Will Windows 7 run smoothly on a non-powerful computer?

I was running the x86 on a laptop with Celeron M (1.5GHz) CPU, 512MB RAM, & integrated GFX, and it wasnt great to be honest. I upped it to 2Gig RAM. and it is not bad at all now.

If you persevere with 512MB, as OS says you will lose the aero effect.

It works but you really need to be quite patient IMO.

I'd say windows 7 is as lightweight as xp, I got old rig with 1.2ghz processor with only graphics chip integrated to mobo and 1gb ram, and xp ran pretty much as fast as windows 7 currently.

deathstriker said:

Will Windows 7 run smoothly on a non-powerful computer?

what if a PC has this:

Intel Pentium 4, 3.00GHz
512mb DDR2 RAM
98mb Intel Extreme Graphics
80GB Hard Disk

I've tried Windows Vista Ultimate on this computer, and it runs fine but without it's Windows Aero Interface. I also experience problems running games and different programs on it.

I've heard that Windows 7 is lighter than Vista, so will Windows 7 run smoothly on this computer?

I have run the 32 bit version of every build since 7022 and the 64 bit of two versions.

The specs on that box is: Pentium 4 3Ghz, 512 MB ram, ATI radeon 200 164MB (i think) so almost the same as yours. They have all been fine. I would get a 2 or 4 GB flash drive and run readyboost and it's even better. Good luck! You'll be fine with that machine.

I run W7 on a virtual machine and it runs nice. So, it'll run just fine on your config.

VM :
Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz (only one core - the second is for the host OS - here Vista)
768MB of RAM
VMware graphic card DirectX 9 with 3D acceleration.
28GB of (V)HD.

lol... don't even use it... it was just for the kick on using it on minimal resources.

It should run decently on that machine. The only thing I would recommend is upgrading the ram to at least 1 GB if possible. In my experience 7 runs at least as well as XP on old computers if they have 1GB of ram or more

Little off-topic

Lebon14 said:

VM :
Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz (only one core - the second is for the host OS - here Vista)

Why separate Core for guest and host ?
You have a Core 2 Duo E6600 with hardware acceleration of Virtualization (Intel V-T) You should have better perf with the both core running on both OS (host and guest). The CPU and the virtualisation software know better than you how to manage proccess over the core.