Installing Windows Vista On The MSI Wind Comments

I really dont think they should call these mini notebooks netbooks unless they have hsdpa.

would be cool to see mac os running on one

Very pleasingly geeky experiment, thanks for sharing!!!

I use vLite for my regular laptop, on principle more than anything else. Current ISO is 1.29GB, with Aero, games, codecs, sounds. The big space hogs are languages and speech support (around 1GB each). Such ripping helps with hard disk space, but to gain memory and speed requires playing with services. For me, UAC, Remote Differential Compression, Windows Defender and Firewall are some of the first to go. I would ultimately prefer XP SP3, but Acer doesn't bother to provide XP drivers for my laptop. Ah well.

No offence Victor and Hugo - this could be the best factual writing since Charles Darwin, and I'd STILL have to object to it on principle - what a useless tutorial!

What are you doing infecting that cute, perfectly acceptable little netbook with the OS that puts the MS in MS?

How would this tutorial be adjusted for the newer eeepc 900 with only the 16 SSD drive? It won't have the 4G + 16 G used in this article.

What's the point of doing this without installing the extra 1GB of RAM you know Vista requires to run well? If anyone doing this is not a casual user, as you claim, he is certainly "hardcore" enough to install the extra RAM.

Can you please test Vista on the MSI Wind with 2GB RAM and let us know how it runs? Thanks!

Well, Pimlicosound, I imagine the idea was to explore the concept while keeping the Wind as stock, hardware-wise ie as it is out of the box.

Once you have to buy a) a Wind, b) Vista AND THEN c) another 1GB of RAM, it starts getting a bit expensive.

A 1GB SO-DIMM only costs £15, and keeping it at stock seems silly when you're already doing so much jiggery-pokery to get Vista on there in the first place.

Not breaking the warranty is fair enough, but I'd still like to see a test done with 2GB RAM. Especially since the review states that 1GB is known to be insufficient to run Vista! I'm curious to see how the Atom and the chipset cope with the new OS, without RAM being a bottleneck.

A fun, yet strangely pointless idea!

Although, I'm intrigued by one of the screen shots showing two hard drives with a total space of about 70GB, and in the bottom corner, "MSIWIND". Surely there was not much need for vLite when you have that much space.

Having said that, I use nLite (the XP version) to cut the crud on my PC...

Also, perhaps not the correct place, but if you're going for Vista and RAM, and are the kind of person that will rip apart an Eee PC to install the RAM, there'd be no disadvantage to getting the OEM edition of Vista, and saving money there!

Hugo, the MSI Wind actually has 1GB hardwired in and one free slot. The chipset accommodates a maximum of 2GB RAM, so you would be buying a 1GB module to put in the free slot.

Please see this handy guide to upgrading RAM:

http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/msi-wind-ram.aspx

This has to be the most pointless TR article, ever. Vista on a 1 GB netbook?! I don't think so. It would have been a lot more useful if you guys had shown us all how to create an OSX .iso from our discs then a how guide to install it, with all the appropriate drivers, on a 2GB Wind or Eeepc 1000H. Of course, entirely from a 'theoretical' point of view ;)

That RAM upgrade info is awesome. Vista on a 2GB Wind might be a little more interesting.

Wind, Schmind - no wonder you're suffering with Wind trying to stuff Vista down a 1GB gullet!

I got an eee 1000H from ebuyer.com last Friday, along with a 2GB SO-DIMM and a 320GB Western Digital 2.5" drive... and then upgraded the eee (an extra £100 on the price, but hey, if you're going to do a job properly...!).

Upgrading the Eee 1000H was straightforward - loosen two captive screws and open the hatch in the base (there is a small eee sticker on one corner, but it doesn't say anything about voiding the warranty on it - and, with a bit of care, the half stuck to the case came away cleanly with the hatch cover and went back just as easily).

Inside you can then swap out the 1GB SO-DIMM and change the 2.5" hard drive (your review of the 1000H is wrong by the way - it's not a 1.8" drive). The original Seagate drive has 80GB spread over two sides of one platter - the 320GB of the WD drive is spread across four sides of two platters - so packs the data twice as densely, and is thus faster at retrieving it).

Then install Vista. I used the 32-bit version - I read at Tweaktown that x64 won't install on a 1000H even if it apparently should. More to the point, x64 is really on worth if if you have over 3.2GB of memory or some other special need. I didn't bother with vlite - it's not as if I'm anywhere near short of space.

Then install the drivers - grab the chipset and video drivers from the Intel site, and the rest from the XP downloads at Asus (leaving out the Asus function key stuff - it doesn't like the audio driver or video driver on Vista, not yet anyway).

And the result? It all works wonderfully well - very smooth in fact - and very welcome for a die-hard XP luddite like me who has come to appreciate the charms of Vista after a year of struggling with it :-)

For comparison purposes, The Windows Experience Index figures on my Eee 1000H are now:

- Processor: 3.0
- Memory: 4.4
- Desktop Graphics: 4.1
- Gaming Graphics: 2.7
- Primary HDD: 5.4

- all very reasonable. For comparison purposes, a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo Dell Vostro 1510 with 3GB of RAM, 250GB HDD and built-in Intel graphics returns 4.8, 4.8, 3.4, 3.5 and 5.1.

All things considered, an Eee 1000H with 2GB of RAM runs Vista very acceptably, and is utterly portable in comparison to full-size laptops.

I hope this is helpful to others considering these machines.

P.S. I chose the Eee 1000H over the wind because:

- it can take a 2.5" drive (the Wind HDD really is 1.8" I believe);
- it comes with a six-cell battery included (for the same price as a Wind with 3-cells);
- it has a better trackpad;
- it's the 3rd generation of Eee in coamparison to the Wind 1.0...

The Wind uses a 2,5" HDD. :-)

God almighty love you guys! almost in a sexual way...
this article is certainly intriguing, though hopelessly. But definitely encourages me to try something naughty with my advent 4211 - let me figure out how to get the case opened 1st..