Netbook’s With Windows 7 Starter, What You Won’t Be Able To Do
Posted on 01. Aug, 2010 by Neil in Guides & Tips, Netbooks
When netbooks first hit the market the only Microsoft branded operating system it could run was Windows XP. Until 2010 when Microsoft launched Windows 7 and subsequently Windows 7 Starter. Windows 7 Starter is featured on a lot of netbook that are on the market currently. This is because Windows 7 Starter is a big step up from the ancient Windows XP.
However Windows 7 Starter edition isn’t the exact same thing as the full Windows 7. The full Windows 7 wouldn’t be able to run on a netbook due to netbooks being much to underpowered for it. Windows 7 Starter is the dumbed-down edition of Windows 7 with less of the flashy features all with hopes of helping your netbook or nettop perform better.
here is a full list of the things you won’t find in your Windows 7 Starter powered machine.
- Aero Glass, meaning you can only use the “Windows Basic” or other opaque themes. It also means you do not get Task bar Previews or Aero Peek.
- Personalization features for changing desktop backgrounds, window colors, or sound schemes.
- The ability to switch between users without having to log off.
- Multi-monitor support.
- DVD playback.
- Windows Media Center for watching recorded TV or other media.
- Remote Media Streaming for streaming your music, videos, and recorded TV from your home computer.
- Domain support for business customers.
- XP Mode for those that want the ability to run older Windows XP programs on Windows 7.
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25 Responses to “Netbook’s With Windows 7 Starter, What You Won’t Be Able To Do”
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brycon
02. Aug, 2010
bullcrap my netbook is running windows 7 ultimate and it is 2 yaers old with an itel atom n270.
microsoft made it able to run windows 7 because it needs to sell windows 7 and not xp. though overall windows 7 starter vs windows xp home. i would go with windows xp home anyday.windows 7 starter sucks and is the biggest peice of crap microsoft has ever made.
Queixa
02. Aug, 2010
That’s why Ubuntu is a great choice for netbooks. Ubuntu does not have to be dumbed down to work.
ptcmini
02. Aug, 2010
I have Windows 7 Home on my desktop and laptop and the Starter on my new Acer netbook. It runs great and I removed the frills from Home anyway for better performance. For me there is no sacrifice involved whatsoever with fewer features on the netbook. I love it but am using a SSD drive so it boots up quicker.
ytilanigiroon
02. Aug, 2010
You’re positive ME wasn’t worse??
kenseynymour
03. Aug, 2010
hahaha ME was DEFINITELY the worst operating system they ever made – even below vista, in my opinion.
New Lenovo Ideapad S10-3 Does Things Twice As Fast, Sort Of | Netbook Planet
25. Aug, 2010
[...] the same 250GB hard drive, same connectivity and I/O ports and Windows 7 Starter operating system(see what you should expect from a Windows 7 Starter netbook). The netbook does add though DDR3 memory which the previous Atom N450 S10-3 models lacked. [...]
HSN First To Offer Netbook With Dual Core Intel Atom N550 | Netbook Planet
27. Aug, 2010
[...] for a 2010 netbook. You get 1GB of DDR3 memory, a 250GB hard drive, Windows 7 Starter Edition (what you should expect from a Windows 7 Starter netbook) and a 6-cell battery that outputs up to 8 hours of battery life (according to Acer of course). [...]
Lenovo Ideapad S10-3t Gets Put To The Test In A Full Review | Netbook Planet
30. Aug, 2010
[...] The S10-3t review unit comes with all those specs as well as a 160GB hard drive, Windows 7 Starter (what you should expect from a Windows 7 Starter netbook)and a 4-cell Li-ion battery. In the review VR-Zone tests the performance of the Lenovo Ideapad [...]
James Lehman
11. Sep, 2010
XP Vs Windows 7 Starter. LOL it is a no brainer the XP version has more and better features than crippleware Starter.
lickbat
07. Oct, 2010
I’ve been running Windows 7 Ultimate on my samsung nc10 for over two years now with any issue at all. I have no idea who the hell keeps saying netbooks can’t run it – they run FINE. I can also run Adobe CS5 on it without issue, so what gives?
AK
14. Nov, 2010
My Acer Aspire One with the Atom N550 runs Windows 7 Starter. Initially, I thought of upgrading to higher versions of Windows 7. But soon, I found that it ran everything just as well and as fast as my older Core 2 Duo (Santa Rosa) laptop. I eventually traded in my laptop. Now, my netbook is my sole and core computer that i use to do everything, at work, at school and at home. I love the weight saving. My netbook is only 860 grams versus 2000 grams of my former laptop. Also, the netbook is a quarter the price of my former laptop. I think Intel has shot itself in the foot by creating such high performing and affordable CPUs like the Atom. Now, I can no longer justify paying over twice or thrice the price for Core i computer. With a power consumption meter, I have found that my netbook only uses a third the power of my former laptop. Netbooks are cheap, light, energy efficient and sufficiently fast. It’s such a god send. My upcoming upgrade to be done on my netbook is an SSD when Intel launches its G3 SSD drives.
AK
14. Nov, 2010
To get decent performance on netbooks, the wisest thing to do is to choose the optimum software
Choose
VLC player over Windows Media player, iTunes or QuickTime.
Google Chrome over IE
Microsoft Office over OpenOffice or StarOffice
Windows 7 over Windows XP
Panda Cloud antivirus or Microsoft Security Essential over traditional heavyweight offerings
bg
15. Nov, 2010
Win 7 Home premium has been running on my 3+ year old Acer Aspire One netbook for over 2 years now (since 1st trial version) GREAT! Faster booting and running than XP ever was; someone is lying about Win 7/netbooks!
Gernella
29. Nov, 2010
I’ve just a net book for my technophobe husband. Which is best Microsoft Security Essentials of Panda Cloud? I’ve already downloaded the suggested VCL as a media player but had settled on the Microsoft AV.
Peter Erasmus
06. Dec, 2010
I am getting into the lion’s den but would appreciate help from you fundi’s. I got a new PC Friday last week with Windows 7 – the invoice says Home Premium 32 bit – as recommended by the shop. I am just an aldd man basically running an accounting package, writing and e-mailing. I cannot find the ‘Search’ function I had in Windows XP and the shop cannot help.
COULD ANYONE OF YOU PLEASE/
THANKS SO MUCH
zeebon
23. Dec, 2010
Hi All, i bought a new PC beginning of 2010 running Win7 home Premium. Apart from some initial issues with working it out i haven’t had as many problems as i did with XP. Now i have a ASUS netbook running Win 7 starter and need to install an older control/interface program for some feild equipment and didn’t really want to install other windows – does anyone know of a patch or add-on that could be used under win7 starter to run 1 small program in XP mode?
xactxx
03. Jan, 2011
Does Win7 Home Premium run well on 1GB of DDR3 RAM?
Neil
03. Jan, 2011
No not at all. 2GB or even 3GB would be better.
Miss. Andrea Borman.
07. Feb, 2011
A lot of the information above is not all true. first of all you stated that you cannot change the desktop background color theme in Windows 7 Starter. I have had Windows 7 starter and happen to know that YOU CAN,but the settings to do this are not as obvious as in other editions. To change the desktop color or task bar color just go to personalization and select change the theme. And select Windows classic and from there choose the colors you want for your desktop and task bar and other things such as text color,by using the color wheel. And the other thing such as you cannot run Windows Media Center on starter that is true. but you also said that Netbooks are low resorses and can not run Windows 7 Home premium or higher editions. THAT IS RUBBISH,because I have upgraded both of my Windows 7 starter Netbooks to Windows 7 Ultimate. Using windows anytime upgrade and now both my Netbooks now have Windows 7 Ultimate. And they have had for the past 9 months since I bought the Netbooks. I bought them in April 2010 and the second one in June2010. Andrea Borman.
bol00002
07. Feb, 2011
ok so my friend downloaded way to much stuff on his windows xp acer netbook and it died, he decided to buy a new one, but he didnt want his old hardrive, so he gave it to me. Now I have a lenovo windows 7 starter netbook, and i put his old hardrive one in my lenovo. When i boot it up, it asks me if i want to run windows normally, safe mode, safe mode with cmd, safe mode with networking etc. I tried all of them and every one begins to boot up windows xp then it stops and shows me blue screen of death. Do I need a special driver or something? Thanks
Miss. Andrea Borman.
10. Feb, 2011
Hi,user name bol00002. First of all I would never advise anyone to open up their laptop and take out the hard drive and replace it with anther one. Unless you are a computer repair engineer. So you should not have done it. It looks like you are going to have to take the Netbook in for repairs. But if you are buying a Netbook,while Windows Xp is fine for a 1GB Netbook. Windows Vista does not run well at all on a 1Gb Netbook as it is more suited for computers with larger GB than 1 Gb which small Netbooks do not have. Also according to research Windows vista is not as good as Windows XP or Windows 7. In England they no longer sell Windows XP or Vista in the stores only Windows7. But I would recommended for anyone buying a new Netbook or laptop. And windows 7 is much lighter on resorces than the previous versions of Windows. And you can upgrade from Windows 7 Starter anytime you want to. And now some Netbooks the newer ones now come with Windows 7 Home premium and some are 2GB. Andrea Borman.
MXS
27. Feb, 2011
I would like to say that it REALLY pisses me off that something as simple and fundamental as CHANGING THE D**N BACKGROUND WALLPAPER was blocked in the Acer Aspire One version of Win7.
I keep reading all over the internet that this is a “restricted” version of Windows. Why restrist it? WHat is the point? There isn’t one. It’s bulls**t and it almost makes me want to return it (I JUST BOUGHT IT YESTERDAY!) for a refund and go buy something that doesn’t suck. What a gestapo move on Microsoft’s part! Way to piss off your customers and drive up interest in Linux Ubuntu, guys! GFY!
Dr. RandyBoy
08. Mar, 2011
7Starter doesn’t permit bkgd image because it takes too much of already-limited memory (system & video) to display. I’ve disabled that and screensaver (even worse resource hog) on each of the dozens of PCs I have bought or built in the past 2+ decades. But it did take longer than it should have to set the background to solid black as I prefer with 7Starter. As for XP? I will not waste my time running that security disaster. ME never gave me trouble on either a laptop or a server, each with 256MB RAM, so not sure why it gets such a bad reputation. Same for Vista (32-bit); I’m running it right now on 2 laptops (both AMD X2, 2GB and 3GB) and the HTPC I’m writing this on (PDC, 4GB). No problems at all. But 7Starter is FINE for what it’s intended to do. It WILL play back DVDs (ext. via USB) using VLC, which I use for most media functions on both N270 & N455 based netbooks. At least until I feel the need to install XBMC some day. I stuck with MSIE for web browsing, and can stream online multi-media at upto 480p fairly well. Don’t really care for Chrome or FireFox, but either or both might be able to stream higher-def content…don’t care since I’mhappy with standard def on my netbooks.
Run While You Can
12. Mar, 2011
Best piece of advice…..Download ultimate boot CD…Nuke the HD, install Linux…….if you insist on having windows…XP sp3 is the way to go, especially for laptops and netbooks. I bought a netbook and it came with win7 starter……its utter junk. It should be used as a client for server ed. I’m not quite sure what was going on when MicroDump decided to put Starter out for the general public. The only logical conclusion that I can come to terms with is one of two, or both of the following: Microsoft uses this as an excuse to inflate the prices for the other editions of Win7 (“well you can always get starter, its the Yugo of OSs but we are doing you a favor of giving you crap at a ‘lower price’”). And the other one, which seems just as likely, they have bloated windows with so much junk that they needed to ‘cut back’ just to lower the insane system requirements so Starter will be able to run in netbooks. The depressing part is that netbooks were first deployed with Ubuntu……they should have stuck with Linux.
And whats with this trustedinstaller garbage. I have to jump through a thousand hoops to edit and customize my computer….Microsoft, ever heard of ‘Root’? Sure, I can “take ownership” but there are still several places where I cannot edit/delete system files. And why do people always seem to say “you shouldnt edit system files, it can do bad things” as an answer. It doesnt matter, the fact is that its my computer I will blow it up if I please.
Why pay someone for this garbage. I’m going back to the land of Open Source.
So thank you Microsoft for allowing me to gaze through your Windows and find that there is a bright shiny world outside….now its time to break them and escape.
/EndRant
jon
13. Jun, 2011
WTF!!? Is Microsoft retarded or something? Even windows mobile you can change the background image.
Windows 7 now is all fucked up cos nobody wants to by it, they rather go for ipad or android tablets.