craigm1841

I have been having trouble with vista since the day i bought my laptop. I plan on buying a Mac Pro around the holidays, in hopes that it will be the last computer I buy for 5 or 6 years. In the mean time my dell inspiron 9400 feels as if it is at its end and i attribute a lot of that to vista. It seems no matter how often i update drivers, do windows updates, update software, the computer is barely capable of running any program successfully without a fight.

I want to download the RC for windows 7. I am in the process of copying all of my files over to my 500GB external hardrive. My question is: will windows 7 run better then vista, or should I go back to XP?

my computer is a dell ispiron 9400
intel core 2 T7400 2.16GHz processor with 2 GB ram.

I am currently running 32 bit vista with SP1.

what would you reccomend? will all of my programs work with windows 7?

I do have a legit version of xp laying around somewhere, but i saw windows 7 in bestbuy the other day and it looked pretty.

thanks.

ImolaRedM

Win7 is years ahead of Vista in terms of stability despite being a newer OS. Will all your programs work in Win7? They should but it's hard to say especially without knowing what you run. Also, keep in mind that if you download the RC (if it's still available for DL) you'll need to upgrade to the final version so you may be better off waiting another month for the release or going with XP now. If you have access to TechNet and can get the RTM version of Win7 then that's another story all together.

craigm1841

i dont know what the RTM version is. the RC is still available and i can use it until march, when i would have to purchase i license, which i would probably do.

craigm1841

i am thinkin' XP now... i have a legit clean copy of XP i bought a few years ago, but i cant find the CD. can i use the restore disc from another Dell PC i have? the computer i have came with Vista, I have an old desktop with XP and a good restore disc...

amanuel777

Restore CDs suck. The come packaged with drivers for the exact pc that they came with and also contain all sorts of other useless crap. Very likely won't work. Just get 7 and don't worry about it.

ENstig8or

I'm running a dual-boot setup on my desktop computer with Vista 64 and Win 7 64. I have not had any issues with Windows 7 at all. All of my programs run on it without any issues. If you experience any problems at all, it would be with driver support. Not all vendors have released drivers for Win 7 to the public yet, but many Vista drivers will work on Win 7 as well.

When the final version of Win 7 is released in October, it will also have what they call XP mode. If you were to encounter any older software that didn't perform well on the new OS, you can run it in XP mode.

craigm1841

thanks all. i am downloading win7 32 now.

craigm1841

thanks all. i am downloading win7 32 now.

ImolaRedM

Not all PCs have the hardware to enable XP mode. Your CPU has to support virtualization.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/913...rc=news_ts_head

On the other hand, there is also a compatibility mode in Win7 for older programs.

zen68

Stick with XP for now since you only have 2GB of RAM plus Window 7 is still beta. Why would you want to be a guinea pig for Microsoft?

By the way, I'm not really an IT guy. I just know enough to be dangerous