Most of the netbooks in the class, at the time we purchased this (September 2009), came with XP; Vista needs too much memory and processor speed. But the text-to-speech voice in Vista and Windows 7 is much better than those in XP, and we needed that quality. The vendor said Windows 7 (the Release Candidate was out at that time) worked, although they weren’t shipping it yet. So soon after arrival I shrank the XP partition and installed Windows 7, keeping a dual-boot setup in case the Windows 7 didn’t work. I had an Ultimate 32-bit DVD handy, or else I would have tried one of the home versions. Pretty much everything worked right off. Drivers for Windows 7 were non-existent and those for Vista were hard to find. I did find one for the touchpad that installed easily and enabled the scrolling area of the touch pad. I also found Windows 7 drivers for the 945GSE chipset on the Intel site, but still had trouble making the computer go to sleep (or stay asleep) when closing the lid. After installing Vista "TouchKit" drivers for the screen, and turning off "Device can wakeup computer" for the PS/2 "mouse" that really is the touch screen pointing device, the computer would finally stay in sleep mode when the lid is closed. But it won't wake up just by opening the lid; the power-on button must be used.

After some fussing, I was able to get the webcam to work. The quality was no better, or worse, than under XP. It might be ok for something like Skype.

There were still some unknown USB devices listed in the Device Manager, but the computer was doing everything we needed so I ignored these. It would be interesting to see a version with Windows 7 Starter Edition installed by the reseller to see if these mysterious USB devices are working.

Pen input is amazingly good with the Windows 7 Pen Input Panel. The processor keeps up with the handwriting recognition and there is very little delay in the ink appearing as the stylus is moved. A couple months later one of the resellers assembled drivers for Windows 7. I will install these and see if some of the unknown USB devices are identified.

The 1GB of memory is adequate for our use (one application at a time). It would be interesting to see if another GB would make bootup a little faster, but so far I've been unable to figure out how to open it to see if there is a free DIMM slot. There are no visible screws or snap-out panels on the bottom. Here's where a lack of online technical information may be frustrating for some users. (Recenlty a person from Mirus answered the question and I'll be taking a peek to see if I have a DIMM that will fit.)

Conclusions

We are very happy with this little Tablet PC. After nearly daily use for 5 months, it still looks as good as new. The pivot hinge, often a weak link in convertible tablets, is still tight and stable. The speakers are not quite loud enough for our application, but at this point in our son’s program it is more important that he learn to point at the right pictures rather than hear the computer generated speech. I would not recommend this computer with the patched-up version of XP it was shipped with when we bought it. As of this writing, one reseller, Mirus Innovations, does offer the option of Windows 7 Starter Edition instead of XP for an additional $27.61. That is well worth the cost.

Chris Sacksteder is a systems developer for THE Pennsylvania State University, and lives in Pennsylvania Furnace, PA with his wife and two "remarkable" children. He likes any gadget that goes "beep" or glows in the dark.

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