Best OS for Acer Netbook

R

rudirautenbach

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Having read posts on installing XP and 7 on the Acer Netbook (the one with the 8Gb SSD and Linux Linpus OS factory-installed), can I get some opinions on which is (in your opinion) the best OS to install on this machine?

Whilst the Linpus OS is great for getting oneself up and running quickly, I find its ability to network with other Windows PC's a bit lacking, and the OpenOffice is not as great as I thought it would be. I am not expecting to run Office 2007 though...

So, having the limitation of a maximum of 8Gb internal memory without opening it up and replacing the SSD/memory card with more Gb's, what can be done ito Windows OS's? I read somewhere that MS is planning on bringing out a W7 version specifically designed for netbooks, would it be worth waiting for that?

Or can one safely "upgrade" the internal storage capacity (keeping with memory card/SSD-style storage and not HDD's) with something locally available to try and cope with a full W7 installation? I realise I would void the warranty, but then again it was only R1999...

Thoughts please chaps?
 
Anyone knows whether Yahoo Messenger & Skype (both with video calling) works well with UNR? This is probably the biggest gripe we currently have with the standard OS, as we use both extensively to communicate with family in the USA and Asia.
 
rudirautenbach said:
Anyone knows whether Yahoo Messenger & Skype (both with video calling) works well with UNR? This is probably the biggest gripe we currently have with the standard OS, as we use both extensively to communicate with family in the USA and Asia.
Click to expand...

Works great on Ubuntu, so 99.99% sure it'll work great on UNR.

Where are you based? I can give you disks etc if you want.
 
rudirautenbach said:
Anyone knows whether Yahoo Messenger & Skype (both with video calling) works well with UNR? This is probably the biggest gripe we currently have with the standard OS, as we use both extensively to communicate with family in the USA and Asia.
Click to expand...

Skype works fine with video on ubuntu remix. I think you might get video to work with aMSN.. I am not sure though. Doubt you will have much joy with yahoo but I could be wrong.
 
yeah skype works well with UNR. In fact skype works with linpus too.

You just have to add the additional repositories for skype (cant remember which they are at this moment in time)

Regarding windows, all you need is "flashpoint" if I recall. It speeds up windows on the SSD.
 
Any OS would work reasonably well on your machine.
The problem is that you have not decided what exactly you want to use the netbook for. Once you decide what your main use/s will be, it would be easy to settle on an OS that would best support your main use for the device.
 
plazma said:
Any OS would work reasonably well on your machine.
The problem is that you have not decided what exactly you want to use the netbook for. Once you decide what your main use/s will be, it would be easy to settle on an OS that would best support your main use for the device.
Click to expand...

Good observation plazma. I guess the main use would be video calling and surfing the net, and listening to music streamed from another PC in the household.

Based on this would you say that UNR is a good choice? I am not very familiar with Linux, although I am prepared to give it a go. Would have liked W7 though, but read earlier on myBB that Windows 7 is a bit sluggish on this type of netbook, so that worries me a bit.
 
I got the 8GB SSD.
Installed Ron's Tiny XP on it.
Yes the SSD is slow with NTFS.
But load XP with Fat32 and its better.
Than last night I tried a application called Flashpoint which speeds up the SSD.
I got a 50% performance increase on the SSD.
XP runs smooth and fast.
 
mk1 said:
I got the 8GB SSD.
Installed Ron's Tiny XP on it.
Yes the SSD is slow with NTFS.
But load XP with Fat32 and its better.
Than last night I tried a application called Flashpoint which speeds up the SSD.
I got a 50% performance increase on the SSD.
XP runs smooth and fast.
Click to expand...

Thanks mk1. The link I have for Rons TinyXP seems dead, would you know where I could download please? I noticed another link to PirateBay, but have seen some nasty stuff come through there in the past...

Will try the Flashpoint too. I have already downloaded Ubuntu Netbook Remix, so together with TinyXP I guess I would have covered 2 options for the netbook.

Weekend work cut out...
 
I agree UNR is definitely worth a try, also you can download skype from skype's site for ubuntu and for yahoo messenger use Pidgin, I use pidgin on windows too, less bloatware.
 
OK, so I downloaded the UNR. Its quite impressive, it gave me an option to "mount" it without destroying the current OS, which is quite useful. I am playing around with it as we speak, and its certainly a HUGE improvement over the cr@p that came with the machine.

My issues with UNR so far identified are as follows:
1. Networking with my other Windows 7 PC's are cranky, it is not seen by all the PC's and all the PC's can see it. It might be a problem with Windows 7 networking though, I am working on it. Help if any would be appreciated.
2. There is no version of Yahoo IM (my wife and her family uses the damn thing grrr) and she will need that. She needs it for video calling and Pidgin only offers text IM.
3. I will sorely miss Office 2007. Old habits die hard :)

What I like about it:
1. The desktop layout is friendly, clean and every main feature of the OS is right at hand.
2. Firefox is a winner over IE8 ito speed of loading webpages and has all the basic everyday features (such as tabbed browsing and others) that most users need.
3. All hardware works and no driver fiddling is needed. OK I just did another Windows 7 installation on an old Dell D620 and Windows 7 had all except 2 of the drivers, but promptly downloaded them. Nevertheless UNR needed none on the Acer!

I looked for Ron's TinyXP, but only a torrent was available and I do not like torrents (personal reasons) so if someone has the image hosted or have a working link please help me here.

Regards R
 
rudirautenbach said:
My issues with UNR so far identified are as follows:
1. Networking with my other Windows 7 PC's are cranky, it is not seen by all the PC's and all the PC's can see it. It might be a problem with Windows 7 networking though, I am working on it. Help if any would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

you'll probably need samba, if you use the add/remove browser it should be there or use synaptic to install it.
 
rudirautenbach said:
I looked for Ron's TinyXP, but only a torrent was available and I do not like torrents (personal reasons) so if someone has the image hosted or have a working link please help me here.

Regards R
Click to expand...

Rudi,

Why don't you just make your own TinyXP. nLite will allow you to stip all the crap out, slipstream SP3 & add your drivers. The install media ends up under 250MB in size. Remove all printer drivers, remove all languages except english, remove network protocols like IPX/SPX, ATM, Banyan Vines etc. I even removed some windows components like WMP, notepad, defrag etc and relaced them with better freeware.
 
R, you must have read my mind! I am doing that as we speak, just busy downloading the Aspireone drivers and have updated the BIOS (who some claim improves that noisy fan). Nlite is open and waiting to slip the drivers.

On SP3, at work we found on almost every PC where SP3 was installed that it dramatically slowed the PC down. Our sysadmin declared war against SP3 :) so I am still thinking whether I should slip that in or just stick to SP2.

But thanks for the idea. Great minds think alike!

Cheers Rudi
 
get 8Gb or 16Gb micro flash drive to go into the SD card slot on the left side to increase 'hdd' space... I think I even saw a 32Gb one, should be enough to hold OS and some extra apps
 
@CeeBee
I actually went out today and bought a 16Gb SD flash. Problem is, the slot does not get picked up during the installation so I cannot install the OS there. I looked for drivers, found some but have not had much luck.

I used vLite to "rebuild" my Windows 7 32 bit ISO, it actually gave me the option to "extract" Windows 7 Starter Edition. I loaded that onto the Acer Aspire via USB, but it is EXTREMELY slow (the installation took almost 2 hours) and the OS is basically unuseable, it came up with some file system errors (will post these later) and eventually froze the machine completely.

So, in essence, Ubuntu Netbook Remix works well on the Aspire One, but I am not too sure whether I want to use it due to its limitations to use Yahoo Messenger with video calling. I have not tried by own Nlite remix of XP SP2 yet. Windows 7 Starter Edition installation was painful and not considered successfull.

Note to self. Next steps would be to research how to use the 16Gb SD to install the OS on it, and hopefully make disk access faster and more reliable. Perhaps should try Flashpoint. Don't think one can actually use FAT32 with Windows 7, or can one?

Any other thoughts on getting Windows 7 to run smoothly would be welcome.

Cheers R
 
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