Discuss this week's Win7News Editors Corner here!

A topic I have spent some time exploring myself, and let me just say that Win7 has breathed new life into some old computers. Aside from upgrading all of my existing higher performance computers from Vista to 7 back in July, my old Dell XPS M170 and my girlfriends very old Dell Inspiron laptop both got the treatment. I use the XPS solely for DJ Software, Numark Cue, and I have enjoyed the extra headroom. It needed it! On the woman’s older DELL (forget the model number) the specs are little more than a netbook, with better video. I did bump up the RAM to 2 GB, and the experience has been pretty good. We will definitely have those old Dells around for a while. Same for the Aspire 1 Netbook. I hacked in a micro HD a while back an it ran Vista OK, but I definitely feel the difference with Win7. I am just not big on the form-factor of the device. Too small but nice for quick stuff. I use it as a Swiss army knife of network diag tools. BTW It is my Aspire one that has been yelling about the battery. I am happy we now know why. I never looked into it because I just don’t use the netbook that often.

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DJMik

13 months ago I purchased a HP 1030 mini NetBook from BestBuy. It came with XP/Home. Doubled the RAM to 2GB. Ran fine, but battery was limited to about 2 hours. Last October (2009) I updated the OS to Windows 7/Home Edition. Machine is just snappier. Runs faster. Battery lasts about 3 hours now. I've been very happy with the upgrade!

I've installed win 7 ultimate on a 6yr old Dell Latitude D610 with 1gb mem and 64mb video card and it runs flawlessly for basic computing on that laptop. I've also installed it on a Dell Inspiron 1501 with 1gb mem and 64 video card with no issues as well.

I'd agree with the others here. I bought a HP Pav. dv 9270 open-box about 18 months ago. It ran about 2 hours on a fully-charged battery and didn't get the best performance using Vista Home Premium. After the switch to Win7 Home-32, however, performance and battery life took a noticable jump - around 130%-160% of Vista.

Video is snappier, music is more skip-resistant and the mormal operations don't seem to 'create' as much heat. I only pull out a cooling pad for when I really put the screws to my laptop and run several tasks at once. And even then, it still stays about 3-5 deg. F cooler than it did running the same load in Vista.

That makes it worth the cost in my book - even if I was able to get in on the $49 deal.

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Win 7+Homebrewed Desktop=JOY!

I have not as yet bought a new laptop with W7. I have a problem that is growing in size - my pile of used laptops is growing. I now have around 12 laptops that have been left in the closet everytime a new laptop comes out with advanced features that I must buy. Deb....what do I do with this pile of laptops - I see you go through lots of laptops too. There is no good used market for them, you get peanuts if you sell them. I need to get rid of them before buying a new laptop with W7. Please advise in a future edition of Win7News

Its GGGRReat! I have a ACER ASPIRE 5720 which is a budget notebook bought 18 months ago. It came with Vista, but after a few weeks of very sluggish behavior, I loaded XP Pro as a dual boot at first. I simply had no need for Vista so after a while I cleaned it off. When the Win 7 Beta came out last year I did the dual boot trial and never looked back. I am now running Windows 7 Home Premium. I don't deal with any domain networks, so the home version seemed to be just fine. This machine hums beautifully without a whimper. I think it runs cooler, and faster than with XP. I am now a Win 7 evangelist. I recommend it to all my friends, family and clients.

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John Maguire

Using a 5 year old Sony Vaio VGN-A497XP with 2GB memory and a 1920*1200 screen. Worked fine with XP, slow with Vista and no problems at all with 7 Ultimate. Impressed that all necessary drivers were found and everything works just fine. Used mainly for photo editing with Photoshop CS4 and a bit of video editing. Still get about 2 hours out of battery which has been replaced once in the 5 years I've owned it which is about the same as with XP. Very impressed.

I purchased a Toshiba 17" laptop in June of 2009. Satellite L350-ST2701 with an Intel 6500 processor and the more powerful battery option. It came with Vsta Home Premium and I received the free Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade and the computer seems to run a lot faster than with Vista. However, I cannot reply to the battery issue because I almost never us it on battery power.

well I have a toshiba A105-s4350 notbook Came with WindowXP PRo
It is even stamed with VISTA Ready
I am Running 2 gigs of memory maxed out the hard drive at 298 gigs?
I went from Windows XP to WINDOWS 7 ULMITE
It is about 4 years old runs windows7 just fine but I am noticeing the screen is starting to flicker when I type So am thinking of getting a new one
the wifi is a/b/g only
and some of the key are starting to fade out
other then that It is a great laptop
everything eese runs great windows 7 runs faster and better then windows XP did
the battery only last about 2 hours
when I frist got the battery only lasted 2 1/2 hours not bad for 4 yearold PC

I've had experiences in both directions of good and bad.

My first Windows 7 installation was with the RC1 version. I installed it on a 2 year old Dell XPS 17m machine. This is my toy machine, so trying the new OS was a perfect job for it. I was running Vista on it, and really didn't expect any performance changes under Windows 7. What I found was a shock...

After installing Windows 7 RC1, I found that video drivers were available for the nVidia graphics chip in the machine directly from nVidia. Which is surprising for a beta OS in itself. Turns out ATI also had plenty of driver availability pre-Windows 7 launch too. The driver situation in whole for that laptop was terrific.

Next came the real shock. I installed and started up one of my favorite games. In the past under vista, the game would run well, but obviously worked the system hard as anything multi-tasked in the background suffered and the cooling fans would often go into their highest mode. But, under Windows 7 the game flowed much better, the system was perfectly responsive, and the fans almost never kicked into high gear. The laptop was running much smoother and cooler and quieter under Windows 7 than it ever did under Vista.

Unfortuantely, that laptop suffered from the nVidia overheating issue, and the damage was already done under Vista, so in a few months the video chip died on the machine and it ended up in the scrap heap. The replacement was a new Alienware M17x machine. I had to get a replacement quickly, so I unfortunately ordered it 30 days before the shipment of Windows 7, so it came with Vista. I didn't mind, as I like Vista and always have. But the shock of this system under Windows 7 was opposite. Upon Windows 7 release, the installation of Windows 7 was not smooth, drivers were buggy and a lot of other problems kept that machine from transitioning well.

Since then, the situation has improved on the Alienware machine under Windows 7. But, the issues I've had to deal with on the move were really upsetting. Had I the ability to do this over again, I would have waited until the hardware refresh shortly after the Windows 7 release before ordering the M17x models. Oh well...

I should also note that I've seen a change I didn't expect. I used to tell people to stay away from $500 notebooks. Since Windows 7, both the hardware and the OS have changed enough that I will recommend them now, but only if a budget is tight. There's a lot of new 15.6" notebooks with plenty of power and ability with Windows 7 to be a good home machine.

I think Windows 7 was also a large reason why some really strange machines have appeared lately. I just read about the new Alienware netbook. Alienware!!?? Yeah, they have a M11x machine now that is easily classed as a netbook, using the SU line of low power Intel CPUs, yet is so powerful it's good at hard core gaming too. Amazing!

I've been advising people to buy cheap computers, then buy a new one in two years if they feel the need.

I upgraded my laptop back when Windows 7 was first released. I went from Vista 64 business to Windows 7 Professional 64bit. The upgrade actually worked, and after a few months, I've had no reason to install clean. No issues. First upgrade I've seen work more than a week. Granted the Vista install that was on the laptop was only a month or two old.

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Ken Schneider
<br>Vice President, SHBO Technologies
<br>www.shbo-tech.com

All things considered I think Windows 7 runs quite well on your typical laptop specs. However, the jury is still out on what specs fall into the typical category (I say typical meaning modest). I considered my HP laptop a higher-end laptop about a year ago but by today's standards its just a mediocre system. Better hardware is getting cheaper at an alarming rate. What was yesterday's gaming rig is today's calculator it seems. My HP which is what I use the most never ran better once I installed Win7. It came with Vista on it and that ran OK. I never have tried XP on it but Windows 7... WOW! What a difference! I also have 2 netbooks that have Win7 and they run pretty well. Not quite as fast XP but the trade off in performance to have the new found functionality and stability in the newer OS is well worth it. Not to mention the better security. And, a BIG one for me, things just seem to work the way they should have all along.

Here's the specs of my stuff:

HP DV9000 - 4GB DDR2, AMD X2 TL-58 1.9ghz, 400 & 320 GB HD's
Asus 901 Eee-PC - 2GB DDR, Atom 1.6Ghz, 16GB SSD
Dell Mini 9 - Atom 1.6Ghz, 2GB, 32GB SSD

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Tim Gardner

ODI Consulting, Inc.




NOTE: Sunbelt MVP’s do not work for Sunbelt, they are volunteers helping out on our Forums. Thanks for being a Sunbelt customer!

Just a side note... I see no reason not to recommend that someone buying a new computer buy one with Windows 7. With one catch. Make sure you buy a system with at least Windows 7 Pro (or Ultimate) and make sure the processor supports virtualization. That way you can run Windows XP mode and have the best of both worlds. A little extra memory doesn't hurt either. Of course this is only if budget allows.

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Tim Gardner

ODI Consulting, Inc.




NOTE: Sunbelt MVP’s do not work for Sunbelt, they are volunteers helping out on our Forums. Thanks for being a Sunbelt customer!

My experience of upgrading my old Lenovo 3000 N100 (dual-core 1.83, 1GB, 60GB HDD) XP-SP3 laptop to Win 7 ultimate has been amazing. Earlier it used to take 10-12 minutes after reboot before I could start any work on it. With Win7 and same number of applications installed I am able to start work within 3-5 minutes, a big advantage to me. I suspected that with its 1GB RAM Win7 may be under performing, I doubled it and got even better results as the RAM consumption also crossed 1GB mark soon after upgrade (with no change in apps) which makes me think Win7 was trying to manage itself in the 1GB limited RAM space. Earlier I was highly considering replacing my laptop, which is not now. I feel I can carry on with my same favorite Lenovo for another 2 years, perhaps. Have started moving other older company laptops to Win7 for better overall performance against existing XPs and Vistas. Thumbs up to Microsoft for a fine OS this time.

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Anis Ahmed