To windows 7 or not to windows 7... ???

oss

Just wondering would there be much of a performance advantage or disadvantage if I upgraded to windows 7 pro or ultimate.

I'd be using it on a Compaq laptop with windows vista home premium, AMD Athlon dual core 1.7ghz, 1gb RAM and 120 gb hardrive. I know it meets the min spec required but figured ye good people might be more in the know.

I dont have much hardrive space left and was wondering will it require much space. It says it needs 16gb and apparently vista needs 15 gb so does that mean it'll only require 1 extra gig?

Basically I really want to get it but if its gonna take up a load of space and slow my computer down then its not gonna be worth it.

Any advice?

VaPz

As far as i know, it IS faster and does not slow your computer down anymore than vista. Thus i reckon it'd be fine to upgrade, even better since 7 > vista.
However, be careful of the Device incompatibilities, As its fairly new out.
Hope i answered your questions.

-VaPz

oss

Thanks VaPz

any more info welcome

Alanstrainor

If you were going to buy anything, buy more RAM, running vista or 7 on 1Gb is asking for trouble. Both need 2Gb minimum to run smoothly, they will "run" on 1Gb of RAM but, they wont run well.

Overheal

Raw performance, it has yet to surpass Vista. Framerate benchmarks still show XP taking most of the trophys by a couple fps. but its early days and typically by the first Service Pack things always get faster. Vista is already at the point where its beating XP in some benchmarks.

However in terms of UI performance - performing repetitive tasks - it is significantly quicker than XP and a fair bit quicker than Vista. UI Tweaks like Aero Peek and ever more Start Bar improvements continue to slash the time it takes to load up programs and such. For instance if you look at the Start bar at your 10 most recently accessed programs, Win7 now has Options beside certain programs: If steam is pinned to the Start menu it has its own Sub Menu where you can directly load your Games List without the need to look at the steam game menu (though you still need steam running) and set your online status (Away Busy etc) And Antivirus programs have their own sidemenus here as well to quickly launch system scans, etc.



Though in fairness, 120gb is not really a great amount of space (its about average) You can get some cheap SATA drives these days if you want to pop one into a spare slot your PC no doubt has.

Or if youre buy-happy I could reccomend Western Digital's MyBook World edition NAS drive. Or a Linksys Media N-Router. I love gizmos.

Alanstrainor wrote: »

If you were going to buy anything, buy more RAM, running vista or 7 on 1Gb is asking for trouble. Both need 2Gb minimum to run smoothly, they will "run" on 1Gb of RAM but, they wont run well.

Windows 7 runs much better on netbooks reportedly. The assumption being it handles memory better than even Vista did (which imo did it way better than XP did... sue me)

Not that 2gb is a bad thing. Memory prices are steadily rising. The trend being Very High -> Low -> High, Historically. Try shopping around for SDRAM and see what I mean. Get 2gb sticks now or wait for 4gb sticks to come down in price.

Biggins

Alanstrainor wrote: »

If you were going to buy anything, buy more RAM, running vista or 7 on 1Gb is asking for trouble. Both need 2Gb minimum to run smoothly, they will "run" on 1Gb of RAM but, they wont run well.

I have put Win 7 (Ultimate versions) on TWO machines that have had just 520mb of ram - and both have worked fine, smooth and fast.
Vista wouldn't get off the starting blocks with that amount of RAM but Win 7 ?

I have no problem in saying that its more streamlined, better coded, and able for lower specs.
I would suggest also you install new "Microsoft Security Essentials" as an anti-virus/spyware/malware tool.
Free and exceptionally good, its far less resource demanding than the likes of Nortons and co!

itisyeah

I have a Dell XPS M1530, 4FB RAM, that came loaded with Vista.
Ive been dual booting with XP the last year and a half, I rarely booted up Vista on it coz its such a psice of crap of an OS.

Yesterday I installed Win 7 64-Bit over Vista on the C: partition and I have been blown away by it.
Its got the look and feel of Vista with the speed of XP.
I highly recommend Windows 7 64 Bit as an OS.

Overheal

Biggins wrote: »

I have put Win 7 (Ultimate versions) on TWO machines that have had just 520mb of ram - and both have worked fine, smooth and fast.
Vista wouldn't get off the starting blocks with that amount of RAM but Win 7 ?

I have no problem in saying that its more streamlined, better coded, and able for lower specs.
I would suggest also you install new "Microsoft Security Essentials" as an anti-virus/spyware/malware tool.
Free and exceptionally good, its far less resource demanding than the likes of Nortons and co!

Ill wait till CNet gets their hands on that. Its Microsoft, which means its priority one for the malware crowd.

somuj

Biggins wrote: »

I would suggest also you install new "Microsoft Security Essentials" as an anti-virus/spyware/malware tool.
Free and exceptionally good, its far less resource demanding than the likes of Nortons and co!

I like the way that it changes the OS settings with out asking permission

Capt'n Midnight

Apply the speedups for VISTA first, because the default settings are painfully slow
near the end of http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=47979 This will get you most of the way there.


Some people consider Windows 7 to be a big service pack for windows vista, in much the same way that windows 98 was a big service pack for 95 with IE thrown in.


If your laptop is a few years old or was an entry level model then lookup the price of your Laptop second hand , add the price of Windows 7 and then compare that to the price of a new entry level laptop with Windows 7 preinstalled (or buy a vista one and get the free upgrade). The price difference will include a years warranty, and probably a larger HDD too, not to mention it may be faster.

Microsoft often claim that every new version of windows was the fastest ever.


No software can catch up with Moore's Law, The cost of processing information using machines has very roughly halved every two years. This trend has been going on since at least 1890 when the US census was done with punched cards. Today one of the main limiting factors is the power used and heat given off by multiple chips. Then again ARM processors more powerful than any laptop sold with windows 95 are able to run for a week in the average mobile phone.

AfterDusk

I (finally) got the Windows 7 upgrade for my Dell Inspirion 1545 this morning and all I can say is, wow! The difference is immense. Like the OP, I was worried that 7 would be slower, because Vista didn't work so smoothly on it.

But for one example, a trip to the Task Manager will show the difference. Vista used to hog all but 20-30 MB of my 3GB RAM, but 7 leaves me with 1GB. I'd highly recommend it, and I'm even thinking of buying it for my desktop now too.

Voodu Child

To be honest, if you are looking at spending money, the first thing I would do is increase your ram. I'd do that before even thinking about Win7, because you havent given Vista a fair chance with such a paltry amount of ram. 1GB just isnt enough for Vista. It is possibly enough for Win7, but tbh with RAM prices the way they are I think you'd be mad to have any less than 2GB with a modern computer.

neil2304 wrote: »

But for one example, a trip to the Task Manager will show the difference. Vista used to hog all but 20-30 MB of my 3GB RAM, but 7 leaves me with 1GB.

This is a common misunderstanding. The actual OS itself probably wasnt using more than 800 or 900MB. And your apps another few hundred. The rest of the RAM was being used by Superfetch - a service that preloads commonly used apps etc into RAM for faster access if and when they are needed. The idea being that ram sat there doing nothing is a wasted resource.

Win7 does the same. But the behaviour of its Superfetch is a little smarter and less aggressive.