NB9457 Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 I imagine this is going to be a bit of a taboo subject, but at a school I've been asked to rebuild a load of Samsung NB30 netbooks (Atom Dual core, 1GB RAM, Win7 Starter). As it is at the moment, the last IT company who set these up left 7 Starter on and a few basic Apps, no network access or anything and they incredibly slow. Now the school can't afford at the moment to replace nor upgrade these netbooks for the time being, which leads me to my following question; XP or 7 Pro x32? I understand very well that XP should be dead and buried and all my other schools are now at least on 7, but I'm wondering here if I should make an exception? I know the Netbooks will run well on XP, they'll run Office 2010, provide access to Scratch and to the web, literally all they need to use them for. Am I crazy for thinking of using XP or is it somewhat logical? Any advice, help, hat and abuse welcomed!
Quackers Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 I would say 7 because its still supported, but i do understand that XP will run much better on them, and more than likely actually make them usable. If you were to go down the XP route i would make sure you don't use Internet Explorer, also use Windows Steady State so they go back to clean when rebooted if you use disk protection. Also if possible VLAN them off from the rest of your network so if they do get a nasty worm its only place out is back on the internet.
LeMarchand Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 (edited) Do you have a volume license agreement? Might be worth seeing how they run on 8 or 10. We're considering using Porteus on our old Atom netbooks (thanks @Geoff) and looked at CloudReady but couldn't get it working. The biggest problem would be educating staff. Edited January 20, 2016 by LeMarchand Typo
jmak Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 Windows 10 Seriously, it runs faster than Windows 7 on all the hardware I've tried. Otherwise what about a lightweight Linux distro (Mint seems to be popular atm) with MS Office Web Apps - which has the advantage of doing the Office "heavy lifting" on MS' servers, not your dying clients.
NB9457 Posted January 20, 2016 Author Posted January 20, 2016 Windows 10 Seriously, it runs faster than Windows 7 on all the hardware I've tried. Otherwise what about a lightweight Linux distro (Mint seems to be popular atm) with MS Office Web Apps - which has the advantage of doing the Office "heavy lifting" on MS' servers, not your dying clients. Forgot to mention it's a primary, so as basic Linux is, it'd be a chore teaching the children and staff around it. Also no O365 here, as to why though I've no idea, I'll be finding out! I know we are licensed for 7 and XP, not sure about 10 to be honest, could be worth a test build to see how they perform!
bald_pig Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 We have NC10's running 7 Pro 32bit with classic theme and some other tweaks, they run brilliantly!
Norphy Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 I wouldn't put anything that runs XP onto the web any more. They're not updating IE on it and it, Firefox has already been EOLed and Chrome will be by the end of April. To be honest, I'd be tempted to try and restore them to factory settings. You definitely don't want them on your domain; I've made this mistake with netbooks of a similar spec before and Windows Starter Ed. is that little bit lighter than Pro and would probably run a bit better on them. I think that clearing out the cruft is probably about the best you can expect from them.
NB9457 Posted January 20, 2016 Author Posted January 20, 2016 We have NC10's running 7 Pro 32bit with classic theme and some other tweaks, they run brilliantly! 1GB OR 2GB RAM? At another school I had a basic stripped down build, aero off, core apps only and a couple of other bits, ran great but they had 2GB RAM and it makes a hell of a difference
jmak Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 If you have a windows 7 licence your licenced for 10. In place upgrade or clean install once you've downloaded it from the Microsoft "create media" website. 1
LeMarchand Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 Forgot to mention it's a primary, so as basic Linux is, it'd be a chore teaching the children and staff around it. Also no O365 here, as to why though I've no idea, I'll be finding out! I know we are licensed for 7 and XP, not sure about 10 to be honest, could be worth a test build to see how they perform! It's a primary here, too. Porteus Kiosk Edition literally boots to a browser and that's it. Not a popular choice, but I've found the kids understand the 8.1 Start Menu much better than the staff if 10 is a bust.
bald_pig Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 1GB OR 2GB RAM? At another school I had a basic stripped down build, aero off, core apps only and a couple of other bits, ran great but they had 2GB RAM and it makes a hell of a difference Mixture of both IIRC
Norphy Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 You could try putting Chromium OS onto them. The NB30 seems to be reasonably well supported by that.
Norphy Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 (edited) Try For Individuals — Neverware Looks nice but the problem with that is the "For individuals" part. Looks like schools have to pay. What about windows 7 thinPC? Again, a problem with licensing. You can only use it if you have SA iirc and even then, you can only use it for remote desktop sessions. Using it as a full fat desktop isn't allowed. Edited January 20, 2016 by Norphy
LeMarchand Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 Looks nice but the problem with that is the "For individuals" part. Looks like schools have to pay. IIRC you only need to pay if you want to use/control them like Chromebooks. If you don't need that, it seems OK. I couldn't get Flash loaded when I tried it, hence the Porteus Kiosk suggestion.
CyberNerd Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 1GB OR 2GB RAM? At another school I had a basic stripped down build, aero off, core apps only and a couple of other bits, ran great but they had 2GB RAM and it makes a hell of a difference Our NC10's ran terribly with 2GB ram, we spent ages stripping win7 to bare bones, fitting SSD's and it was still awful. Eventually we installed Neverware and they run perfectly.
NB9457 Posted January 20, 2016 Author Posted January 20, 2016 As I'm a noob with GAFE and Chrome OS, is there anyway to authentic through AD or present their home drives?
CyberNerd Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 (edited) As I'm a noob with GAFE and Chrome OS, is there anyway to authentic through AD or present their home drives? Authenticate through AD: definitely. Home drives are more difficult - we moved ours to Google. edit: you could try this but I think it's still in it's early stages: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/file-system-for-windows/mfhnnfciefdpolbelmfkpmhhmlkehbdf Edited January 20, 2016 by CyberNerd
HTCPCP Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 Our remaining nc110s all run 7 pro x86, and while not blisteringly fast, in fact painfully slow even with a ram upgrade, they do the job they are wanted for. If you can, I would look into 10 for them, as the nb30s have touch screens don't they?
Guru42 Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 If you have a windows 7 licence your licenced for 10. In place upgrade or clean install once you've downloaded it from the Microsoft "create media" website. Good answer! So far this method has worked well for me! I've been pleasantly surprised with Win 10, so far no major issues that I can see for very basic use as you describe.
jmak Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 Good answer! So far this method has worked well for me! I've been pleasantly surprised with Win 10, so far no major issues that I can see for very basic use as you describe. Except that I've used the wrong form of you're and now that you've quoted it, it's stuck there forever! [emoji15] Glad it was helpful. [emoji3]
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