is it worth upgrading to 7

[harj103]

i am currently running my laptop on vista and saw that microsoft are offering students windows 7 for £30. i was wondering is it worth me purchasing it, also i was going to get the downloadable one rather than buying a cd, is there a way in which i can reinstall 7 on my laptop if i need to reinstall my os for some reason in the future or do i need to purchase the cd version to be able to do that?
cheers

 

[Barman58]

The downloadable installs are normally in the form of .ISO files which are actually DVD images and require to be written to disk, (needs a specific burn option not just copied), therefore re-installs should not be an issue.

However, if you purchase an upgrade install you may need to upgrade a activated and validated copy of vista to enable re-installation.

This may or may not be an issue but we will only know for sure after the actual upgrade disks are available for testing

 

[Iomegaman]

For a start, yes, you should upgrade. You will notice increased system performance in comparison to running vista.

Also, the download version, will download an ISO image, which you should burn to a DVD in order to install on your laptop. You do not need the CD version in order to reinstall.

Tom

 

[nate42nd]

I think it depends on your hardware too. Some members of my family are running old CPUs and one still has an IDE hard drive. I have told them to wait until they are ready to buy a new computer then upgrade to W7. No sense in upgrading on an old machine, then having to buy it again in 3-6 months. Some of the hardware people are still using is amazing. My sister is using an AMD that was made in 2002 or 2003....that's getting pretty old.

 

[harj103]

well my laptop is less than a year old, is mine out of date already

 

[Barman58]

If it runs vista at an acceptable rate for you then I would say it will run Windows 7 without any problems - and will probably be an improvement

 

[harj103]

cheers guys, i have just bought 7 and now waiting till i am able to download it now

 

[Mark Phelps]

As to your original question, I'm using a 5-year old Tablet PC which came with XP and I upgraded to Vista -- and the performance, usability, and reliability improvements with Seven have been amazing!

I should mention that I upgraded the memory from 512MB (with XP) to 2GB (for Vista) -- and that got me some decent realtime performance out of it. With 512MB, it was so slow as to be unusable.

But, everything works (and that's saying a lot on this box) with Seven, even the XP-era drivers loaded in compatibility mode.

So, I would heartily recommend upgrading to Seven for your laptop.

 

[harpua]

Especially at the student discount price, it is well worth it, imo.