XP or Windows 7

Esqui

Definitely 7. Windows XP is a ten year old system designed for desktops, with some basic mobile computing things hastily clobbered in a few years ago. It's only still going because it's cheap and it runs on netbooks, not because it's any good on them.

If you can (cheaply), it is worth upgrading to 7 Home Premium (from Starter), but by no means essential,

Mondez

I agree with Sharkie, Windows 7 will perform poorly on this system compared to XP. XP is still supported with security updates and most software will be written to run on it until its long term support finishes (most software written still runs fine in win 2000 and that is well out of support). Just be sure to use a modern browser in it and not IE 6.

marms

Get the one with windows 7 starter edition, it'll run as fast as XP on a netbook, you won't find any cheap netbooks with more than 1Gb ram, it's a limit intel imposes on manufacturers when using the atom processor with an intel chipset, they can be upgraded to 2Gb ram maximum but as they only have 1 memory slot it'll mean buying 2Gb and taking the existing ram out.

Lifes_Grand_Plan

I have had my netbook for about 18 months now and that runs great on XP.

Haven't ever tried a netbook on Win7 so can't comment on what is better, but I would say that 1GB is fine in my netbook with XP to be doing some light multi-tasking.

Inactive

Can somebody please explain to me what significant advantages 7 has over XP?, I got stung by Vista and do not want to fall in to that trap again.

Thanks.

Sublime_2

I had win me, not xp, so can't comment apart from it was dire.

I've had vista though, and it was almost as bad as win me. Crashes, bugs, BSOD.

Upgrading to win 7 was like a breath of fresh air. Do it. I got my upgrade version off amazon for around £60.

Inactive

Sublime wrote: »

I had win me, not xp, so can't comment apart from it was dire.

I've had vista though, and it was almost as bad as win me. Crashes, bugs, BSOD.

Upgrading to win 7 was like a breath of fresh air. Do it. I got my upgrade version off amazon for around £60.

Thanks, but going back to XP from Vista was like a " breath of fresh air ".

I just need to know what are the significant improvements from XP to 7?

spud17

GunJack wrote: »

is it going to be a case of bypass W7 altogether and go straight to 8 Only time will tell.......

Much the same as many, including myself have done, XP miss Vista onto Win 7.

I've been running it exactly 12mths, Home Premium 64-bit, not a single problem.

Depends if you have to be at the cutting edge.

hansi

Sublime wrote: »

I had win me, not xp, so can't comment apart from it was dire.

I've had vista though, and it was almost as bad as win me. Crashes, bugs, BSOD.

Upgrading to win 7 was like a breath of fresh air. Do it. I got my upgrade version off amazon for around £60.

Does all your software which worked with XP work with 7?

fwor

Inactive wrote: »

Thanks, but going back to XP from Vista was like a " breath of fresh air ".

I just need to know what are the significant improvements from XP to 7?

IIRC, there aren't that many that are what I'd define as significant.

Of course, the one thing that many people appreciated most was that it's a lot better than Vista.

It also has major security improvements over XP, but that's only important if you're not capable of using XP in a secure manner, and many seem to think that the default settings are a bit intrusive.

And then there's the eye candy. Aero and similar translucent effects, plus ways to "scroll through" windows instead of using tabs.

Memory management also changed significantly, with program startup time improvements (at a cost of memory, though seemingly better optimised than Vista), and the integration of pendrive memory for use by the OS.

I'm fairly sure that touchscreen support is also present in the Win7 kernel, but not in XP.

I've probably forgotten a few things, but overall I couldn't justify getting it compared to staying with XP.

Incidentally - to the OP - I've been playing with an N130 for the last couple of days, setting it up with XP and JAWS for a visually impaired user. It's a nice little netbook with a very good screen, but I can't help thinking that its Atom processor would struggle a bit with Win7...