Last year I blogged about the Lenovo S10e that I bought to test Windows 7. I ran the netbook with Mac OS X for a while but the Hackintosh is no more. Today, the new Akamai download links for “top downloads” delivered the Windows 7 RTM bits to me in just over an hour (my first attempt direct from TechNet had slowed to a crawl overnight) and I installed Windows 7 Ultimate Edition on my netbook in about 15-20 minutes, although I didn’t actually time it.

Ultimate? Yes, Starter is too restrictive (no multi-monitor support – e.g. when presenting), I want to join a domain (so I need at least Professional), and it’s a mobile device, so I intend to use features like BitLocker (for which Ultimate or Enterprise Edition is required) – incidentally, the information I used for the Windows 7 feature comparison is on Dan Delaney’s blog (although it’s slightly out of date as the 3-app restriction on Starter edition was dropped a whole back). Of course, getting a free copy from Microsoft is always a bonus!

Installation was smooth, fast, and uneventful – as the best installs should be. Only one device was banged out in Device Manager – ACPI\VPC2004, which turns out to be a Lenovo Energy Management Driver, for which the Vista driver for the Lenovo IdeaPad Y710 can be used.

One thing that made me chuckle as I installed this was my DVD drive. This was a bargain picked up a few months ago (and unused until today) but is bigger than the netbook I was installing onto (it has an external power supply too that’s not even shown in the picture!).

I could have installed Windows from an external hard drive or USB flash drive but, even with tools to assist with USB boot drive creation, DVD was the fastest route.

Next up, I’ll try upgrading the x64 notebook that I use for work (I know it’s not supported, but I have to try it!) before I nuke that next week and apply an image using the Microsoft Deployment toolkit. I’m sure I have better things to be doing but playing with technology is far more fun.