Win 7 or New Laptop

Pete Gl

Pete Gl

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I know "At the end of the day" ( hate cliches, but there you go) it's going to be my decision, but I'd appreciate your folks thoughts.

I recently bought a new netbook with Win 7 OS for travelling around, Wifey has a new laptop with Win 7.

So, my main laptop is a 3 year (ish) old Toshiba Satellite with 2GB RAM etc and Vista OS. It works perfectly well, the most demanding programme I use is Lightroom 3, and it copes with that, no problem.

I am interested in upgrading to Win 7 mainly for the good things I've read about the ease of networking.

The dilemma I have is, do I spend £100 ish upgrading my main laptop to Win 7, or, considering it's 3 years old would I be better putting the £100 towards a new laptop?

Pete
 
With the price of laptops today £100 would be a reasonable chunk of the cost, however if your existing is a good spec then Win 7 will transform it from Vista. I've got an Acer that came with Vista and I hated it, however after upgrading to Win 7 its been a transformation in use, speed, reliability.

[Edit - see you've only got 2Gb memory, that's not really enough for present applications to work well]
 
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For me the speed difference between Vista and Windows 7 was negligible, as was everything else. Windows 7 is really just a reskinned Vista with a few under the hood improvements. I think one of the main reasons it was pushed so quickly was to try and overcome the dreadful reception Vista received, which was unjustified. Look up the Mojave Project if you want to see the impact that bad press has on people's reception of a product - all of those who tested it were shocked to hear afterwards that it was in fact Vista, and they admitted had they known beforehand that it was Vista they would have not rated it as highly.

Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is a very small step for what the price costs - about the same as going from Windows 95 to 98 for those who remember that far back. Save your money and put it towards something else.
 
trencheel303 said:
For me the speed difference between Vista and Windows 7 was negligible, as was everything else. Windows 7 is really just a reskinned Vista with a few under the hood improvements. I think one of the main reasons it was pushed so quickly was to try and overcome the dreadful reception Vista received, which was unjustified. Look up the Mojave Project if you want to see the impact that bad press has on people's reception of a product - all of those who tested it were shocked to hear afterwards that it was in fact Vista, and they admitted had they known beforehand that it was Vista they would have not rated it as highly.

Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is a very small step for what the price costs - about the same as going from Windows 95 to 98 for those who remember that far back. Save your money and put it towards something else.
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what he said basically. i went from vista x64 to 7 x64 on my work laptop and it wasnt really a noticable performance jump. i wouldnt say its worth it just for the networking improvments which again in my opinion are negligable.

id agree with putting the money towards replacing the laptop (youll get a copy of windows 7 either way then).
 
id agree with putting the money towards replacing the laptop (youll get a copy of windows 7 either way then).


Sound advice
 
neil_g said:
i wouldnt say its worth it just for the networking improvments which again in my opinion are negligable.
Click to expand...

Thank for the comments folks.

The above was why I was really interested in upgrading to Win 7, to connect my laptop, my new netbook and Wifeys new laptop together. Maybe I read too much into how better Win 7 is at networking. Whilst I know it's possible to do it with my present set up, it seems to be a pain in the a**e to set up.

As I said initially, my present laptop works perfectly well, so I may just "sit on it" for now.

Thanks again,

Pete
 
neil_g said:
simplest way to do it would be share the folder(s), create local user accounts on each machine with matching usernames and passwords and they should then show up in the network locations.
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:thumbs:

Indeedy, this is known as a workgroup. Interesting but not entirely relevant: Windows 7 evolved the concept of the workgroup (which is actually becoming less and less common in the workplace due to increased customer demands and added security of a domain) and has a feature called homegroup, which is similar but more wizard-driven and easier to setup, apparently.
 
trencheel303 said:
:thumbs:

Indeedy, this is known as a workgroup. Interesting but not entirely relevant: Windows 7 evolved the concept of the workgroup (which is actually becoming less and less common in the workplace due to increased customer demands and added security of a domain) and has a feature called homegroup, which is similar but more wizard-driven and easier to setup, apparently.
Click to expand...

does anyone actually use a homegroup out of interest? im yet to find anyone that does..
 
I only use Windows 7 at work and obviously we're on a domain here. If I did ever upgrade to Windows 7 on my computers at home (and that's a big If) I probably wouldn't use it either.

But you're right, it seems to be one of these features that MS have implemented that is supposed to be really great... but no one actually uses. A bit like the Internet connection Wizard. WTF?!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wi...&ie=&oe=&redir_esc=&ei=7J_GTOnVDYyR4Qa97vj9Dw

Doesn't look overly inviting.
 
I hated vista ,and still do but as mentioned above I was working int he PC market when it was released and it was nothing but a headache.
I think w7 has a lot changed under the hood, as visually it looks very similar. but networking and driver interaction is just so much better. however, that could be down to driver maturity since it's been a couple of years since vista emerged and w7 can't be that much different.

however, I would save your money. a 3gb i3, 17" laptop with w7x64 on from dell was £600 a few months ago. (oh yeah, decent 5650 gfx too). typing on it now.
so save up and see where it takes you. £100 on w7 would be good money after (not bad) but money already spent.

if you work in education though you can get a cheap copy of w7
 
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