Windows 7 beta on the Samsung NC10

I should probably preface this post by saying I’m far from a windows expert.  I am quite comfortable within XP but don’t really have much experience in Vista outside of the few occasions I’ve launched it in VMware to flash a phone.  I use XP daily for work, but basically just tolerate how it all works.  I definitely prefer OSX, though the more I’ve used Windows on a daily basis the less I find I care as there are ways to basically to everything I need on each system.

The Windows 7 beta was leaked at the same time I ordered the Samsung NC10 netbook so I decided to go for it.  I had a few days of experience in VMware before the NC10 arrived and overall I find that it’s quite peppy and looks really slick.  It definitely reveals XP’s age visually and offers some general niceties.  I was pleased to see that performance in both virtualized as well as the netbook environment was excellent.  The standard install / startup of the NC10 includes some Samsung specific applications for controlling the keyboard, trackpad, battery etc and none were obviously included in the Windows 7 install though they all installed without too much hassle in Windows 7.  I did have to use compatibility mode to install things, and thus far the only conflict here seems to be the synaptics trackpad software.  Through some trial and error I was able to find that the conflicts are unfortunately with most of the cool stuff you get with the synaptics driver.  By disabling the virtual scrolling and gestures, I was able to stop the trackpad from freezing.  While this essentially reduces the trackpad to a basic device again, I at least can continue using the PalmCheck feature which prevents the trackpad from activating while typing.  With the smaller keyboard this feature is actually critical for me.

Otherwise I’m running Firefox, iTunes, Tweetdeck, Chrome, Windows Live Writer, Evernote, Launchy, Skype, WinSCP, OpenOffice, Boingo and probably a few things I’m not remembering.  I’ve seen a few circular stalls (the windows 7 beach ball) which I expect to have resolved when I upgrade from 1 to 2GBs of RAM.  Windows 7 installed beautifully and seems to handle pretty much anything I’ve thrown at it.  I’m looking forward to seeing how things evolve over the course of the beta.

20 Replies to “Windows 7 beta on the Samsung NC10”

  1. Great Post, Im a Mac user and running win7 under fusion and also getting my NC10 today.
    Was just wondering how things are working out with the RAM upgrade and if iTunes runs well, I have all my media invested this way.

    Thanks

    Simon

  2. what do you use launchy for exactly? since vista you can start apps and docs just by pressing the windows-key and start typing…

  3. Thanks!

    The RAM should arrive today and I'll upgrade it tonight … iTunes 8 runs great on the NC10. I was streaming my main shared library at home to my AppleTV over the weekend in Windows 7 and it was solid.

  4. The speed of launchy is better for me … a quick alt+space and I'm in my app. The Win7 Windows Key search thing is great too though it takes longer to find an application. I've been using that to get into control panels or to search on the machine.

  5. Indeed Launchy reminds me more of Quicksilver on the mac, hotkey type app and it's there, fewer steps than Vista search.

  6. Nice link – I had actually read your post earlier (nice). Very happy with my 2gb upgrade and looking forward to swapping the wireless card out tomorrow so I can get the osx partition rocking as well.

  7. download the new synaptics vista driver. did a trick for me. cheers

  8. Thanks. I'm getting an NC10 myself next week but was concerned that it might not be able to run TweetDeck, which seems to be giving a few of the other (admittedly weaker) netbooks fits.

  9. I did have an issue after it was running though they released an update which lets you reset the window and that fixed it from hiding on me. Works great!

  10. It would be great if you could link to some of these drivers and software.
    Otherwise good article.

  11. Pingback: DISQUS | Sheamus

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