Is it worth upgrading to win7?

wazza

donny-gal wrote: »

I followed the "slow pc" sticky, on mine, upgraded the ram, and a bigger HDD, certainly made a big difference. DG

The laptop is sometimes slow in starting up/shutting down and/or also slow in accessing the account. It is not a regular problem and is bearable. Have pencilled inover xmas to sort out the laptop.

Mondez

I am going to disent agains the common opinion that Win7 is much better than Vista, it isn't. It is a little bit better in a few areas, but Vista with SP2 is fine, Windows 7 is just a slight evolution over it. IMO peoples opinions between vista and 7 are formed because of the poor launch and word of mouth where drivers weren't available or working properly for a lot of common hardware and most systems came with a lot less ram than vista really needed to perform well (and that 7 also needs). Skip forward a few years and most people have upgraded their systems a bit and the upgrade to windows 7 goes fine since hardware manufacturers have got their act together on drivers as well since 7 uses the same architecture as vista. The difference is more perception that actual real world performance. Still if you can get a cheap upgrade, there is no reason not to, but I wouldn't pay more than £30 for the privelege if that. This site is all about saving money and avoiding unnessesary spends afterall

victor2

The biggest complaint about Vista is its performance. It can be tuned to run reasonably well if you have the skill and time to do so.
I ran standard installs of XP, Vista and Windows 7 on the same hardware. XP and Windows 7 took almost the same amount of time to get started into a usable state or shutdown. Vista took about 3 times as long and was still doing jobs in the background when it finally could be used, which made it slow to respond. The interface on Windows 7 was a refreshing step up from XP, otherwise I would have stuck with XP.
For an older machine, I'd stick with XP. If you've got the power to run Windows 7, I'd go with that. My disk with Vista on it is in the cupboard somewhere.

[Deleted User]

Mondez, I agree. Poorly configured machines by so-called "powerusers" will always run poorly but it is easy to point the finger and blame someone else for the lack of your own skills. Welcome to the internet!


Victor, did you do any investigation into the causes of the startup and shutdown delays? For what more anecdote-based experiences are worth, I diagnosed and rectified my own shutdown issues in about half an hour solely through the tools and configuration options available within Windows recently. Unsurprisingly the culprit was third-party software..


In relation to the OPs situation, it would be worth backing up your documents and doing a clean reinstallation of Vista making sure the latest drivers and updates are installed and choosing security software to compliment the security within the operating system rather than to completely take it over. You may find yourself somewhat surprised at the difference in comparison to the performance of a system maintained poorly for a number of years.

victor2

anewhope wrote: »

Victor, did you do any investigation into the causes of the startup and shutdown delays? For what more anecdote-based experiences are worth, I diagnosed and rectified my own shutdown issues in about half an hour solely through the tools and configuration options available within Windows recently. Unsurprisingly the culprit was third-party software..

I had Vista on a new machine from its early days as an OEM system. Tried various performance enhancing tweaks as they came out but was always disappointed that I had a much more powerful machine than my previous XP one, with less performance. Fortunately Windows 7 came out in time to replace Vista. Given that even Microsoft acknowledged that Vista was "less good", I went with the flow and concentrated on using Windows 7.

TheFlyingGerbil

I'd probably do a clean install of vista, with as few extras installed as possible. What condition is your 3 year old laptop in? Mine are usually on their last legs (or more likely long gone!) by then so I wouldn't really want to spend money on them. If it is in good nick then I'd probably rather spend the money on a bit of extra RAM instead of a new OS.

wazza

Thanks for the replies. Have done a compatibility check and the laptop passed.

After reading the above posts i have decided that i will reinstall vista ona a clean drive and see how it performs then. If it is working faster then i will stick with it and probably wait for wins8.

The laptop is in good condition apart from a dead battery.