Windows 7 and GHWT!

paulfo — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:22:42 GMT

What a day! Not only does the full Guitar Hero World Tour complete band set get delivered but so does my new blue Acer Aspire One. I confess I left the GHWT unpacking until the kids got home from school - but by then my new netbook had its 120gb hard drive re-formated and the PDC build (6801) of Windows 7 installed.

I'd seen a number of blog posts regarding netbooks and the Windows 7 build - EEE PCs and MSI Winds. But I liked the look of the Aspire One - and at Amazon's £219 for the 1GB RAM, 120Gb HD Linux version it was to good to miss. I had thought of purchasing the £179 one and then upgrading the RAM and disk myself (512mb and 8Gb SSD). I found some suitable RAM on Dabs.com for only a tenner! But bigger disks made the economics of the £219 0808-150-Ab model the better deal.

I plumbed up my old Compaq TC1100 USB DVD-Rom with a 5V supply from Maplin, plugged it into the USB of the One and within 40mins there was Windows 7. I had to go get the Ethernet and Wireless adapter drivers from the Acer site after install. These were the XP drivers - but they are working fine. I haven't found a solution to the SD extended storage slot not being recognised yet. But with another multi-card reader all up and running I'm not to worried about this.

The performance of the 1.6Ghz Atom is amazing. I'm used to C7 M Via boards at 1.6 Ghz - I have both the EPIA motherboard and a OQO Model e2, but neither compare to the performance of this machine. On the EPIA board I was running XP, and on the OQO I'm running Vista Business.

Although the new Windows 7 memory foot print is only around 530'ish mb, I'm sure the new Atom has a lot to do with the perf difference. I haven't even bother optimising services as I have had to do on the OQO to get satisfactory perf.

Windows 7 gives the Aspire One a 2.3 Windows Experience Index. Which a year ago was as good as some considerably more expensive VAIOs! The weakest link is the Aero graphics capability.The 120Gb disk comes in at a 5. Then it is memory (4.4), game graphics (3) and processor (2.9).

I've even install C# Express - will put my new favourite play thing XNA on here and just to completely ruin the experience I'll stick MRDS on it and watch the perf crumble under the weight of the simulation engine. I know, but my current day to day machine is a giant Toshiba X200-219 which weighs a tonne, so this tiny lump of polished blue on my lap now is completely amazing - I don't want to have to carry the X200 ever again (some hope!!).

So, if you're in the market for a netbook I can recommend the Aspire One. James Connard had a EEE PC 901 also running Win7 the other day. The looked cool but costs another £80. Not sure what you get for that - the One doesn't appear to have bluetooth which is a bit odd.

However, coupled with BT's new Openzone wireless rates (£5 a month for 500 minutes, and 10p per minute beyond that or £12.50 per month for Openzone and T-Mobile 500 minutes) I'm pretty sure the One is going to be my only machine when I'm doing the lighter end of my tech jobs.

I need to learn PHP to assist with a cool campaign for PHP on Windows adoption - so the One is going to help me blend in with all these other PHP types :-) I'm really quite excited about it - can you tell?

Anyhow, the second big thing of the day is Guitar Hero World Tour. The drums are completely amazing - really good quality to my eyes. The new wireless guitar looks cool and was quickly adopted by eldest son. For some reason I was really pleasantly surprise to find to wooden drum sticks - rather than nasty plastic ones. The whole fill in the hour I've had to play it is good quality, built to last stuff. Great to get some tunes from the past again too - Bon Jovi, Motorhead, Van Halen - hehe eldest son was surprised I new the words :-) Cheeky monkey.

So there you have it. I'll be bringing the One along to the After Hours event on Monday at Cardinal Place Victoria, London if you'd like to have a look.

wotudo : Acer Aspire One, Windows 7

Windows 7 and GHWT!