Windows 7 polled as the best netbook OS
February 17, 2010 at 12:47 pm
There are so many operating system choices when you’ve bought your new netbook. You have the usual desktop stalwarts such as Windows, OS X and Ubuntu, but there is a growing number of Linux alternatives catered to the netbook experience such as Jolicloud, Moblin and the upcoming Chrome OS.
Lifehacker has been conducting a poll over the last week, asking its readers what is the best netbook operating system. First of all they asked their readers to flag their favourite, they then rounded up the five most popular OSes and conducted a poll to find a winner.
The five chosen candidates were Windows 7, Ubuntu, Jolicloud, OS X and Linux Mint. What I find strange about this collection is that there is no Windows XP. Given that Windows XP was preinstalled on pretty much every netbook before last October, it’s strange there’s a lack of XP love. I was also surprised to not see Moblin as one of the chosen five. Over 760 replied to the original post, which seems a reasonably high number to get a wide range of votes.
The poll itself saw 13,001 votes and declared Windows 7 the clear winner with 36 percent of the vote followed by Ubuntu with 27 percent. Jolicloud and OS X both garnered 12 percent of the votes each with Linux Mint at last place with 8 percent. Do you agree with the list? We’d love to hear your favourite below.
February 17th, 2010 1:37 PM
Just as this poll is out there is news that WinXP is, to put it mildly, giving problems. Anyway, I think there is too much of XP in netbooks so folks may have opted for something different. Wonder how OS X got a slot ??
With news of XP problems galore doing the rounds, I think the only good option would be WINDOWS 7 HOME PREMIUM albeit with 2GB RAM.
Its coincidental that I just posted news XP going beserk under banner ‘Windows’ in Software Forum before this landed on the front page.
February 17th, 2010 2:16 PM
Nope that poll is total bullshit, Microsoft is having a let’s get rid of windowsXP and get people to upgrade to windows 7. Last weeks XP updates proves this. Microsoft’s very same updates crippled most windows XP OS, we certainly had problems in our company. The funny part about it is that the government let’s them get away with this non-sense and we the people follow right along.
We as consumers should not let a company dictate what we get to purchase we should be telling them and that poll is totally bogus, LifeWacker is starting to suck more and more on a daily basis. It is so bad I once had to write to the writer or an OS review for Ubuntu Karmic(9.10). This was due to the fact that only negative reviews / responses were showing for the article and even after I wrote to them about it, it took them 3 days to change that. So to me some how LifeWacker is very fishy when it comes to being unbiased in their reporting.
February 17th, 2010 3:50 PM
@spartan2276:
One can never rule out MS itself getting rid of XP – a credible conspiracy theory. Its quite easy to make a big deal about a rootkit and then say nothing can be fixed. Shameful if true.
Something’s definitely fishy. This is enough for new netbook buyers to select Win7 automatically even if XP is still available. As for me am gonna keep my ‘automatic updates’ off for the time being. Am sure this will happen regularly till XP is stomped out !
Win7 will be the obvious choice – one doesn’t need a poll for that. Its a crappy one !!
February 18th, 2010 3:38 AM
I find it strange that the headline says “Windows 7 polled as the best netbook OS” when it gets 36% of the vote.
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to write: “Ubuntu polled as the best netbook OS” when it (and its barely tweaked spinoffs Jolicloud and Mint) get 47%.
February 18th, 2010 12:38 PM
With ARM based smartbooks being touted as the next growth sub-segment within the netbook space, Linux versions may well get the bigger share. Come 2011 Linux OS may just start overtaking Windows. Android is joining the fray too !!