For Netbooks, Windows 7 and Chrome Make a Perfect Match

Windows 7 plus Google’s Chrome browser is an excellent netbook combination.

The two together make pretty good use of a netbook’s most limited resources: screen size and processor power. The result is a surprisingly pleasant combination for browsing, working in GMail and Google Docs, and other lightweight tasks.

In other words, Google might be onto something with its plans to make a Chrome-based operating system for netbooks.

Over the weekend, I finally got around to upgrading the computers at home to Windows 7. As part of the chore, I also switched my MSI Wind hackintosh to Windows 7. It had been functioning primarily as the kids’ computer, although I use it for work in a pinch — for example, I used it when I was covering the Google Chrome OS press conference in Mountain View last week — and occasionally for checking e-mail at home. Running OS X on the Wind was a way of making it easier for the children to use, but it had persistent drawbacks: For instance, the trackpad didn’t always behave as expected, and the screen was sometimes squashed into the left two-thirds of the display, leaving a big black bar along the right side that only disappeared after rebooting.

That’s not a criticism of OS X. After all, it’s not made to run on a netbook, and by forcing it to do so, you have to be willing to accept the tradeoffs and bugginess that come with any hack. And, while I like working with OS X, one of its chief advantages to me is the seamless way it works. In short, working with a hacked version of OS X on nonstandard hardware takes away most of the operating system’s advantages.

In that light, it’s clear that Microsoft has a far more challenging job in building operating systems, because it has to make Windows work acceptably well with a wide range of computers, processors and accessories. It’s a credit to the Redmond company that Windows 7 works as well as it does on a netbook, and while it hasn’t entirely eliminated Vista’s annoyances (such as confirmation dialogs and an overly-aggressive automatic update system that sometimes reboots the computer, unpredictably, while I’m in the middle of doing something), it goes a long way towards making Windows more “transparent.” For the most part, it just works, and doesn’t get in the way, while I concentrate on my work.

Adding Google’s Chrome browser to Windows 7 complete the picture for the netbook user. That’s because Chrome is lightweight and fast, rendering pages (especially JavaScript-heavy ones, like Gmail) especially quickly. And because of the compact way it presents the address bar, tabs and toolbar — especially if you’re using the “Minimalist” theme — more of the screen is available to display web pages — no small consideration when you’re working with a tiny 9- or 10-inch LCD.

Windows 7 may not be as speedy as a stripped-down Linux distro, but on the other hand it is familiar, runs well enough, and appears to support every component on the MSI Wind without trouble. By deep-sixing Internet Explorer and replacing it with Chrome, it becomes the best netbook option I know of.

Photo (of an MSI Wind netbook running Windows Vista) by Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com