Would you remove XP and install Windows 7?

gebbel

My laptop is a Dell Latitude D630, Intel Core Duo CPU, T7250 @ 2.00GHz, 3582MB of RAM. I have XP installed but could put windows 7 on it if I wanted. W7 did not cost me anything...got it off my brother.

Should I bother? I have no problem with XP and the machine performs pretty well with it. I guess I'd like to know if the machine would perform better with the upgrade.

Many thanks again.

Zascar

If you create a second partition using Partition Magic or similar, when you install Win7 it will do a dual boot very easily. Give it a go, its good, but there were a few tiny things that made me go back to XP. Over 10 years on and you still can't beat it!

techfeen

i totally agree, i have xp on my home pc and would dream of upgrading it. xp is very very reliable

omen80

I had a laptop with XP on it for about 4 years. I bought a new laptop almost a year ago with Windows 7. In my opinion XP is still King, it performs much better than Windows 7.

gbee

No. Short answer.

Would I buy a NEW laptop with Windows 7 pre-installed? Yes.

I wouldn't bother messing with a partition either ~ unless you are that type of guy who loves messing with laptops and have seven partitions and seven different OSes = :cool:

But if you're just trying to improve your existing laptop, I'm with the others and consider XP still better in that package.

demanufactured

omen80 wrote: »

I had a laptop with XP on it for about 4 years. I bought a new laptop almost a year ago with Windows 7. In my opinion XP is still King, it performs much better than Windows 7.

Have to disagree....XP is old tech nowadays...windows 7 is much better at managing how much RAM is used by apps and even by the OS

Have installed w7 on many older machines that originally had XP on them and the improvement in performance was definitely there.

Capt'n Midnight

demanufactured wrote: »

Have to disagree....XP is old tech nowadays...windows 7 is much better at managing how much RAM is used by apps and even by the OS

Have installed w7 on many older machines that originally had XP on them and the improvement in performance was definitely there.

Horses for courses. If you have a new system 7 is better , if you have an old system and XP is happy then no point in making work for yourself unless you have a specific requirement.

Perhaps I'd even say that if you have 32 Bit CPU / less than 3.2GB of RAM and you are just browsing then XP will do the job.


XP was designed to run in a low memory environment and will swap stuff out of memory into pagefile the first chance it gets. Windows 7 will try to load as much into memory as it can.

So if you have more than 768MB of RAM windows XP will be faster if you DISABLE the pagefile.

/me is annoyed that I can't find a decent EXT3 driver for 7 and the way they have moved menus and such. Also not liking the way that you have to open yet another window to see what each update is for.

Also if you are running 64 bit windows then drivers would have to figure largely in your choice of OS to use.

JonathanAnon

I'm a big fan of XP... I upgraded to Windows 7 as I work in support and needed to learn about it.... Had a few small issues with particular software that needed a bit of effort to get running on Windows 7, and an old sound card whose drivers did not work fully on Windows 7.. (I would check your hardware and software before you upgrade, if you choose to do so)

From a practical point of view, Windows 7 gives me NO benefits over XP... Windows 7 runs just as fast and stable on the same PC, so there is no downside either ... But unless you have a serious reason why you need to upgrade, I wouldnt bother..

Capt'n Midnight

JonathanAnon wrote: »

old sound card whose drivers did not work fully on Windows 7.. (I would check your hardware and software before you upgrade, if you choose to do so)

+1

if the manufacturer hasn't released an updated /signed driver you may be able to install it by pressing F8 on startup and choosing the option to install them , a vista driver might work

YMMV , especially if you have a 64 bit version of windows 7

WinOutreach4

Gebbel,
You can run the Windows 7 upgrade advisor to see if your hardware and software are compatible with Windows 7.

And for Zascar’s idea of a dual boot machine, there are instructions here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Install-more-than-one-operating-system-multiboot
This is a great way to test which OS will work faster or better on that particular laptop if you have the drive space available for the dual boot option. I did this myself when I first started using Windows 7.

David Wolters
Windows Outreach Team - IT Pro

Hank Scorpio

D630s are nice little machines, used to work with them. I find Windows 7 alot nicer than XP

Broadbander

Having an older Dell laptop (Inspiron 640M) running XP I upgraded it to 7 and it made a big difference. I would definately upgrade.