Windows 8 Consumer Preview: The Netbook Experience. While installing Microsoft's latest operating system on a netbook may seem like throwing good money after bad, Windows 8 still offers some advantages even on these lowly PCs. Here's a guide to what you can expect to gain- -and lose- -by using Windows 8 on a netbook. By way of definition, a netbook is a low- end computer, typically with an single or dual core Atom- level processor running at 1 GHz, 1 GB to 2 GB of RAM, a small 1. Netbooks lack an optical drive and typically run Windows XP or, more recently, Windows 7 Starter. These machines are designed to be low cost and appealed largely to children and those with very small computing needs. But the advent of the tablet- type PC, which will become common with Windows 8, is expected to kill off the netbook for good. Installation. Because netbooks lack an optical drive, you'll need to install Windows 8 using an external (and separately purchased) DVD drive, a USB device (which you can create using the instructions in my article Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Create Bootable Install Media), or the new Windows 8 web- based installer. That latter method is the preferred way of doing so. For more information, check out Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Set Up Windows 8 with the Web Installer. Be careful when choosing the OS type. Many netbooks utilize older Atom processors that will only accept a 3. Windows 8. But even for those netbooks that aren't limited in this fashion, I still recommend using the 3. Windows 8. These versions will perform better with the constrained hardware offered by any netbook. Clean install via USB on my single core Atom- based netbook (a Toshiba NB2. Out of Box Experience (OOBE) and choosing Express settings. This compares to 1. Core 2 Quad) desktop. Not bad. On the other hand, the screen resolution at first boot was just 8. And there was no way to fix this in the Screen Resolution control panel. Fortunately, an Important Update in Windows Update related to the Intel chipset cleared up this issue. Note: It's unclear at this time which product versions Microsoft will offer with Windows 8, but hopefully there will be a low- end version, similar to Windows 7 Starter, that costs less because of the lack of Metro- style app compatibility. During the Consumer Preview, only one product version is offered. Metro: What works, what doesn't. Windows 8 boots into the same beautiful lock screen you see on real PCs, which is great. Hoi2 Doomsday Armageddon Patch 1.3A download free software. More Hearts of Iron II. Download Cossacks No Cd Patch free; Handbrake Netbook Resolution Patch download free; Download free Dos Benchmark. Handbrake on your netbook. As per GPL licensing, the source is available as well. FalconFour's Ultimate Boot CD v4.61 Patch. The latest Dell XPS 13 Touch delivers the ideal combination of power and. Useful Windows – News and How To’s. Fix for The Screen Resolution is Too Low for This. WHen i changed the resolution on my netbook and ran the app.Black screen came and netbook was restarted.My driver intel 3600 series. Kindle Fire Video Conversion. I’m going to use a video conversion tool called Handbrake. How To: Windows 8 NetBook Screen Resolution Fix Gear-TV. Subscribe Subscribed Unsubscribe 1,699 1K. Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Handbrake Netbook Resolution Patch; Virginia Alcohol Safety Awareness Program download free; Download Did Patch Adams Girlfriend Get Murdered free; Girl Scout Patch Companies. Download free Plastic Bag Garbage Patch software; Download free Resolution Patch Fallout 1 software; Free download Club Nintendo Kirby Patch Set programs; Gbatemp Region Patch List - Download Free Apps; Handbrake 0.9.5. And as promised, the new Start screen does indeed work on a netbook, offering three rows of tiles. I assume this is only a temporary condition for the Consumer Preview, but the Start screen also offers up the full slate of Metro- style apps. Which is too bad, since most don't work at all. When you try to run most Metro- style apps, you get a full screen notification indicating that the screen resolution is too low to do so. A Change screen resolution link simply loads the Screen Resolution control panel (on the desktop), which unhelpfully notes that . Some items might not fit and apps might not open. That means that only two of the 2. Start screen- -Desktop and Windows Explorer- -will do anything other than throw up an error message. How's that for a good experience? The Metro- style task management utilities all work, however, including Back, Switcher, the Charms, and the new Start experience; right- clicking the Start tip also displays the expected power user context menu. The Windows desktop. With Metro mostly a bust, netbook users will want to turn to the Windows desktop to see what's new there and decide whether those improvements will be enticement enough to upgrade. And the experience on the desktop is actually pretty excellent: You get the nice (and downtuned) Aero experience, even on the lowliest of netbooks like mine, and if you've been burned by the silly wallpaper limitation in Windows 7 Starter, you'll be pleased to see this works just fine too. Metro- style notifications work on the desktop, too, and this includes both the full screen notifications (like the one warning you about the screen resolution) as well as application notification toasts. The new file copy experience is working fine, and offers concurrent file transfers in a single window as expected. And, yes, the new Task Manager is presented and accounted for. Performance. I didn't think to perform before- and- after benchmarks on this system, but I can tell you that it boots from a dead stop to the lock screen in less than 2. The Laptop Magazine review of this netbook notes that the boot time for Windows XP was . So Windows 8 is booting this machine less than one quarter of the time. That's amazing. For me, however, real world performance involves the reason I bought this little hunk of junk in the first place: Video playback. And the goal here is to play a full- screen, H. DVD rip without any glitches or hiccups, and to do so with the biggest pig of them all, Apple Quick. Time. So I picked three movies I ripped recently using the latest version of Handbrake, copied them to the netbook, installed Quick. Time, and saw how it all worked. I can tell you that under both XP and Windows 7, video playback was non- satisfactory, and I tried a variety of video players on each. The system would bog down, the video would pause or stutter, and I simply stopped traveling with this machine. With Windows 8, however, it worked fine, with one caveat. There were no performance issues. Speech lined up with characters' lips and stayed there. It's Quick. Time, the most awful Windows application ever written. It doesn't respect Windows power management, so you'll find yourself swiping the trackpad from time to time to stop the machine from blanking the screen. And in Windows 8, at least, the taskbar is still visible in full screen playback, which is a glitch. Of course, no self- respecting Windows user would ever really use Quick. Time, that was just a worst case scenario test. I also installed the superior Video. LAN VLC Player software, and, voila! Everything works great. It's surprisingly nice, actually. Secret: Getting Metro- style apps to run on a netbook. I promised earlier that I would provide a hack that will let you run Metro- style apps on a netbook with a lower- than- needed 1. As you might expect, there's a (major) caveat: Changing your system in this way will make the desktop environment look a bit skewed, or squished. But if your goal is to enjoy Metro, this will do the trick. Here's how. Find each instance of this entry and change its value from 0 to 1. You will now have additional resolution options. On my netbook, these are 1. I've found that the former looks better, but your mileage may vary. Metro apps now work. Final thoughts. Where Windows 8 is a major, revolutionary upgrade for traditional PCs and especially new generation tablet PCs, it's more of an evolutionary update on netbooks. You get the new Start screen, sure, but no Metro- style apps, and a handful of useful but not crucial improvements to the Explorer interface. That said, you do get some pretty impressive performance improvements, always welcome in such low- end systems. It's not going to turn a netbook into a true computing contender. But the effect here is noticeable. Is it worth the upgrade? People with netbooks probably aren't big spenders, generally, and anyone trying to stretch the usage of such a device beyond the 2- 3 years they've already use it is unlikely to pony up whatever Microsoft will charge for this upgrade. If the Windows 8 netbook upgrade is somehow, magically, in the $2. Apple now charges for OS X updates, maybe. Otherwise, I'd recommend saving that money and putting it towards a new PC or device.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |