Given that Microsoft has a netbook-friendly "Starter" edition of Windows 7, it's not surprising that there's lots of interest to see how Windows 7 runs on existing netbook hardware. Moreover, with the majority of netbook sales these days offering the eight year old Windows XP platform, there's a distinct security benefit in running a more hardened operating system.

Microsoft is allowing customers to freely and legally run the Release Candidate 1 version of Windows 7 until the 1st of June 2010, although it'll start a forced shutdown every two hours from 1st of March 2010. That gives you plenty of time to assess whether Windows 7 works for you and your netbook.

Here's how to get the release candidate running on your Netbook. We're not going to delve into multi-boot scenarios for this particular tutorial although that's also a perfectly viable option.

The really good news is that the toughest part of this entire tutorial takes place well before you actually begin installation.

Step one: Back up your netbook files

This method will clear the Netbook entirely, but even if you are going to partition your system, it's a good idea, just in case something goes wrong during the install process.

Step two: Create an ISO

Use your CD/DVD burning software to create an ISO image of your Windows 7 installation disk.

Step three: USB or DVD?

The two easiest ways to get Windows 7 onto a netbook are with either an external optical drive Ð typically that'll set you back around $100 Ð or a USB Flash drive and some patience.

If you're using a USB optical drive, about the only preparation step for a wipe and install of Windows 7 you'll need to do is ensure that the netbook's BIOS is set to boot from external USB devices first. Enter the BIOS on boot (typically by pressing DEL, F2 or BACKSPACE) and head to the "Boot" section of your BIOS. As long as "USB external drive" (or similar) is above "Internal Drive", you should be fine. Pop your Windows 7 disc into the drive and power up; you should then be greeted with the option to boot from the disc and proceed with the installation from there.

If you don't have (or want) a USB optical drive, your other option is by creating a bootable flash drive, and copying the Windows 7 installation folders from there. You'll need a flash drive of at least 4GB in capacity for this installation method. The first step there is making the drive bootable, which involves a little bit of command line hacking. This will also depend on the operating system you're copying the files from. We've opted to install from Windows Vista, as its inbuilt partitioning utility makes it a much smoother process than XP.

Plug in the flash drive you'd like to use. Once it appears in Windows Explorer go to the Start menu, choose Run and type

CMD

This will launch a command prompt window. From there, type

DISKPART

This launches the Windows Hard Disk partitioning software, which we'll use to make the drive bootable. The first and most neccessary step is to identify your drive. Type "LIST DISK" and you should get a listing of all the available drives. Your USB flash drive won't be disk 1 (that's the current Windows drive), but you should be able to identify it by size if nothing else. Take note of the Disk number. Then type in the following lines, hitting enter after each one.

select disk n (where n is the number of the drive you identified earlier. So if it was disk 3, type "select disk 3" for example)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit

That'll leave you with a freshly formatted bootable drive, onto which you'll copy the Windows 7 installation folders. You'll need to extract the contents of the ISO file, either manually with an unzipping utility, or by burning it to DVD (or mounting it with an application such as Daemon Tools) and then copying the entire contents to the flash drive.

The actual installation is a simple affair - Microsoft's done a fair bit of work to ensure that the installation procedure is pretty hands off. Even on a low-end netbook it's fairly quick. Aside from the usual localisation questions and setting up your network, you can largely leave a Windows 7 install alone as it'll handle itself nicely presuming you're not pitching for a dual boot system.

Get the most out of your Windows 7 system

Microsoft's Starter edition may ship with a smaller, more netbook friendly set of features, but how do you get the Ultimate edition to play nicely in the smaller netbook sandpit? Here are a few key tweaks to maximise your productivity:

1) Windows Update
Your first step with a new Windows 7 install should be Windows Update. The default drivers that it finds on most Netbooks should work, but the upgraded drivers are often better, and that's definitely the case for the standard Intel wireless drivers in our experience.

2) Simple themes
The starter version of Windows 7 omits the Aero interface and unless you really need it we'd suggest switching it off and saving a few processing cycles. Right click anywhere on the desktop, choose "Personalize" and scroll down the themes list to the "Basic and High Contrast" group. Windows 7 Basic (or Windows Classic) might not look as snazzy as Aero Glass, but on a netbook they'll be much snappier.

3) Kill startup programs you don't need
Open the Start menu and type "msconfig" into the search box. This brings up the System Configuration utility. Under the Startup tab, disable any applications that you don't always need loaded at boot. This will speed up your boot times but use common sense; don't disable an application you always run each time, as you'll just have to wait for it anyway. Likewise, you can disable some of Windows 7's services on boot, depending on your usage needs.

By Alex Kidman