Windows 7: Would you recommend any specifications?

Would you recommend any extra specifications above those recommended by Microsoft to run Windows 7 Professional OS?



Hardware
System Requirements
Processor
1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
Memory
1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
Hard Disk space
16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit); for the download version, an additional 3 GB is required
Media Drive
DVD/CD authoring requires a compatible optical drive
Connectivity
Internet access
Sound Card
Music and sound require audio output
Video Card
DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or later driver

That all depends on what you are planning to actually do with the system. The OS requirements are just the starting point in choosing your build hardware and they are the bare-minimum requirements. Browsing the net, video editing (or other hardware hungry applications), and then there's gaming in an entirely different league of its own.

However, I personally would not choose a system for any reason that has anything less than at least a 2Ghz x2 core (Intel or AMD) and 4GB RAM. 1Ghz CPU and 1GB RAM would be way, way too frustratingly slow for me to work with in any capacity and Windows 7 is rather resource hungry in its own right.

And for video editing/gaming, I would not like anything less than 3-4Ghz x4 core CPU (Intel or AMD) with 8GB DDR3 RAM and a mid to high range ATI GPU (never been a fan of NVIDIA myself). Or even better than that, but that would massively wound the wallet.

Hope this helps you somewhat.

Agreed. Very good advice I wouldn't recommend anybody getting the minimum specs, unless your doing pretty much nothing with the computer and don't care how slow the computer reacts.

Windows 7 runs pretty well on 2 GB of RAM, but RAM is so cheap now that I would get either 4 or 8.

An SSD for maybe $100 will definitely improve your overall experience.

If you do not game, the on-processor graphics capability of recent Intel processors is all you would need for general use---you could omit a separate video card.