Get the best from Windows 7 on a netbook

Even just a few years ago, the idea of taking a computer out and about would have struck some people as rather pointless. Many consumers chose laptops simply because they didn’t take up much space in the home. Those laptops lightweight enough to carry from home to work or school were much more expensive and aimed at those who had a real need to work on documents while out and about.

Today’s laptops are lighter and cheaper than ever but there’s a new generation of portable computers that use low-powered processors and solid-state storage to produce smaller, leaner and even less expensive computers called ‘netbooks’. Early netbooks were sold with Linux, while more recently Windows XP has been the supplied operating system.

Vista was much rarer, largely because it required more memory and processing power to run than XP. Windows 7 was designed from the outset with portability in mind and, despite it being more advanced than Vista, most netbooks can run it with little impact on performance. In this article we will show you how to get the best performance from a netbook running Windows 7.

One of the quickest ways to boost netbook performance is to turn off the advanced graphics features that make Windows 7 look great, but which use a significant proportion of processing power.

The main culprit is Aero, which produces the transparent effect on the edges of Windows and includes handy tools such as Aero Peek and Jump Lists. These are useful but if you need the extra performance for other tasks, it is easy to limit Aero’s processor use.

Right-click the desktop, select Personalize, scroll down the page until you see ‘Basic and high-contrast themes’ and choose Windows 7 Basic. You’ll still get a basic level of Peek and Jump Lists continue to work.

Preserving battery life
Battery life is an important concern if you want to use a computer away from home. Netbook processors use less power but their displays and other components still draw lots of energy – ­ just like laptops.

The good news is that you can change the settings in Windows 7 to preserve power. Click the Start menu icon and select Control Panel followed by Power Options. A selection of power plans is displayed here – ­ a plan is a group of settings that tell Windows how much power to use for various components and when to dim the display and cut power to some components altogether.

The default setting in Windows 7 Home Premium is Balanced, which ensures the processor has enough power to give good performance when in active use by applications while reducing energy usage if the computer is not being used after a set time.

The Power Saver plan is ideal for portable PCs when away from a mains connection. While Balanced dims the screen after 10 minutes of inactivity, Power Saver does this after five minutes.

Similarly, the amount of time Power Saver waits to put the PC into Sleep mode is cut by half to 15 minutes. Sleep mode cuts power to everything but memory, so work in open documents is not lost.

To change the power plan your computer uses, click the button next to its name so the circle has a blue dot in it and close the Power Options window.

You can also customise the power settings to save even more battery life. Each plan has a link next to it labelled ‘Change plan settings’, which you can click to change the time Windows 7 waits before switching off the display or entering Sleep mode. Windows 7 also reactivates the display and sleeping components much more quickly than Vista.