (volume etc.)? Do they work?

Nice vid :)

[malignifier]

i think post-xp windows (vista and 7) is pretty safe against viruses with windows defender. it wouldn't slow the system to install avg or avast, but i usually rely on virustotal(dot)com for scanning any files that might be sketchy. i installed a few drivers to make sure everything would work smoothly, though the fn+volume keys remain an issue (one i haven't been concerned with or tried to fix though). but yeah, i was on easypeasy and wanted to test out 7 and never switched back!

[ramboman88]

@GamerGuy51

If you wanna go crazy you can make a cluster of 2x2 3.7 volt batteries, only downside is that the "stock" charger would take too long. Just be careful because there is a very real danger of explosion if you end up messing something up too badly.

[pspheaven]

@Sha12333 ha :) there are actually quite a few little netbooks that run aero.. I dunno how tho lol

[Sha12333]

how tA FUCK HOW YOU HAVE AERO !!

[Bdiddly1]

@bumblebee2181 -your ram is fine for this mate-its the ssd thats recommended for an upgrade as the stock ssd is shit&it makes the cursor & other random stuff freeze for a second every now&then-win 7 will be sound on yours though&i think yours should run aero no probs although i don't see the fuss myself!

[bumblebee2181]

Nice vid mate :)

I have an Eee PC 900ax, 160 GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, 1.6 GHz Intel atom, XP home. I was just wondering if you would recommend a RAM upgrade before installing Win 7. I have the ISO file for Win 7 Pro and I was very interested in installing it.

Also, what type of graphics card do you have on your motherboard? It seems to be able to run aero? When I type 'dxdiag' into Start>Run... And go into the display tab, it says I have a 224 MB Intel Graph Media Accelerator. Would that run aero?

[rnga16]

plz help, i try installing windows 7 and it gets stuck on the partitons thing, it says format to ntfs, i allready did, can do nothing beyond

[bankaikiller2]

u should install window xp pro