When i bought my amilo li 1705 last year in May , it had windows vista home basic on it and it was awful .So owful that i wasn't even able to watch movies on it without lag ,so i decided to install windows XP --I was pleased ..it worked great ..i was even able to run Need for Speed most wanted on it (with some lag of course ...) but two weeks ago , my windows xp was starting to act up and a few days later i saw the e-mail from Microsoft about the new windows 7 RC (build 7100 ) so i thought i will give it a try .My laptop specs were 2 gb of hynx ram (667 mhz) , 120 gb hard drive , Intel t2060 CPU dual core(1,6 ghz) . I downloaded the windows 7 rc 7100 .iso file , i burned it with Nero 6 at a speed of 8x and i rebooted my laptop .The instalation was smooth ;I did a clean install (it didn't ask for a cd-key during the setup , you have to activate the windows copy after installation by right clicking on "computer" , click properties and select activate , then enter the cd-key ) , the installation took like 30 minutes .After the first boot , windows 7 will load some drivers that were not meant for this laptop (With the default drivers +the updated drivers from windows update the laptop will crash often , the wifi will be unstable and the sound will not work on the headphones jack , also the acpi drivers weren't the right ones ) so i started searching for the best ones .It took me almost a week to fine tweak the drivers and now my amilo works better than it worked in windows XP ! I will put a link with the drivers at the end of this post (you will have to manually click on each component and click on update driver ..then point windows to the correct driver folder). After all the drivers were installed i noticed an increase in performance , for example
-the wifi range was 10 meters larger and also its bandwith was preety good
-the graphics performance was almost stunning in comparation with windows xp ..i can now run need for speed most wanted at a constant 20-25 fps at lowest settings + windows aero works like a treat !
-The sound quality was better
-the battery lasted for longer ..i now get about 1 hour-1 hour and 5 minutes out of this laptop
-as program compatibility –windows 7 rules over windows vista ; I as a GSM specialist use alot of phone unlocking , flashing application and i had alot of them not working in vista sp1 ..with windows 7 ..no problems at all !!
+many more little things ..but i encountered a small problem : after a while , the sound card will mute itself and you will have to slightly move the sound bar from windows mixer to unmute the sound.
The bottom line : Windows 7 is by far much better than vista on this laptop and also very good in comparance with windows xp , its way easyer to use than windows vista and also its very useful : Windows media player 12 now its better than Winamp at sound quality and also on resources needs ,you now have an inbuilt iso burning engiene so no need for power iso anymore (or nero ) and many many more .Oh and one more thing , after installation , windows 7 comes with a watermark telling you that it is for testing etc ..i got rid of it using this application : http://rapidshare.com/files/244427023/R ... ermark.exe
The applications that i have installed and working (some running in compatibility mode ) are :
-Mozilla Firefox 3
-Itunes
-Yahoo messenger 9
-Winamp 5
-Microsoft office 2007
-Yahoo Widgets
-uTorrent
-Windows Media Player Classic
-VLC media player
-Avira Antivirus
-CPUID
-Daemon Tools Lite
-Foxit Reader
-DriverScanner
-TeamViewer 4
-TuneUp Utilities 2009
-Vampix Wap Tunneling Software
-Phoenix –Nokia Service Software
-FixTunes
-UFS Suite
-Nspro software
and a few more ...
Windows will boot and ready to work in 40 seconds(My start-up programs are yahoo Widgets, Avira Antivirus ,Unlocker and Yahoo Messenger ).It uses almost 450 mb of ram in idle with all theese applications running and the sp-u will be 0-7 % in idle .The scores Windows Experience Index gave me are:
CPU-3,9
RAM-4,2
Video performance for Aero-2,0 (lowest score )
Video performance for games – 3,0
HDD-5,1
I don;t know what else is to tell about Windows 7 running on Amilo Li 1705 but GREAT JOB MICROSOFT – This time you got it right !
Here is the link to the drivers for Amilo Li 1705 running Windows 7 (the drivers will work just fine for vista too ) : http://rapidshare.com/files/244422094/W ... I_1705.zip
Thanks for reading and please give me a thumbs up if you found this post useful .