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Last updated: Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The release of Windows 7 this October is likely to have the computer world abuzz. But will notebook users be feeling the joy, too? Every new operating system seems to render yesterday’s hot notebook computers virtually worthless for running the latest and greatest operating system, so notebook owners have a right to be skeptical. Microsoft claims that Windows 7, though, was built with notebooks in mind. Read on to find out what that means. Q: Do I need to get the fastest notebook available to run Windows 7? A: No. Just about any notebook made today will run Windows 7 acceptably, at least from the standpoint of the central processing unit (CPU), which is how most people measure the “speed” of a computer. One of the design goals of Windows 7 was actually to improve the operating system’s performance on all computers over that of Windows Vista, and to a large degree Microsoft seems to have accomplished that goal. Windows 7 is measurably more responsive than Windows Vista. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay attention to the notebook’s specifications at all, however. Consider 2 gigabytes of memory (RAM) a bare minimum for your notebook, and you’ll really be better served with 4 gigabytes if you do much multitasking. If you’re buying a notebook, you should spring for one with dedicated graphics as opposed to integrated graphics. A dedicated graphics card is typically more powerful and has more on-board memory than graphics that are built directly onto the notebook’s motherboard. Both graphics speed and memory are important in Windows 7, as they were in Windows Vista, in large part because of the demands of the Aero interface. In terms of LCD size, wide screens predominate today. For Windows 7, there’s really no perfect size. The operating system is configurable enough to display adequately on the LCD…

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Windows 7 on Notebook Computers

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