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GBM InkShow: Windows 7 Running on a LS800 Tablet PC

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windows7ls800thumb When Microsoft announced that Windows 7 would be able to run on cpu, memory, and resolution challenged devices like Netbooks, I couldn’t wait to give Windows 7 Ultimate a try on a old, and cpu challenged, Tablet PC: Motion Computing’s  three year-old LS800 Tablet PC running a 1.2 ghz Intel Pentium M processor, Intel 915GMS chipset, 1 gb of RAM, and a 1.8” 30 gb 4800 RPM hard drive.

The install went without a hitch — automatically downloading needed driver updates, except for button drivers that I got Motion’s support site. This was a clean Windows 7 install (no upgrade) and the harddrive was freshly formatted. The result: a decently performing 8.4” slate tablet pc with only 380 mb of consumed memory and about 50 running processes! Heat output is on a par with an XP install and I never hear the fan running. Wonderful work, Microsoft!

In this video InkShow, I demo inking, launching a game, Journal, Sticky Notes, browse the web, go in to stand-by, and more. I did launch up Media Center off camera, and no surprise — it wouldn’t run. I had to force a shut down in order to recover. Besides a few minor video overlay issues and the Media Center problem, I am pretty impressed. Needless to say, I’m one very happy Windows 7 slate Tablet PC user!

Correction: I make a mistake in the video saying the processor was a Core Solo. It is a Pentium M.

Windows Experience Index:

Overall: 1.0, Processor: 2.7, RAM: 4.1, Graphics: 1.9, Gaming: 1.0, Hard Disk: 3.4

All GottaBeMobile.com InkShows are sponsored by TechSmith.

21 Comments

21 Comments

  1. archiwiz

    11/05/2008 at 10:00 pm

    That’s very, very nice Rob. Thanks for putting this up. So was this an upgrade from XP or Vista, or is this OS on a hard disk partition? Are other programs, that you had in XP running smoothly on W7? I’m looking forward to upgrading my X61t and M1400 to Windows 7.

  2. Rob Bushway

    11/05/2008 at 10:05 pm

    It was a clean install on a just formatted hardddrive. I’ll be installing Office and such on it later this week.

  3. Donald

    11/06/2008 at 2:07 am

    I am impressed. Why the heck does Vista seem so bulky and unweildly on this type of platform while windows 7 seems to add even more to the OS.

  4. Ben

    11/06/2008 at 2:23 am

    Windows 7 seems faster than vista because they’ve had time to streamline all the new technology they built into Vista. Besides that, i’m sure they heard all the b*tching and moaning about how much of a ‘hog’ vista is.

  5. frblckstr

    11/06/2008 at 5:29 am

    I tried Windows 7 on the ASUS R2H UMPC (1.2MB memory): it actually runs very usable, might I even dare say better then XP?
    Start menu and standard programs open in a snap, handwriting is fast and the onscreen touch keyboard is very usable.
    Its like someone found a delayloop in the UI somewhere and removed it…

    Two problems to resolve still: finger print registration doesn’t work (the scanner does it looks like) and I can’t get wireless to work yet. Must try the GPS and Office 2007 still.

    (This might actually make the R2H usable again)

  6. Mark Payton

    11/06/2008 at 9:21 am

    So is three hope for resurrecting my TC1100?

  7. Rob Bushway

    11/06/2008 at 9:24 am

    absolutely!

  8. Civisi

    11/06/2008 at 11:15 am

    I am looking forward to getting Win7 for my HP tc4200 (1.86 GHz Pentium M, 2 GB RAM). I’m running Vista on it now, and while it’s a little slow to start up, it’s not bad once it gets going. Windows 7 looks to be very promising, and as a Windows network engineer and support technician, I’m looking forward to using the excellent features from Vista in a package that not so demanding on hardware!

  9. David Howard

    11/06/2008 at 1:23 pm

    That was awesome – thanks Rob!

  10. bristolview

    11/06/2008 at 6:23 pm

    I still have my LS800, running fine on XP. I really like the tablet features of Vista, but after upgrading the LS800 it became such a sloth, I went back to XP. Hopefully, the Windows 7 experience will remain usable with low power low memory machines like this one.

    I also have an OQO Model 02, which came with Vista Business. IT ran remarkably well, considering it’s low amounts of everything. For about 7 months it worked quite acceptably (not fast, but acceptable). It then began to trash the disk for 15-25 minutes after waking up or booting. During this time, it is essentially unresponsive and unusable. After it finished thrashing, it’s usable again. I had thought that it was due to the low end nature of the OQO, but… then my Lenovo x61 Tablet began to do it too… hmmmmm It’s Vista. Both worked quite well for many months, but after considerable use they thrash. Hopefully Windows 7 will not do the same after several months. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

    Thanks for the preview on an LS800, gives me a look at how well it’ll fly on mine, and a pretty good preview for many of the other low end mobile devices (including the OQO). Nice.

  11. hxpii

    11/06/2008 at 8:40 pm

    I have an OQO 02 also with Vista installed and it is terribly slow! It is unbearable to use as the file viewer and information management tool it was orignally intended for. I hope Windows 7 will breath new life into this UMPC and other portable computing devices everywhere.

  12. Mickey Segal

    11/08/2008 at 6:18 pm

    Rob: I thought you got rid of your LS800.

  13. Mickey Segal

    11/08/2008 at 6:36 pm

    I checked my LS800 running Vista with a bunch of programs installed and nominally none open. I get 437 MB of memory use with 59 processes running. Overall I’m more impressed by the similarities of the LS800 running Windows 7 versus Vista than the differences.

    The worst part of Vista on the LS800 is that Windows Mail pins CPU to 100% frequently if you have lots of stored email. But the Windows Live Mail interface under Vista at least was terrible on the LS800s 800 x 600 display, as detailed at https://www.segal.org/tablet/live/ so it seems one will be trading one Vista bother for a worse bother under windows 7 (assuming it dropped Windows Mail).

    So it is not clear how Windows 7 is a significant improvement on small computers such as the LS800 (of blessed memory).

  14. BurningOrange

    11/10/2008 at 8:02 pm

    Just a comment: the LS800 doesn’t have a fan — which is why you never heard it… :)

    But great to see the LS800 again ! I’ve given mine to my (not so) little bro’ and am using an OQO 02 now. I hope Windows 7 will be useable on it too…

  15. Rob Bushway

    11/23/2008 at 2:42 am

    It does get warm, whether running xp or windows 7

  16. Andario

    11/23/2008 at 7:52 am

    Sweet thing! I wouldn´t mind getting one of those LS800s, since I´m a big fan of silent devices. However, I´m a little concerned about the heat thing. Could you guys tell me if it gets quite warm?
    Thanks!

  17. Andario

    11/24/2008 at 7:36 am

    That´s a pity, the device does look sweet…
    Thanks for letting me know, Rob.

  18. John Harvey

    11/25/2008 at 9:31 am

    I have a tc440 running xp tablet edt. and it runs real slow. Would installing windows 7 concuer this?

  19. gottabemobile

    11/25/2008 at 9:54 am

    John – I can only tell you what my experience has been on the LS800. I have no idea what it might do for you on the tc4400

  20. Paul Tidwell

    12/03/2008 at 11:25 am

    I have put Win7 on my LS800 as well (clean install), and it runs as well or better than the original WinXP Tablet OS. I am running 1GB memory and the speed, handwriting recognition, RAM to run other programs is better than VISTA. Since this is BETA, I was not surprised to learn that drivers for speaker, microphone and security are not available. Additionally, and disappointingly, I am unable to run AVG Anti-Virus and several other software packages with this version of Windows. Compatibility with most recent versions of these software packages is not assured. Will keep watching!

  21. Luke

    01/11/2009 at 12:50 pm

    Rob,

    I’ve been trying to install Windows 7 on my LS800, and I keep running into an error message “Windows was unable to update the boot configuration,” at which point the installation cancels. Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated (note: I have the most recent BIOS update, A15).

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