I installed Windows 7 today

[Hokiefyd]

After going back and forth and back and forth over what to do with my computer, I decided that if I didn't at least install Windows 7 on my current desktop, that I was only cheating myself, and potentially spending some money that I didn't need to spend on more hardware. So I have Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on it now.

I must say, I'm impressed with it so far. I took about an hour to install it and it went 100% smooth. I didn't have to choose any drivers to install or tell it what I had. It sensed everything and it just did it. After it started for the first time, it found the 64-bit driver for my Canon Pixma AIO printer online and installed that on its own. First thing I did was install IE9 and the whole thing just seems extremely fast and light. It's not boggy like Vista was. I'll say that so far, it seems even as spritely as XP MCE.

My next move, if I do make one, may be trying some additional RAM, now that I have a 64-bit OS and could take advantage of it. Otherwise, even this older AMD Athlon x2 processor seems to handle the system well. At least as well as when it was running XP.

I'm a happy camper with 7 so far.

 

[MysticGold04]

I actually took it off of my laptop. I found that once I got it running the way I wanted, it seemed to slow down. Just me, but I took it off and re-installed Mint 11. Don't get me wrong, Win7 is a huge improvement over Vista, but actually I've had to dig some older Athlon dual-cores back out at work to use because of budgets, etc and Vista SP2 is what we run. These systems run okay with 2GB of ram.. (they would run better on 7)

 

[Bill in Utah]

I'm running it on my Netbook (Lenovo x120E) and one of the desktops (home brew quad-core Intel i5) with excellent results. Daughter has it on her desktop (AMD dual core 5200+) and laptop (Lenovo Intel duo-core) with same results.

Win XP pro on the other 2 desktops in the house and sticking with that since they are working. If I had to reload the OS I'd think hard about upgrading them to win 7.

I like it overall.

Bill

 

[wkcars]

I like Win 7 alot, definitely much better than vista.

Check out this article if you haven't seen it on upgrading options http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/component-upgrade-ssd,2730.html

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

the biggest performance upgrade to my AMD Athlon2 5200+ system was using an SSD drive.

I bought an Intel 80GB earlier this year, man oh man, it FLIES! I really can't believe a yester-year CPU runs this fast. I'm very happy with it. No slowness at all using MSSE, but I don't run Norton, McAFee, etc. SO many of these awful programs slow a machine down. Don't run them, there are far better alternatives out there.

Acronis True Image made the process easy to clone from the old disk to the SSD drive.

 

[mechtech2]

Hokie-
Get more RAM, like you surmised.

 

[HTSS_TR]

Hokie, How much did you pay for Windows 7 Professional 64-bit ?

My 2 laptops, Dell Inspiron 1300 and Vostro 100, are running with Window XP 32-bit, I wonder if Windows 7 Professional 64-bit will be faster ?

Both machines have 2-Gig Ram and Intel Celeron-M processor.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: wkcars
I like Win 7 alot, definitely much better than vista.

Check out this article if you haven't seen it on upgrading options http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/component-upgrade-ssd,2730.html


Interesting, thanks for the link. They think the SSD is the way to go for mainstream users.

 

[bdcardinal]

I just did the switch and the only hiccup is getting iTunes to work. I cant repair the install, can't uninstall and can't reinstall.

 

[Hokiefyd]

I believe it was installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and when it restarted, it said there was a fatal error and it sat there hung. So I rebooted and it asked me if I wanted to repair, so I chose that. It said it couldn't repair, and told me to contact my computer administrator. So I turned it off and back on and started Windows normally and all seems fine now.

Weird.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
I believe it was installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and when it restarted, it said there was a fatal error and it sat there hung. So I rebooted and it asked me if I wanted to repair, so I chose that. It said it couldn't repair, and told me to contact my computer administrator. So I turned it off and back on and started Windows normally and all seems fine now.

Weird.


By the way, I did find the MS KB article with a patch for this problem. It looks like it's not uncommon.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2533552

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: bdcardinal
I just did the switch and the only hiccup is getting iTunes to work. I cant repair the install, can't uninstall and can't reinstall.


This month I've had to hand-peck installations off two Win7 computers, one, a brand new install, the other, my wife's PC. Both iTunes 10.4.x.

I have the full instructions on my friend's computer that I documented for him, I'll ask him to email it to me so I can post it here, 2 registry settings, then a manual de-install of iTunes did the trick.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
the biggest performance upgrade to my AMD Athlon2 5200+ system was using an SSD drive.

I bought an Intel 80GB earlier this year, man oh man, it FLIES! I really can't believe a yester-year CPU runs this fast. I'm very happy with it. No slowness at all using MSSE, but I don't run Norton, McAFee, etc. SO many of these awful programs slow a machine down. Don't run them, there are far better alternatives out there.

Acronis True Image made the process easy to clone from the old disk to the SSD drive.


I agree. My Intel quad core i5 has a SSD for the c drive and 2 gig for the other drives. The boot time and pretty well anything else is really improved with the SSD. 4 gig for the ram here.

 

[stephen9666]

I have a few year old AMD dual core with 4 gigs of ram. I recently upgraded to Win 7 from XP. I was also surprised how fast it is, even with the same old hardware setup I had before. Booting, shutdown and sleep/wake all seem quicker than XP.

I bought a legit copy from Newegg for $95.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
My next move, if I do make one, may be trying some additional RAM, now that I have a 64-bit OS and could take advantage of it.

How much RAM does it presently have?

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Bottom_Feeder
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
My next move, if I do make one, may be trying some additional RAM, now that I have a 64-bit OS and could take advantage of it.

How much RAM does it presently have?


It has 4 GB, which is the maximum according to the Dell product information. But some with my same hardware report that 8 GB does work.

 

[rjundi]

I find Windows 7(wife's decent $600 laptop with 6GB ram) so much more productive when I am working. Its so much easier to move around between apps(usually have 8 apps opens at once and 15 windows). I love that shake the window and they all minimize or go back.

That being said still running Windows XP Pro since I don't dare touch my work notebook. It all works and quite well with 4GB ram(3 GB accessible though) and a 7200RPM drive.

 

[jigen]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: Bottom_Feeder
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
My next move, if I do make one, may be trying some additional RAM, now that I have a 64-bit OS and could take advantage of it.

How much RAM does it presently have?


It has 4 GB, which is the maximum according to the Dell product information. But some with my same hardware report that 8 GB does work.


I am 95% sure that only Windows 7 Ultimate will allow anything over 3.25GB of RAM. Any other version will let you put more than that but it will only read 3.25GB.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
It has 4 GB, which is the maximum according to the Dell product information. But some with my same hardware report that 8 GB does work.

Unless you are doing a lot of multitasking, 4gb is the sweet spot for Win7 64-bit. For general use, you probably wouldn't notice it if it had more.

That said, DDR3 memory is ridiculously cheap nowadays so maxing out a system just to future-proof it a bit is probably worth it.

And with THAT said, your system probably uses DDR2 which isn't so cheap, hence my 4gb recommendation.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Originally Posted By: jigen
I am 95% sure that only Windows 7 Ultimate will allow anything over 3.25GB of RAM. Any other version will let you put more than that but it will only read 3.25GB.

You're thinking of most 32-bit Windows operating systems. 64-bit versions will not have that limitation.