Vista to Win8 - Worth it on a dog?

[TWINSET]

I've got the wife's 'old' laptop as a media player in the garage, and it's currently running Vista

It's painfully slow and clunky, would upgrading to 8 be worth it?

The laptop's only about 3 years old, was a reasonable spec at the time, but just wondering if Vista is a pig of an OS or the laptop's the problem.

It's the only machine we have with Vista, so I've nothing else to judge it by, but compared to my 10 year old 'gamer' XP machine and 3 '7' PCs, it's just plain nasty

[IBIFTKH]

What RAM has it got? Vista has a reputation for being a RAM hog. The min requirements for 7 and 8 are quite high too, though allegedly they use RAM more efficiently. But a RAM upgrade may be your first step, might even save you the cost and hassle of changing OS.

[alfagta]

What RAM has it got? Vista has a reputation for being a RAM hog. The min requirements for 7 and 8 are quite high too, though allegedly they use RAM more efficiently. But a RAM upgrade may be your first step, might even save you the cost and hassle of changing OS.

agreed, my old lappy with vista on runs great if i do a complete re-install but within a week its sluggish and clunky again, seems fine running win7 though , also run 7 on my new laptop and its been fine ,so far! , i did try 8 on the old lappy and was ok but no real improvement speed wise over 7, just a new face afaic,

[TWINSET]

I've not got the discs to do a re-install, only whatever 'recovery' options came with it - pretty sure I had to burn a couple of DVDs at some point - sound likely?

I'll check the specs tonight and post 'em up...

[matman]

Win 7 is so much better , Vista < You might as well put a gun to it & pull the trigger . I have removed

Vista off so meany computers it's not funny & put on win 7 .

This is why vista didn't stay long & they got win 7 out so fast . Mr M

Knew it had a problem .

[TA-Mark]

If it's only got 1GB of RAM and a single core processor, then you're probably better off with WinXP Pro in it.

This 6 year old laptop I'm typing on here is 2GB of RAM, 7200rpm HDD and a Duo Core 2.33Ghz CPU and it was terrible on Vista, a bit too sluggish to be comfortable on Win 7 (and it run hot with both OS's), but on WinXP Pro it runs really good.

[TWINSET]

Quick Q about upgrades; If I buy MS Win 8 Upgrade, does that then free up the licence for the OS that was upgraded?

I have a PC running Win7 for instance - If I upgrade that to Win 8 can I then install that 'redundant' Win7 (I bought the OS outright to build the PC) on another machine?

[beefmuffin]

andy - windows 7 will perform far better than vista on an older machine, and about as well as XP speed-wise but with far better features. i still haven't tried 8 but i haven't heard anything about it being a need-to-upgrade thing. most of what i've heard about 8 is that it's hard to work with but you can modify settings to get a normal desktop back. if the benefit is really just a slick shortcuts and gadgets home screen then i'll stick with 7 for a while personally.

[beefmuffin]

Quick Q about upgrades; If I buy MS Win 8 Upgrade, does that then free up the licence for the OS that was upgraded?

I have a PC running Win7 for instance - If I upgrade that to Win 8 can I then install that 'redundant' Win7 (I bought the OS outright to build the PC) on another machine?

i think you are allowed 3 activations of windows 7 before you get any kind resistance. and they tend to loosen the restrictions once a new OS is out.

[TWINSET]

Cheers Ben

Win8's only an option because the upgrade's so cheap at the minute (£44), I don't really like that Metro interface so I'll be working hard to turn that off

Here's the specs;

[TA-Mark]

Acer website say it's suitable for Win 7. All drivers are contained within Win 7. Only need to look at the 64bit versions if you have more than 4GB of RAM.

http://www.acer.co.uk/ac/en/GB/content/drivers

[Gruntfuggly]

Why not ditch Windows and go for Linux?

<steps back from flames>

[hammerstien]

nout wrong with linux used it for a few years but on win7 ultimate at mo

[yogi-bear]

I second linux. Ubuntu is what I am running on a tv server, but it comes with a lot of stuff for general computer work and is pretty easy to install these days. Plus its free!

[alfagta]

Cheers Ben

Win8's only an option because the upgrade's so cheap at the minute (£44), I don't really like that Metro interface so I'll be working hard to turn that off

Here's the specs;

you can re-install from a partition on the hard drive with acer, just type restore in the search bar at the bottom of the windows start menu and choose default set from the list , takes about 30 mins for it to do its thing but it will at least give you a faster lappy and remove all the junk that vista collects while you decide which OS to go for,

[TWINSET]

Cheers Alfagta, anythng that speeds it up would be excellent - timed it last night and it took just over seven minutes to be useable from pressing the power button, then another three minutes to start playing a video from HDD

I've had a play with Linux on a tower before and didn't really get on with it - does it fully support stuff like wi-fi dongles etc - as that was one thing I could never get to work

[Gruntfuggly]

How long ago did you try it? I think support for that sort of thing is much improved these days...

[TWINSET]

Probably about a year ago, was Ubuntu about then?

I got a working desktop but as soon as I tried to get 'peripherals' working it all went pearshaped and I re-installed XP

With the laptop, my main concern is whether all the built-in stuff like Wifi and touchpad would work properly from the off

[TWINSET]

just done some searching and pretty sure it was "Natty Narwhal" I ended up with, if that makes any odds

[djmcnz]

The specs for that PC are fine for Win 7 or 8, both of which will perform substantially better than Vista. If you don't like the Metro interface you're better off sticking with Win 7 or you're in for a whole bunch of compromises. At the very least get a copy of 8 with a downgrade license (to 7) included although these aren't available for all upgrades.

Quick Q about upgrades; If I buy MS Win 8 Upgrade, does that then free up the licence for the OS that was upgraded?

I have a PC running Win7 for instance - If I upgrade that to Win 8 can I then install that 'redundant' Win7 (I bought the OS outright to build the PC) on another machine?

If you brought the OS outright and it was not an upgrade then you have a transferable license. However if you got a retail upgrade pack then the transferability terms of your previous version will apply.

Enforcement is an entirely different matter. Microsoft never seemed to care how many times I reactivated my license (even by phone) for different hardware, they always just asked if I had it installed on one computer only.

[TWINSET]

Cheers

The 8 upgrade's cheaper than the 7 for some reason, although I can get a system builder version of 7 for 50% more than an upgrade version of 8

Looks like it's gonna be Win8 in the garage

It'll give me some time to come to terms with (or learn to hate) Metro before the new mini-tower arrives...

[beefmuffin]

ubuntu is actually pretty good these days - i tend to run it on my really low spec machines since it's even lighter than win7. although there are plenty of limitations in terms of programs, sites and services you can use. canonical have put together their own content store similar to itunes to try to address these difficulties but i wouldn't recommend it. that said if you already have the MP3's you want ubuntu could run fine - you can always buy music from amazon.com, and you can dual boot it with windows once windows is set up to try it out. they even have linux/ubuntu variants that run within a virtual partition in windows (no actual disk partition, instead of booting up to the ubuntu install disc just open it in windows and run install or wubi or whatever is there) and also on bootable thumb drives, etc. but given you only need like 2-3GB for ubuntu (though i'd give it 5GB personally) you can't go wrong with a true dual boot setup...it also gives you a way to access the system if windows 'does something nasty' in the bed as happens fairly often. heck, you could also turn it into a hackintosh if you want easily enough. i've done that to a few machines, but in the end it wasn't worth maintaining since ubuntu is just about as good for basic browsing, etc.

yadda yadda yadda you'd almost think there are nerds frequenting this board.

[TWINSET]

It's more for movie playing although I've found a good site for live TV streaming too, so it'd need web access and whatever's needed to handle the live feed.

I've ordered up an 8 upgrade pack now, I don't have the patience or the inclination to learn summat new

Should be up and running tomorrow...

[TWINSET]

Upgrade started at 12:32..

All done @ 13:04

12:32 CD in - some updates needed downloading, so process may have been slowed by our lousy broadband

12:58 'Personalize' - Log in details, PC name etc

13:00 'Hi'

13:02 Installing apps

13:04 'Let's Start' - Upgrade finished

Just gotta play now...

[beefmuffin]

let us know what you think of the interface compared to win7