Windows 7 on a Netbook? Absolutely.

I have been using Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (Release To Manufacturing) on my ASUS 900HA netbook for about a week now. I must say, I'm impressed.

The specs of my netbook are modest - Intel Atom 1.6 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics - but Windows 7 seems to run better on my netbook than Windows XP did overall.

Some things I've noticed:

- The battery lasts longer. Noticeably longer. And this is without even messing with the default power management settings. I bet if I did, I could get even longer battery life.

- Aero works beautifully.

- Thanks to Windows prefetch, the programs I use on a regular basis load much faster than they would have on XP.

- Multi-tasking has improved, thanks to the enhanced multi-core and HT usage of Windows 7.

- Boot time is surprisingly fast

Thus far, I see no reasons to want to reload XP. Which begs the question: why all this talk over the need to load netbooks with Windows 7 Starter Edition? It must be purely for financial reasons - why would manufacturers pay for Win 7 Ultimate when Starter will be just fine for their netbooks? That's the only reason I can think of, because as far as I can tell, my little netbook can handle Windows 7 Ultimate just fine.