Installing the Windows 7 beta on my LG netbook worked so well that I decided to also install it on my HP notebook computer.
Big mistake. I spent this morning reinstalling Vista.
Windows 7 does not seem to recognize the HP's AMD dual-core CPU, and so I was faced with the following problems:
- Fan on all the time, even with maximum power saver settings. The non-stop sound gets irritating after a while, especially compared to the LG's whisper-quiet fan.
- Regular blue screens of death, several times a day. What ever I'm working on was interrupted.
- The BSOD error message seems to indicate the shut down was due to the CPU overheating. I would not be surprised.
- The Task Manager's Performance tab showed just one CPU core, not two. (Curiously, on the LG netbook, the same dialog box shows TWO cores for a single-core CPU.)
- The Windows Experience Index was just 2.0 -- some 0.3 lower than the LG netbook (!), and 1.0 lower than with Vista. In particular, the hard drive was considered the slowest element, dropping from 4.5 on Vista to 2.0 on 7.
- The hard drive seemed to run pretty much constantly, even with indexing turned off.
- Applications were so-o-o-o sluggish, as if there were insufficient memory in the computer. It helped a bit when I added a USB thumbdrive for ReadyBoost.
So I backed up all my files. That took a while, since the HP did the BSOD thing every hour or less. And then I reinstalled Vista, which involves wiping the disc clean, spending hours reinstalling software and updates...
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