Netbooks compared on price and features

I made a matrix of Netbooks, split by OS (Linux or Windows) and Hard disk (SSD or HHD):

OS / HD	Linux OS	Windows OS
SSD	Asus Eee PC4g 512MB/4GB/4cell $250 Acer Aspire One 1GM/8GB/3cell $280 Acer Aspire One 512MB/8GB/3cell $329 Acer Aspire One 512MB/16GB/3cell $350
mechanical		ASUS EeePC 900HA1GB/160/4cell $329 ASUS EeePC 904HA 1GB/160/4cell $340 Acer Aspire One 1GB/160GB/6cell $380 MSI Wind U100 1GB/120GB/3cell $350 Lenovo IdeaPad S10 512MB/80GB/3cell $350

Notice anything interesting? Netbooks only appear along the diagonal of the matrix. It seems you can't get a Windows netbook with a solid state disk, or a Linux netbook with a mechanical hard drive. A strange set of optimizations, if you ask me. Given how much excitement there is about this category, you'd think that there would be at least some examples in the other two cells of the matrix. True, not every netbook is listed here, but this is a representative sample of what I could find on Amazon and Newegg. I'd welcome reader comments on netbooks I missed.

Reducing Chrome memory footprint & comparison to Firefox

Google's Chrome is the newest web browser to challenge IE's dominance. One of it's claims to fame is that each Tab (or now, each website) runs in its own process. This means that if a Tab crashes it doesn't effect the rest of the open Tabs.

While great in theory, in practice this turns out to be relatively useless. Chrome is actually about as stable as Firefox, so crashes really are not a problem. Using a separate process for each Tab does use more memory, however. All of the program code is shared between processes, but data is not, and this means that each new Tab has some overhead that would not be consumed in a single process browser. My limited testing, to be described below suggests that each tab takes about 10MB extra RAM, which won't be a big deal of you have Gigs of RAM installed on your machine, but could be quite a problem on lower-end machines.

The good news is that Chrome can be run in a single process mode - which is incidentally how I estimated the amount of overhead for each tab.

To switch Chrome to a single process mode, you need to change the command line arguments to Chrome.exe. I use an icon/shortcut on the desktop to start Chrome, so I just right clicked to get the properties of that shortcut, and then added --single-process to the end of the Target edit field.

I did a really quick before and after test to see how much of a change this made, by loading three websites: gmail, comics.com, and phdcomics.com. These websites are relatively graphic, javascript, and flash rich, which should actually minimize the relative contribution of multi-process overhead to the total memory usage.

The memory usage for these websites, immediately after loading all 3:

Chromium 1.0.154.43
multi-process: 120MB
single-process: 90MB

Firefox 3.0.5: 135MB (no extensions or addons)

As you can see, the single process mode does make a difference. More surprisingly, it looks like Chrome is actually a lot more memory efficient than Firefox. More comprehensive testing would be a good idea here, but at the least, it appears that Chrome is no worse than Firefox.

So for now, I strongly recommend you check out Chrome, and run your own tests. It also has a nice interface, and doesn't waste screen space with lots of "chrome" :-). The only big downside I have seen so far is that it's built in spell-checking facility is really weak. It often doesn't have any good suggestions for more phonetically based spellings, and even typos can sometimes stymie its suggestions. Furthermore, the spell-checking facility doesn't even load on some websites (notably, blogspot). In the mean time, I use FreeSpell, which makes excellent suggestions and works with all websites (and applications) [Disclaimer: I wrote FreeSpell].

Turn off Windows Update service to save RAM and avoid error 0x8DDD0018

The Windows update service takes about 10MB of RAM, but is used about once every month.
What a waste, espcially if running on a Netbook or low-end laptop where RAM is at a premium.

It's easy to turn off the service using the Services.msc tool, but then for some reason the Windows Updates website doesn't know how to turn it back on as needed. Instead, you need a batch file which starts up the service and then shuts it down as soon as the update is over. Likewise, the BITS service is only used by Windows Update, so it too can be enabled just as needed. The problem I ran into, however, is that even when Windows Update service is running Windows update may not be able to detect it, and will return an erronous 0x8DDD0018 error. This is solved by running regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll.

The final batch file is as follows:

net start wuauserv
regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll /s
net start BITS

start /wait iexplore update.microsoft.com

net stop wuauserv
net stop BITS

How to import registery settings from a previous Windows install using RegEdit and NTUSER.dat

If you want to import the settings from an application you had installed on a previous copy of Windows you probably will have to mess around with the registry. If you are lucky, however, the settings are just saved in a .ini file in the program's directory. Be sure to check for that first. In the case that there is no .ini file, however, here is how you can load the settings without having to boot into your older Windows install first.

Start regedit (winkey+r, "regedit", enter)

Select HKEY_USER registry key. 

From the File menu, select Load Hive (will be grayed out if you don't select HKEY_USER first).

Find your old install's documents and settings folder, navigate to your old user's folder, and then open their NTUSER.dat file (note it's hidden, so you'll have to make sure that explore is set to reveal hidden files).

It will ask you for a key name - choose something unique, because you'll want to do a search and replace later. I used xyztemp. 

Now click on  HKEY_USER, and then on xyztemp. You now have your old copy of HKEY_CURRENT_USER loaded. Find the program's settings (typically under Software), and export that folder/key to disk.

Supposedly it's a good idea to select the xyztemp key, and select unload hive from the File menu before quiting regedit. 

Next open that exported .reg file with a text editor. Do a search and replace, replacing each instance ofHKEY_USERS\xyztemp  with HKEY_CURRENT_USER (no spaces).

Now save and close the file. Finally, right click on the .reg file, and select Merge. 

What do slashdot readers think is the best low-end laptop OS?

Just a quick update: less than a month after my two posts on the topic of the best OS for low end machines, somebody posted an Ask Slashdot on the same question.  A quick glance thru the comments suggests that Linux is the most popular option, which isn't surprising given the audience. 

The real value of the Ask Slashdot article, however, is that people are suggesting actual Distros.  So far xubuntu doesn't get a lot of hits, suggesting that perhaps I didn't select the very best option for my own head-to-head tests.  If you do decide to install Linux on your low end laptop, you should check it out:

Ask Slashdot: Best OS For Netbooks and Underpowered Tablets?

Best free calandar for 2009

You can pay $10 for a colorful calendar for 2009, or 50 cents you can print out your own. I decided to print out my own. I spent ~20 minutes trying to find a good free PDF calendar for 2009 online, but they all featured advertisements, or poor use of page space (ie really large margins, etc). So I made my own. Download my 2009 calendar here.  It's free, has no ads, and makes very good use of the space on the 8.5 by 11 page. No fancy clip-art included, but maybe you prefer that? 

What OS is best for a low-end laptop? Evaluating Win2k on a 800mhz ThinkPad

An 8 year old laptop can still be pretty useful for surfing the web, writing emails and papers, and other sorts of basic tasks. In fact, low-end laptops have become quite the rage with the $350 "NetBook", as personified by machines like the Acer Aspire One, or the Dell Inspiron Mini. But for many of us it's possible to get your hands on a old Low-end machine for much less than $350. And, unlike the Netbooks, you'll get a full-sized keyboard and screen. 

The question this post focuses on is what OS provides the best sort of performance for this kind of low-end machine.

I recently completed a post where I tried installing Xubuntu Linux on a 800mhz Thinkpad with 384MB of RAM. I was impressed with my Linux experience on the whole, but found that bootup and shutdown (as well as hibernate and resume) time was much longer than I would like. Judging from my experience with my Windows desktops, I suspected that an appropriately selected Windows OS would do better. Vista obviously wouldn't, and even XP might be too much, but what about Windows 2000 (Win2k)? Win2k was one of the first really stable Window OSes, and still has good driver support.  Win98 might have lower hardware requirements, but wasn't nearly as stable. I elected, therefore to install Win2k.

Coming fresh from my Xubuntu experience I was surprised at how much more work it was to install Win2k. You always hear about how much pain it is to install Linux, but I think that's largely historical. Today, installing Linux is actually easier than installing Windows - especially older copies of Windows which don't come pre-equipped with all the drivers you'll need, current security updates, or all the good opensource/free software that you'll want, like Firefox and Open Office. Not that it's actually 'hard' to install Windows - all the steps are easy; it's just time consuming to download the right service pack, gather drivers together, and install each one in turn.  With Linux a fully functional install took all of 20 clicks. I'd estimate Windows took more than 10-20 times as many. And with all the rebooting required, I'd guess it took 3-4 times as long to get a fully functioning OS, before I even started installing applications.

Of course you only have to install the OS once (every few years). So what really matters is performance after it's all set up.  

Websurfing was just fine, just as in Linux. Firefox could handle multiple websites at once, with no jumpiness or lag.  Flash was also better, with no more than 1 dropped frame a minute. Also, it was possible to multi-task without making Flash drop audio and video, unlike with Linux. That was almost certainly an issue with Flash being poorly implemented under Linux, as my Linux tests showed that the same machine could play back DVDs just fine. Nonetheless, I'm more likely to use Flash on a machine like this than watch a DVD... 

For doing real work, I tried coldstarting AbiWord and Open Office.  AbiWord started in 5 seconds. Open Office writer started in 33 seconds.  For comparison, AbiWord started 2 seconds faster than under Linux, but Open office actually took 9 seconds longer. Note that I did not have the quick-start program installed under Windows, since that just hides Open-Office start time in the bootup time, and wastes RAM too. As far as I know, no such quick-start program was running under Linux, so it's rather impressive that the same version of Open Office loads quicker under Linux. Not that 24 seconds is really 'quick'. Open office is a real pig, actually.  Note that once started, both AbiWord and Open Office were perfectly snappy, with no typing lag or any problems like that.  With both programs loaded, plus Firefox, I found that performance continued to remain snappy, with switches between applications taking less than 1/2 a second. 

So what about the bootup time, which was so disappointing under Linux? Bootup time from power on to a usable desktop was 110 seconds, only 10 seconds faster than Linux . Clearly, this was still too slow, so I experimented with using Hibernation, where the contents of RAM of an already booted machine is written to disk. Assuming a fast enough disk, it's going to be quicker to load that RAM image back from the disk than going all the way through bootup again. Hibernating to disk took 34 seconds.  Resuming from hibernation took 44 seconds, still longer than I would like, but a significant improvement over Xubunutu, which took 80 seconds!  So, in conclusion, I was right: Windows (2k) is faster to start up than Xubuntu was, though only significantly so when you use hibernation. And Windows is still slower than I would like. 

So, in conclusion, which is better for a low end laptop (as personified by my 800mhz Thinkpad)? Linux/Xubuntu was much easier and quicker to set up, and comes with lots of good opensource software "right out of the box" (fresh off the download?).  Booting, however, was painfully slow, as was Flash performance. On the other hand, Windows took forever to install and setup, but once configured it was fast(er) to boot (or at least, to resume from hibernation). Though I only tested two applications, it does appear that Linux starts applications slightly faster than Windows does, at least with the monolithic Open Office. In retrospect I wish I had benchmarked a few more apps, but I hadn't expected there to be much difference. Oh well, I'm sure somebody else will do it eventually. 

So it's kind of a draw, if you ask me. Other factors, such as what kind of software you want to use probably makes a bigger difference than the differences in performance. I'd go with Windows myself, since I prefer MS Office (esp. Office 2000, which is very fast to load, and lacks all the bloat of Office 2007). But if you prefer Open Office, or other Linux only apps, then clearly Linux wins. It's nice when the choice of what OS to use depends mostly on taste; after all it would be sad if I had to report that Linux fans should use Windows because it's so much faster, or vice-versa.