Windows 7 roadmap for Asus EEE PCs

With Windows 7 just around the corner, I’m expecting all the major producers to start shipping their netbooks with the new OS in a matter of weeks. I’m going to write a dedicated post about this in the next days, but for now, here’s what Asus has prepared for us.

Windows 7 on EEE PC in Q4-2009

As you can see in the picture below, Asus is going to:

• offer the mainstream EEE PCs 1005HA and 1008HA with Windows 7 Starter (that’s the bared naked version of the OS, the one that won’t even allow to change desktop theme )
• offer the bigger 11.6 inch netbook EEE PC 1101HA with Windows 7 Home Premium .

Along with the new operating systems, there will be some buffs in terms of hardware specs: The 1005HA and the 1008HA will keep their N270/N280 CPUs and 1 GB RAM but will get bigger 250 GB hard-drives. While the 1101HA will keep the low power Z520 CPU and get 2 GB of RAM and the same bigger storage space.

There’s no word on prices for the new Asus EEE PCs equipped with Windows 7, but a smart move from Asus will be to keep them the same as they are now.

My biggest concern however is how will these devices perform with Windows 7. I for one tested Windows 7 RC1 Ultimate on the 1101HA earlier this year and wasn’t completely satisfied (as in: the computer was very sluggish with Aero ON and a little bit sluggish from time to time with all the fancy graphic options OFF. Also, running Firefox with 5-6 tabs, Winamp, Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft Word all in the same time was pretty painful, mainly when changing between panels). But hey, that was the Ultimate version and i only had 1 GB of RAM on that netbook. So i’m pretty sure the one offered by Asus will do better somehow. More about Windows 7 performances on netbooks in a next post.

Source: Liliputing

Tags: Asus netbooks, EEE PC, Windows 7