[Prax]

First let me say hi , I am a new Dell Mini owner who just found this forum. I had previously owned a Asus EEE PC 701 and loved the size but my eyes were straining with the screen, so when Dell released their version I had to pick it up. That and being a native of Austin, owning at least one Dell is suggested. I use my Dell Mini as a secondary computer for when I travel, and use it around my house for IM'ing and basic surfing.

Anyway onto my post, I have been a veteran of using small machines and wanted to make a suggestion to others on this board. There is a version of Windows that I have been using that works really really well on these netbooks. Its called Windows for Legacy PC's, this version of windows is not available for purchase and is only supplied to the Software Assurance group from Microsoft (and various other places if you look hard enough). It was created when XP came out and was meant to be used by corporations for use with older pc's that large companies didn't want to replace when XP came out. So it has a much smaller footprint then normal XP, it has been stripped of some options that normal XP has but I have never found a need for those options, or if I have needed them I have found a way to install them on FLP. For all intensive purposes Windows FLP act's feels, and behaves like XP. Microsoft's own Windows update program tries to suggest install Windows XP SP3 onto it even though it won't install. All the Dell drivers work off the CD and I have yet to find a program that tries to say its not Windows XP. To give you an example of how small it really is, with a freshly formatted drive, FLP, firefox, VLC, and Digsby, installed takes less then 4 gigs, with paging file of 192 mb.

If you have any questions about this feel free to post here and I will do my best to answer them.

[PM5K]

nLite is a good alternative, my nLite install took up less than 1GB with no swap file.

[cmarcho]

Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PC's is based on XP Embedded with SP2.... Similar to what you would find on a Wyse Terminal or other similar devices.

some of the benefits at the link below include:

>> Use existing hardware as Terminal Services clients

>> Move line-of-business and productivity applications to the server

>> Install only the components that your organization requires to minimize on-disk footprint

"Users can run Web browsers, terminal emulation software, security software, and other light workloads locally. All other applications run on a server and can be accessed by using the Remote Desktop client or ICA connections."

It seems that WinFLP is intended for very light loads, maybe it would be ideal for a netbook? Not sure.

I think I would rather do an nLite version of XP Pro. I just installed WinFLP to a VM and including the driver cache which is only 14mb on disk, it used 794MB on the disk. How much space are people getting nLite installs of XP Pro down to? Probably very similar sizes.

You can find public information on WinFLP at:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/prog ... ntals.mspx

Please read all End User License Agreements before installing WinFLP or any other version of Windows.

[cmarcho]

Service Pack 3 is available for WinFLP.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

Interesting notes from the release:

"The WinFLP installation, depending on your configuration, will have an uninstall folder of up to 300 MB in size."

"you can use a USB flash drive to install the SP3 package."