OT- should i upgrade to windows 7? [Archive] - Sawmill Creek Woodworking Community

Bryan Morgan

12-20-2010, 5:42 PM

Depends on your hardware and what you are trying to achieve. Simply "having the latest" isn't really a good reason to upgrade your OS if what you have already works fine. You might just make things worse for yourself. Want to play the latest games and need DX10/11/12 support? How old is the hardware you already have? Does it have 64 bit capability? Are you trying to use more than 3 gigs of RAM? If you are going to be forking over some cash for an OS it might behoove you to just buy a new machine with Windows 7 already on it.

Windows 7 is pretty good but isn't without its faults of course. I hate Windows in general (I'm a *nix type guy) but in all honesty I think 7 is just about the best desktop OS MS has put out. I would definitely recommend it but not if you have an older XP machine that works fine.

Steve knight

12-21-2010, 12:25 AM

it will most likely if you have enough memory make your computer a fair amount faster. I was surprised when I put it on my computer that my mac replaced. the computer was a new machine and far smoother.

Jerome Stanek

12-21-2010, 6:24 AM

Remember If you have older scanners and printers they may not work with Windows 7 I have an HP laserjet color all in one and there is no driver for the scanner I have to run Virtual machine to use my scanner

Jim Becker

12-21-2010, 9:31 AM

If your hardware will support it, by all means, Win7 is a pleasure. I run the 64 bit version on my circa 2007 Dell system and have been very pleased. I did upgrade the video processor to a more current high performance card, but otherwise, my 4gb Intel Core Duo system "sings" with Win7 64 bit installed. No crashing like I experienced with Vista, either.

Oh, I did have a non-compatible scanner as Jerome mentions, but I was due for a printer upgrade anyway and purchased one that included that capability.

Ken Fitzgerald

12-21-2010, 10:02 AM

IMHO....Windows 7 is as stable or more stable the Xp was but I bought a new machine that came with Windows 7. I was expecting to have to replace most of my auxiliary devices like scanner, printer etc. I simply replaced one photographic printer my wife uses. The normal printer and scanner all had downloadable drivers for Windows 7.

Windows 7 has been a good experience so far.

Matt Meiser

12-21-2010, 10:11 AM

My 2007-era Dell work laptop runs it nicely too. Unfortunately it isn't 64 bit hardware so I had to stick with the 32 bit version. I also upgraded to 4GB of memory (knowing it can only see 3.2) even though Dell says the max is 2 and the combination made a nice performance improvement over XP with 2GB. My shop PC, another Dell from about 2006 which is 64-bit runs it nicely too. That one has 4GB in it as well since it was our only machine that had a port for capturing video off our old firewire digital camcorder. Even my little Acer netbook runs it nicely on 2GB of RAM.

Our home HP laptop has Vista with no issues so I haven't gone through the hassle of upgrading, though I will when LOML jr buys it from us and we get a new one. (Note: never tell your kid they can have a laptop when they can save $300 to buy yours. Christmas, birthdays, etc add up too quick! She may well hit it by Saturday. :eek:)

We had to replace our 2003-vintage HP AIO printer. It was time anyway and there are a lot of advantages to the new ones.

There's an upgrade advisor you can download and run that will tell you about hardware and software compatibility. Supposedly Vista->Win7 is an easy upgrade but on the one I ran it on there are several apps that have to be uninstalled and reinstalled per the advisor. If you have XP, I've heard you should do a fresh install which is what I've done.

Michael James

12-21-2010, 8:47 PM

Not a puter pro here, but I do a lot of audio recording and I SWORE I would never leave win98. The digital world started to pass me by very quickly and I was unable to take advantage of the new technology which is relatively affordable. If it's my $$, the question is: What do I use the computer for? If you just use it for Email. surfing the web and word processing, any ol system will work. If you do labor intensive work with digital files you better move up. I was nervous, so I waited for a while so both Microsoft could get some bugs out and Protools could get caught up. No probems like my wife had with Vista. Good luck!
mj

Greg Peterson

12-21-2010, 10:52 PM

What deficiency are you expecting to address with the OS upgrade?

Susan Mattix

12-24-2010, 10:47 AM

Chuck Wintle

12-24-2010, 10:53 AM

not a computer expert but I think a lot depends on how much resources Windows 7 needs and how much you have on your current machine running XP. When my husband bought his new Sony lap top a few years ago, it came with XP but Vista was about to come out and Best Buy was going to send him the premium version of Vista, as soon as it came out, if he bought this Sony. He did buy it. Then I started to hear just how much memory and hard drive space one needed just to run Vista...no way could his Sony have supported that program. The unopened disc for Vista, is still laying around here somewhere.... So, before I would upgrade to Windows 7, I'd be finding out if you have enough memory and hard drive space to even support it..... might not be worth the hassle.

upgrading to something new just for the sake of it can lead to problems especially when one realizes the new OS is not much better...only packaged differently. I tried Win 7 and came away with the feeling MS was not offering anything terribly new or different...just a similar OS in a new clothing. What has caught my attention is the latest version of Ubuntu...now if i could only get all of my rpograms to run in it...

Susan Mattix

12-24-2010, 11:45 AM

I'm actually trying to get hubby to leave Windows behind too... I went to a Mac earlier this year due to safety concerns. I do online banking and manage his mom's, my parent's and our own accounts, that's 3 different banks, online. I am the most paranoid person on earth when it came to online safety. Never clicked on links sent to me by email, never opened attachments unless someone emailed me or called me ahead of time to tell me they were sending photos or something....always kept my antivirus and anti spyware up to date religiously...and still got a very nasty virus that my computer guy couldn't fix without wiping the drive. At that point, I was finished with Windows. Too much at stake. The old pc is what the grandkids play on now.....and I do go into the guest room and play on it....I miss the windows versions of freecell and spider solitaire...
but for the most part, I love the Mac. It's not really all that different from a PC as far as the basic stuff. Hubby's laptop isn't long for this world and I hope he'll go with a mac book next time around.

Curt Harms

12-25-2010, 8:34 AM

Like Chuck says, the newer versions of Ubuntu work pretty well. I haven't booted Windows in months. The biggest hassle aside from "It won't run Internet Explorer,etc. etc." is hardware support, especially WiFi. However if you want to play with it, it'll run from a CD or USB key without touching your hard drive. You can determine how your hardware is supported via the live install. I find Gnome-the default desktop in Ubuntu-more intuitive than Windows. There are things the live version won't do, like store cookies, remember passwords and such. When you reboot, everything from that session is gone. If you're really paranoid, that can be a good thing. I've included a link to Unetbootin which creates bootable USB drives. It'll run on 4 Gb., 8 Gb is plenty. There is a way to make a USB drive persistent or not meaning stuff will be stored or not. I don't know how to do that. I find the USB version nearly as fast as running off a hard drive. Did I mention there's no cost, activation or restrictions on use? And no viruses or malware "in the wild" that I know of. The only sorta tricky thing is you have to set your machine to boot from a USB port before booting from the hard drive. This is done in the BIOS. If there's no bootable device plugged into a USB port, it'll boot from the next device on the list e.g. hard drive.

Here's the USB key creator:

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Here are sources for Ubuntu downloads:

http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Fair warning: This can become a huge time sink ;).

John Coloccia

12-25-2010, 8:41 AM

re: upgrades
As a general rule, the answer to "Should I upgrade?" is nearly always, "No". The only reason to upgrade is to fix a problem that you need to have fixed OR because there are wizbang features in the new version that you just can't live without. If you're generally happy, I wouldn't upgrade as it can be a hassle when things go wrong. In addition, computers have gotten so cheap that upgrading the OS is becoming a poor value. For $400, you can buy a whole new computer.

Paul Ryan

12-25-2010, 1:07 PM

If you're running Vista.... yes you should. If you're running XP.... if it's not broke, don't fix it.

-kg

I agree with Kevin and others. If your system was running Vista most definatly upgrade. If the machine ran Vista it will run windows 7 better. But if it is an XP machine you will probably need to add extra RAM minimum 2gb. Most XP machines have 1gb tops. Ram is cheap though. I primarly use 3 computers at home. 2 laptops and 1 desktop. The I upgraded one laptop from vista to 7 and could not be happeir. The other laptop came with 7. The desktop is an XP machine and I still dont mind that OS. I think XP was microsoft's best mainstream OS to this point but 7 is close. Vista and Millennium can go in the same trash bin.

Greg Peterson

12-25-2010, 1:33 PM

While the Mac OS is solid and secure, it is by no means any more secure than a properly configured Windows OS. The biggest advantage the Mac OS has over Windows is its relative obscurity. Mac's can be exploited just as easily as Windows. It simply has not been economically viable for the Russian mob. Expect this dynamic to change as Apple becomes a more dominant platform.

As for Win7, there are things about the interface I like and things that drive me nuts. I find the file management on Win7 to be counterintuitive to everything I knew before (Linux, Win 3.11, 95,98, 2000, XP, NT 4.0, Windows Server.....).

paul cottingham

12-25-2010, 1:44 PM

Not really true, the difference is in the OS architecture, and how it handles security. FreeBSD is much more secure from the ground up than windows can ever be.

Curt Harms

12-26-2010, 8:38 AM

I recall reading about a "cracking contest" a few years ago. The targets were OSX, Vista(at the time) and Linux. OSX was the first to fall not because of any flaws in the OS but because of an unpatched exploit in either Flash or Java, I don't recall which. Vista was next and Linux wasn't cracked in the time alloted. The point being security is dependent on more than just the platform.

Darius Ferlas

12-26-2010, 9:34 AM

Another happy user of Win7 here but I didn't have to pay full price for the upgrade licenses. Although the actual benchmarks show Win7 is a touch slower on the same hardware than XP, the lowliest machine I am running it on is an old Dell (1.83GHz with 2MB of RAM) and it feels as fast as XP. In some aspects it is actually faster. While speed is king in computers it is not a deal breaker or maker if the speed differences are negligible. Win7 is a much more polished OS with a massive amount of extra goodies such as hardware support, enhancements, better security etc.
I have upgraded about 30 computers so far and still about that many to go.

If I were to pay the full price then, as suggested before, I'd opt for a new machine with the OS installed. If you still decide to go for it, make sure that your system supports a 64 bit OS and that you can throw more than 4GB of RAM at it. Otherwise I'd stick to 32bit.

Bill Huber

12-26-2010, 11:21 AM

I get ask this question all the time at work, most of the time its by people that have an older PC that will just meet minimum specs for the new OS.

My reply is well just buy a new computer, you can get a really good PC now days for under $500 and by the time you buy Windows 7, get upgraded memory and a new hard drive its just as cheap.

With a new computer you get all new hardware and the latest OS and it will have a warranty.

With that said, like has been stated if you are running Vista, I would upgrade. I was running the 64 bit version of Vista and upgraded to Windows 7 and could see a lot of difference in the way the computer preformed.

I also have an XP box because I have some scanners that are not supported by anything higher then XP, so make sure your external hardware will be supported but a new OS.

Bryan Morgan

12-26-2010, 11:11 PM

Not really true, the difference is in the OS architecture, and how it handles security. FreeBSD is much more secure from the ground up than windows can ever be.

Well, other than those backdoors the FBI put in and are now public knowledge that I'm sure hackers will now be extra motivated to exploit. ;)

paul cottingham

12-27-2010, 1:43 AM

Ahh, you are thinking of openbsd, I think. FreeBSD has maintained it's purity.:-)

But seriously, open source kernals are hard to hide backdoors in. Everyone can, and does pore over the source code looking for backdoors.

Burt Alcantara

12-28-2010, 5:17 PM

I built a new machine i7-920 (not OC) to run Sony Vegas. I've been away from Windows for over 3 years preferring Linux but had to switch because there are no decent video editors for Linux (that I could afford). So far, no crashes and no issues. I keep the system locked down pretty tightly and don't subscribe to anything so I avoid computer diseases. I'm using W7 Pro because I will eventually go to 24GB RAM when the prices come down.

Thumbs up for Windows 7 64bit.

paul cottingham

12-28-2010, 6:29 PM

24GB ought to be enough ram, but barely.

Bryan Morgan

12-28-2010, 6:53 PM

24GB ought to be enough ram, but barely.

Yeah, it will be ok to play solitaire and maybe check your email but I dunno.... The cool kids all have more than 100 GB of RAM these days...

:)

paul cottingham

12-28-2010, 8:53 PM

Smeggin windows. I've seen Linux run in 1K of memory.

Ok, not quite, but still......

Rick Gibson

12-29-2010, 12:40 AM

If you are running XP and it's working fine don't bother. If you have more than 1 PC to upgrade get the family pack upgrade. Available from Microsoft store for $149 in Canada $199. Will let you install it on 3 systems. I have it on 2 of mine now and just getting ready to install it on my wife's. I have a laptop about 5 years old and 256Mb memory less than the minimum 1Gb and it is running significantly faster than XP was.

It calls itself and upgrade but it is not an in place upgrade. It checks to see if you have a valid XP product first then installs itself, you will have to re-install all your programs and data. Some software you use now may not run on 7 for example my FTP sofware would not run with 7 although the software manufacturer has an upgrade I can buy for $60. I found some free stuff that works fine. I had print formatting software I used all the time. Won't work with 7, still haven't found a replacement. Also no drivers available for the audio input on my intel mother board sound card. Replaced it with a card I saved from my last computer, works fine.

It's a hassle upgrading, I was 3 days before I was more or less happy and I almost know what I am doing.
If you are running firefox or thunderbird before you start hunt down a file called MozBackup. Learn how to use it. It will do a seamless backup and reinstall of all your browser info and email stuff. Wish I had found it years ago.

Matt Meiser

12-29-2010, 8:13 AM

"Upgrade" refers to the license type, not what the CD will do. They sell you an upgrade for a discount because you've already paid for a previous version. Its best to do a completely fresh install. On an important computer, I like to do that by buying a new drive (they are pretty inexpensive any more) and installing on the new drive. Then I can easily pull files off the old drive with no worries that I forgot something, or even pop the old drive back in and boot it up on the old OS.

When we went to Vista was when I found a few incompatible packages. Most important was Cutlist Plus because I had to pay for an upgrade. All the others were free/open source stuff I just had to re-download.

Jeffrey Makiel

12-29-2010, 2:04 PM

If you have older 32-bit software (that may have been expensive and does everything you need of it), it may not run properly on Windows 7 64-bit. Windows 7 does have a 'compatibility mode' for older software, but I've found it to not work very well. Microsoft also offers a patch OS that runs ontop of Windows 7 to run older software, but it's generally not available for typical home versions of Windows 7.

Even in this thread, I hear mention of folks replacing peripherals so they would be compatible with Windows 7 64bit operating system. If the older peripherals are running fine, then that's a shame because it seems unnecessary.

In my experience, Windows XP is functionally the same as Windows 7 except for the forced software obsolescence issue and the excessive folder creation annoyance. That is, I click an icon, launch an application, and use it. I've been doing that for 15 years. What am I missing?

-Jeff :)

Chuck Wintle

01-02-2011, 1:23 PM

I just ordered a copy of Win7 Pro 64 bit and should have it this week.

Darius Ferlas

01-02-2011, 2:40 PM

If you have older 32-bit software (that may have been expensive and does everything you need of it), it may not run properly on Windows 7 64-bit. Windows 7 does have a 'compatibility mode' for older software, but I've found it to not work very well. Microsoft also offers a patch OS that runs ontop of Windows 7 to run older software, but it's generally not available for typical home versions of Windows 7.
There are some free choices proven to work well for those who need to run a bunch of operating system. I have been using VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) for some time. It does all I need. Here is a sample of a Linux host with Windows 7 running as guest. Other host-guest options are available.

With a 64bit Win7 host, WinXP with 1GB of RAM assigned to is pretty snappy.

Curt Harms

01-03-2011, 7:47 AM

What am I missing?

-Jeff :)

it's not what you're missing, it's what Microsoft is mi$$ing. Let's hope Windows7 has less security issues. We have to remember that XP's bones are similar to WinNT/Win2K but XP has 'surgical enhancements':). WinNT was developed long before cybercrime was a growth industry so XP's default was to do anything with anybody including running self destructive programs. You can upgrade a 14" bandsaw with every aftermarket gadget known but that 14" bandsaw will never become a 20" Agazanni. Let's hope Windows7 is like a 20" Agazanni. On the other hand, if a 14" bandsaw does what you need it to do what's the point of upgrading? Eventually you won't be able to get parts (updates)for the 14" bandsaw (XP) which as of now is April 2014.

Ron Natalie

01-03-2011, 9:24 AM

I'm a professional software developer for Windows platforms. Frankly, my preferred OS is XP64. I'd not upgrade from XP to Windows 7 at this point, it's still got issues. As pointed out Vista was a disaster and Windows 7 is a tremendous improvement. We even claim we don't support Vista with our stuff.