Tip: Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7—Even on a Netbook

Putting the Windows 7 installation on a USB thumb drive has a few advantages—a small USB key is much more convenient for carrying around than a DVD, the OS will actually install much faster, and you can use a USB key to install Windows 7 on systems that do not have a DVD drive, such as a netbook. In fact, you can even install Windows 7 on netbooks that have fairly modest hardware. Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft recently posted a video demonstrating how easy it is to prepare your thumb drive and use it to install Windows 7. Here’s a quick look at the process:
•First, you’ll need the DiskPart utility on the system you will use to prep the thumb drive. This is a free disk partitioning utility that is likely already installed on your Windows system. If not, you can download DiskPart here.
•Launch the DiskPart utility by typing diskpart at the Start Menu.
•Then run the list disk command to check the status of your drive.
Video
Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft, demonstrates how easy it is to prepare a USB thumb drive and use it to install Windows 7.

•Now run select disk 1 where the "1" is actually the corresponding number of your USB drive.
•Run clean.
•Once the thumb drive is clean, you can run create partition primary.
•Now make the partition active by entering active
•Then you need to set up the file system as Fat32 by running format fs=fat32 quick (quick, of course, specifies that you want to perform a quick format to speed up the process).
•Entering the assign command gives the USB drive a drive letter, making it easy to access from Windows Explorer
•Then you can copy everything from the Windows 7 installation DVD onto the USB key (a simple drag and drop will do).
•Now you can insert the thumb drive into the system you want to install Windows 7 onto and boot the system. The installation will now proceed as usual—but faster.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-my/magazine/dd535816(en-us).aspx

Asus Eee PC

I bought a 7inch Eee PC last year when it was launched at RM1299.00. Although only 7 inch it's great to bring along when shopping, etc. With hifi at Jusco Seremban 2, infact so many connection to choose from. I don't think I will upgrade to the new 10 inch model, cos I have another 13 inch Dell Vostro to use at home and at work.

(By the way the 7 inch Eee PCis advertise for sale at mudah.com.my at RM500 used, second hand, if anyone is interested.)

Asus adds the Eee PC 1000HE, which has a claimed battery life of 9.5 hours, to its already large stable of netbooks.

The review unit has an Intel Atom N270 CPU running at 1.6GHz, instead of the newer 1.66GHz Atom N280 processor that all 1000HE models in the market currently ship with.
If you buy the 1000HE now, you will get the slightly faster 1.66GHz Atom for your RM1,599.


If you would like to read the review of this Eee PC 1000HE please click this link: http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2009/5/26/prodit/3956827&sec=prodit

Windows 7 Download

At last manage to start download Windows 7 yesterday. As you can see from the picture of download manager I only got 1% of the 2.36 GB file. My Celcom broadband only 5GB and very soon I will get a SMS warning from from CELCOM that I soon reach the limit.

Trying Windows 7 RC

Trying Windows 7 RC on for size
By TAN KIT HOONG
PETALING JAYA: In our ongoing tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate, we’ve been installing the operating system on various types of computers to see how it installs and to judge how well it runs.
We started at the small end of the scale, the netbook. But first, a quick reminder — Asus Eee PCs with 4GB of SSD storage will not be able to install Windows 7 RC. The operating system requires at least 16GB of free space, although the actual installation size is 7GB to 9GB.
We have a 10in-screen Eee PC with 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of SDRAM, Intel GMA950 graphics processor and 160GB hard disk drive in the office so that became our guinea pig.
Windows 7 RC took to this machine like a duck to water. In fact, the installation went completely without a hitch and the operating system even installed the drivers for every component in the Eee PC, including the ElanTech touchpad.
What surprised us was how really, really well Windows 7 RC ran on the device despite the relatively basic specifications of the Asus. Also, the machine’s Aero transparent interface worked like a charm on the Microsoft operating system.
Even more surprising was that we could run a 720p Windows Media Video file, open several Internet Explorer windows, and yet still be able to use the Flip3D (Windows key + TAB) to view all the open windows (and the video still running flawlessly) as Flip3D icons.
Overall, we had a very pleasant experience running Windows 7 RC on what we see is a typical netbook.
Going bigger
We next installed Windows 7 RC on a desktop PC that’s powered by an AMD Athlon 64 2.2GHz processor and has 1GB RAM, as well as a built-in ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics chip.
Here we ran into a problem initially because this version of the operating system does not have the drivers built-in for this relatively old and finicky graphics chip.
We did a Windows Update and Windows 7 RC found the needed driver; we were soon up and running.
Strangely, the operating system didn’t seem to be running as speedily on this machine as it did on the netbook. This could possibly due to the different graphics chip in each computer. We’ll be looking further into this.
Cool, this is
One of the things we like in Windows 7 RC is its Libraries feature. Libraries appears in the Internet Explorer window and is a sort of smart folder which you can configure yourself.
What Libraries does is provide a shortcut based on certain criteria that you set. For example, if you set the criteria as looking for videos, the link in Libraries will list all your videos no matter where they are located on the hard disk.
Windows 7 RC comes preconfigured with a number of Libraries folders — such as Videos, Music and Documents.
The one unfortunate thing is that we couldn’t seem to add folders stored on removable hard drives to the Libraries folders.
Nevertheless, Libraries is a useful tool to have, especially if you have files stored all over your hard disk.
That’s all for now. Keep watching this space for more on our Windows 7 RC experiences.
Related article: Windows 7 RC — First impressions (May 7, 2009, News) http://tinyurl.com/c3du5x

Note: Wanted to try Windows 7 but can't download, maybe Microsoft's server busy, try later maybe next week when it's not so busy. _ WongSF