Windows 7 or Windows 8?

[flibberdipper]

Right now I have Xubuntu on my netbook. It's plenty fast, but I miss the convenience of Windows. I'm kinda torn between Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 8.1. The drivers for it are for Windows 7, though, so that's a weak point.

 

Here are the specs of the little beast.

 

• Intel Atom N270 (it's 32-bit only)
• Intel GMA 945GME iGPU
• 1GB of RAM
• 120GB Samsung 840 EVO

[Moredeath]

I'm an 8.1 guy

[Paralectic]

No Windows, 1GB RAM is ancient and shit.

[ShadowCaptain]

Windows 8.1 is better with system resources and ram than 7 (though you should upgrade your ram anyway even just an extra gb would help)

 

Win7 Drivers should work

 

Unless you can get hold of windows starter?

 

Or a super stripped out XP/7, and get rid of as much as possible, I had this on my old Asus EEE and it ran great with a super cut down XP

[Cacao]

Since it's pretty low end, you'll want the little performance boost Win 8 will give you.

[JAKEBAB]

8.1 because it uses less resources then 7 does it not? 

[Guest]

Get a Linux with better user interface, there are lots of those , and install wine!

[Createinator]

Maybe Windows 7 will run on your laptop... but your experience will be much less snappier than Xubuntu. I doubt Windows 8.1 can be installed on that configuration

[Vitalius]

It's sort of a swings and round-abouts thing. 

You get better resource management with 8.1 which you obviously need, but the drivers might hinder that. Whereas, the opposite is true for 7. I would guess there's no difference, but if I were you, I would install both and test them individually then decide for yourself. tmcclelland455

You can guarantee 8.1 will use less resources, but you can't guarantee that the driver thing will even make a difference without testing.

[Redportal]

I would sometimes prefer windows 8.1 over windows 7, but only for performance needs on lower end computers such as your 'little beast'. You would probably be better of going with windows 7 though, I find it still better to use than windows 8.1 and another plus is that you can still use all the original drivers for it.

 

I vote windows 7.

[flibberdipper]

Windows 8.1 is better with system resources and ram than 7 (though you should upgrade your ram anyway even just an extra gb would help)

 

Win7 Drivers should work

 

Unless you can get hold of windows starter?

 

Or a super stripped out XP/7, and get rid of as much as possible, I had this on my old Asus EEE and it ran great with a super cut down XP

I plan to eventually get a 2GB kit for it.

 

And I know they work. Just sometimes they were funky.

[Wats]

7 will run with 1gb but you need 2gb to install. use another machine

[flibberdipper]

\Get a Linux with better user interface, there are lots of those , and install wine!

My Xubuntu install looks a lot like Windows and it has Wine installed.

 

Maybe Windows 7 will run on your laptop... but your experience will be much less snappier than Xubuntu. I doubt Windows 8.1 can be installed on that configuration

The preview of it ran decent, just it corrupted one of my hard drives so I hated Microsoft for a while.

[ShadowCaptain]

I plan to eventually get a 2GB kit for it.

 

And I know they work. Just sometimes they were funky.

 

Wonder if you can make something like Windows 7 Starter, it ran much better on netbooks

[AnotherTechGuy]

.

[Createinator]

The preview of it ran decent, just it corrupted one of my hard drives so I hated Microsoft for a while.

Oh wow ~ could never imagine that... go for it!

[flibberdipper]

I don't think Windows runs on 1GB

Ran on 384MB with a GeForce 4, don't see why it wouldn't run on my netbook.

[AnotherTechGuy]

.

[CowsGoRoar]

Worry about your hardware right now, you can always grab your software later.

[Guest]

You need minimum 2 gigs of ram to run windows 8 32 bit if im correct, you are only stuck with starter for now...

[GunnAthax]

Go for a basic and light version of win 7

[flibberdipper]

You need minimum 2 gigs of ram to run windows 8 32 bit if im correct, you are only stuck with starter for now...

For a good experience, sure. And you only need 2 if you have a 64-bit install (and my CPU is 32-bit capable only).

 

 

Windows 8.1

If you want to run Windows 8.1 on your PC, here's what it takes:

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2 (more info)

• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)

• Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver