One way would be to purchase an external DVD-ROM drive, but that’s not really necessary.  If your netbook supports booting from USB (hint: most do) and you have a 4GB or larger USB drive laying around, you can use that instead.

Requirements for Installing Windows 7 from a USB Drive

1. 4GB USB drive (or larger)
2. Windows 7 install DVD
3. Another computer with a DVD-ROM drive

Netbook Requirements

1. 16GB hard drive (preferably larger, as this is the minimum requirement for Windows 7, 32-bit)
2. 1GB memory (although 2GB makes for a much smoother experience)
3. Check out Microsoft’s Windows 7 + netbooks page to verify additional requirements

Installation

Formatting the USB drive

The first thing you should do is format the USB drive that you’re going to use for the Windows 7 installation.  (Note that this will erase all of the data off your USB drive.)  To do this, open up a command prompt on your alternate computer:

• Press [Windows] + R
• Type cmd
• Press [Enter]

Once the command prompt opens, launch the disk partitioner:

• Type diskpart
• Press [Enter]

After a moment or two, you should see a separate window come up with a DISKPART> prompt.

• Type list disk
• Look for your USB drive in the list;  A 4GB drive should have just under 4,000MB of space
• Type select disk #, where # is the disk number of your USB drive from the list above
• Type clean
• Type create primary partition
• Type select partition 1
• Type active
• Type format fs=fat32
• Type assign

Please make sure that you select the correct disk number, as you will not be prompted to confirm your selection.  Do not continue with the steps above if you are unsure of which disk is your USB drive.

If all goes well, you can close the command prompt.

Copying Install Files

The next step is to copy the Windows 7 installation disk files to the USB drive.

• Insert your Windows 7 DVD
• Open the DVD up to view the files using Windows Explorer
• Select all of the files on the DVD
• Press [CTRL] + [C] to copy the files
• Open the USB flash drive using Windows Explorer
• Press [CTRL] + [V] to paste the files

Once the transfer is complete, you’ll be ready to install Windows 7 on your netbook.

Installing Windows 7

This part should be very painless — much like a normal Windows install.

• Ensure that your netbook is turned off
• Insert the USB drive into any of the available slots on your netbook
• Turn the netbook on
• When prompted, press the appropriate key(s) to access the boot menu (this will vary depending on your system; Dell Inspiron Mini 9 users will hit the zero key)
• Select USB from the boot menu
• The netbook should begin to load the Windows installer
• Once the installer is loaded, continue as you would with any other Windows installation

As with any operating system install, make sure that you’ve backed up everything you might need from the old OS prior to installing Windows 7.  You’ll most likely want to delete all existing partitions and create a single large one to install Windows on.  If all goes well, you’ll be up and running with Windows 7 on your netbook in about an hour.

Notes about Windows 7 on Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbooks

As for performance, Windows 7 runs really well on my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with 2GB of memory.  I haven’t run into any hardware issues yet, although I haven’t had much of a chance to test everything out thoroughly.  So far, I can confirm that the following things work fine out of the box (i.e. no manual driver installs or tweaks):

• Display
• Sound
• Wifi
• Memory card reader
• Webcam
• Logitech USB wireless mouse

In terms of disk space, my Mini has a 64GB SSD and, after installing Windows 7, I have about 48GB free.

Could the system perform faster?  Perhaps, but for a netbook running latest operating system from Microsoft, I think it performs extremely well.  As good as, if not better, than the original Ubuntu installation that it came with.

• [Win] + [Up] – Maximize the current window
• [Win] + [Down] – Restore a maximized window, otherwise minimize it
• [Win] + [Left] – Snap the window to the left side of the screen
• [Win] + [Right] – Snap the window to the right side of the screen
• [Win] + [Home] – Minimize all except the current window
• [Win] + [Space] – Temporarily make all windows transparent
• [Win] + [P] – Change the display setting
• [Win] + [T] – Move forward through items on the taskbar
• [Win] + [Shift] + [T] – Move backwards through items on the taskbar
• [Win] + [1 - 9] – Launch or switch to the respective taskbar item (if already open)

If you have multiple screen setup (i.e. dual monitors), these will be helpful:

• [Win] + [Shift] + [Left] – Move window to the monitor on the left
• [Win] + [Shift] + [Right] – Move window to the monitor on the right

And, similar to the OS X zoom effect, you can zoom in and out using [Win] + [+] and [Win] + [-]  respectively.

For reference, here are some of the other useful Windows key shortcuts that have been around in earlier version of Windows:

• [Win] + [D] – Show / Hide the desktop
• [Win] + [E] – Launch Windows Explorer
• [Win] + [F] – Open up a search window
• [Win] + [L] – Lock the computer
• [Win] + [M] – Minimize all windows
• [Win] + [R] – Show the Run dialog
• [Win] + [Pause] – Launch the System Properties window

If there are other useful Windows shortcuts that you find useful, post them in the comments.