I guess plenty of people here owns a netbook. What do you do to make it run as best as you'd like it to be? I hope this topic can be a collection of nice tips, aside from the other usual ones found elsewhere.

1. I got Windows 7 Starter for my netbook. The limitations are ridiculous, can't even change the wallpaper. What I did was doing a loophole of a free upgrade to the Ultimate version using my netbook's company brand OEM key.

2. I like the fancy aero graphics so I don't disable it. The netbook still runs well and lasts long enough.

3. Next up is free-ing the taskbar space. There are two things I did, the first is getting StartKiller. It removes the big (ugly) start button but you still can call up the start menu with the Win key. The second is making all the taskbar items show the program's icons only, something like a dock program. There is no "Never combine, hide labels" option so you'll have to hack it yourself.

4. Security + low CPU usage: I use the free Microsoft Security Essentials for virus/spyware. For the firewall, I use Windows Firewall with Advanced Security - I set the rule to block all outbound connections and manually make exceptions one by one for the programs I need to use.



5. Free-ing browser space: There is the Personal Menu addon while hiding the menu bar. Quietube is to watch youtube without all the distraction. Readability makes it comfortable on the eyes for long articles/pages/ebooks .