light version of Windows 7

[Whitie III]

there are lots of editions of windows 7 both avalible only to the consumer/company and only to companies (7 home premium, embedded standerd 7, Windows thin pc, Windows 7 Pro, Windows 7 Starter, ect.) but which one is truly the lightest?

Windows XP is lighter then windows 7 but it's old and I want to get away from it....  I want to find an edition of windows 7 that would make a netbook or any older laptop work well... would only really use it for the internet and not much more

I don't really want to deal with Linux, please don't suggest that!

[DaveLembke]

Windows 7 Starter Edition is what came with most lightweight Netbooks with Intel Atom CPU's about 6 years ago. I decided 6 years ago to buy my Toshiba Netbook with Windows XP Home because I knew that XP would run well on a lightweight dual-core at 1.66Ghz and only 1GB of DDR2-667Mhz memory. My concern with Windows 7 Starter and only 1GB RAM was that 1GB was going to be a bottleneck. Later I upgraded to 2GB RAM after I was given a dead laptop that had 2 x 2GB DDR2 667Mhz sticks in it and I swapped out the 1GB for a 2GB stick which is maximum supported in the single RAM slot that the netbook has. I have been tempted to upgrade to 7, but I have heard from others that Windows 7 Home Premium of which I use to have an available unused license key available for from the 3 license package I bought I was told was going to crawl on a Intel Atom 1.66Ghz CPU. So I left mine at Windows XP Home and SP3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

[camerongray]

Starter is the lightest but is not available on the retail market - It can only be found pre-installed on machines.  All the other editions will be around the same.  Realistically you don't need THAT much for Windows 7 to run reasonably well, for basic web browsing you would be okay with 2gb of RAM.  Embeded Standard and ThinPC are also not available on the retail market and are not designed to be used as general purpose OSs.

What you do need to consider however is the cost of the upgrade - This will likely be around $100 which would often be not far off the cost of a much more powerful, used Windows 7 laptop.

[Whitie III]

my netbook never had the option of coming with Windows 7 Starter, it only came with Windows 7 Home Premium and was about $700 when it was new.... I got it for $200 and was wondering how could I make it run at it's fastest? I disabled all visual themes, set walpaper to solid color and set performance to best for performance. what elce could I do? I also don't have any programs, exept for Google Chrome and I have absolutly no files on the computer.

[camerongray]

What machine is this?  What spec is it?

[Geek-9pm]

my netbook never had the option of coming with Windows 7 Starter, it only came with Windows 7 Home Premium and was about $700 when it was new.... I got it for $200 and was wondering how could I make it run at it's fastest? I disabled all visual themes, set wallpaper to solid color and set performance to best for performance. what else could I do? I also don't have any programs, exept for Google Chrome and I have absolutely no files on the computer.

You may be going the wrong way. There is no easy way to make it faster other than two areas. First is more memory, which is limited in the 32 bit  version. Second is the use of a Solid State Drive  alongside the regular drive. But your Net book already has a SSD?

[BC_Programmer]

Usually when a system is slow like you appear to be observing it has a lot more to do with applications running in the background than with the Operating System itself.

[Whitie III]

What machine is this?  What spec is it?

it is an HP Mini 210-1099se and has an atom N450 @ 1.67 GHz maxed out with 2 GB of ram from factory and a 250 GB HHD (stock config)

You may be going the wrong way. There is no easy way to make it faster other than two areas. First is more memory, which is limited in the 32 bit  version. Second is the use of a Solid State Drive  alongside the regular drive. But your Net book already has a SSD?

it supports a max of 2gb and no it has the original 250 GB HDD still.... may go with 120GB SSD... any suggestions on a cheep SSD

Usually when a system is slow like you appear to be observing it has a lot more to do with applications running in the background than with the Operating System itself.

the only program installed is Google Chrome and not a single file on the computer

[Geek-9pm]

In the first post  you  said:

... I want to get away from it....  I want to find an edition of windows 7 that would make a net-book or any older laptop work well... would only really use it for the internet and not much more

You have a HP Mini 210-1099se with an Intel Atom CPU.
Most customers seem to be be happy with it.

What Internet applications seem to be slow? Are your trying to watch HD movies over Internet? If so, a better OS will not help.  It may be a limit yoour ISP puts on the bandwidth.
Another issue is the video drivers.
Do you use the correct drivers for you HP Net Book?
Just trying to help. 

[Whitie III]

In the first post  you  said:
You have a HP Mini 210-1099se with an Intel Atom CPU.
Most customers seem to be be happy with it.

What Internet applications seem to be slow? Are your trying to watch HD movies over Internet? If so, a better OS will not help.  It may be a limit yoour ISP puts on the bandwidth.
Another issue is the video drivers.
Do you use the correct drivers for you HP Net Book?
Just trying to help. 

still running the factory build so the computer so is running like it come out of the box exept for the removal of some factory adware and addition of google chrome... don't even watch hd on my other computers... I think this computer has the best keyboard though... maybe the new ssd i got on it's way will speed it up a little plus make it run a slight bit cooler as i think this netbook has a 5400 RPM drive and not a 7200 RPM hdd for longer battery life as they probably would claim

[Fran49]

   Hi. I'm new here but I've found that a cooling pad w/fan keeps my hot-running Acer mini pretty cool. Just a suggestion.

[Computer_Commando]

still running the factory build so the computer so is running like it come out of the box exept for the removal of some factory adware and addition of google chrome... don't even watch hd on my other computers... I think this computer has the best keyboard though... maybe the new ssd i got on it's way will speed it up a little plus make it run a slight bit cooler as i think this netbook has a 5400 RPM drive and not a 7200 RPM hdd for longer battery life as they probably would claim

SSD will help speed things up.  Since it came with Win7, it's eligible for free upgrade to Win10 due to be released on 7/29/15.