Netbook Digest

Vista is an also-ran in the netbook market. It controls a mere 1.5% of marketshare. Many experts attribute this to the fact that the operating system is too heavy to run on low-powered computers. Windows 7 is based on Vista so if this is true this does not bode well for MSFT. But has Vista’s flaws been exaggerated?

Notebook Review installed Vista on a MSI Wind. MSI doesn’t officially support Vista but the XP drivers supplied with the netbook worked. The reviewer did have to do some tweaking such as disabling System Restore, UAC, Windows Update and scheduled hard drive defragmenting tasks.

In performance tests, the Vista machine had superior results. Using the wPrime test, Vista’s score was 117.501 seconds vs 124.656 seconds for XP  (lower is better). Battery life was also 20% better.

It would have been a better comparison if the reviewer had also tweaked XP. But it does bring to light an important point. Could Vista’s issues merely be cosmetic? Microsoft’s Windows 7 could still have issues because the starter edition to only be able to run 3 programs simultaneously.