Should I move to win 7 with my older computer

[MadforitSteve]

On my other computer it is currently running Vista and is very unstable.

This is partly because it only has 1GB of ram and I cannot afford to upgrade it at the moment and I was wondering whether anyone could tell me if they think that Windows 7 would run better on this amount of RAM as I seem to remember a few years ago that Vista is Very RAM/Resource hungry and I am sure that Win7 is a lot better when it comes to these things.

Maybe even putting XP on would be an option as it is too unstable to use to any extent and also locks up every other time i use it and also takes way too long to do anything.

Any ideas/information regarding this will be great.

The system is an eMachines E4252 if you need to look at the specs as I am not 100% sure what it has inside.

 

[Element7]

Windows 7 will definitely run faster and more stable than Windows Vista. 1 gig ram is enough for it to run smoothly but you might want to disable some of the visual effects. Windows XP will run even faster than Win 7.

I hated Vista when I had it on my old PC that had only 1gig of ram.

Here are the requirements for Windows 7.

-1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

-1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

-16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

-DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

 

[indianacarnie]

Personally I think I would work with Vista a little bit before doing that. I used Vista for quite awhile and after some ....work.... it ran just fine. I would address the "instability" issue(s) before I considered a upgrade, but thats me.

We have a "sister" site that may be more of what you need, heres a link to their tutorial section on how to make your Vista installation much better :Speed Up the Performance of Vista

 

[jimbo45]

Personally I think I would work with Vista a little bit before doing that. I used Vista for quite awhile and after some ....work.... it ran just fine. I would address the "instability" issue(s) before I considered a upgrade, but thats me.

We have a "sister" site that may be more of what you need, heres a link to their tutorial section on how to make your Vista installation much better :Speed Up the Performance of Vista

Hi there
I'll probably get Flamed here on W7 but on an older computer why not at least TRY W8 -- whatever the vitriol thrown at W8 on this Forum it does seem to have better hardware drivers, install very easily and takes probably fewer resources than W7. It won't take long to install -- and if you don't like it you haven't actually LOST anything other than a bit of time since you can DOWNLOAD FREE a 90 Day evaluation of W8 ENTERPRISE -- so it won't even cost you any money to try it.

Forget VISTA -- it's old now and on older hardware like yours it's probably a dog. W7 is better but I'd use this as an opportunity to try out W8 -- if you don't like it -- nothing lost as it hasn't cost you anything.

W8 enterprise 90 day FREE evaluation from here.

W8 Forums (also a sister Forum to this one) will also help with any problems you might have -- and loads of people here (including me) are members of both.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Unless you already have a copy of Win7 already knocking about, you probably can upgrade your RAM for much less than the cost of Win7; even 1GB more would be much better (I'm guessing that machine would top out at 4GB). Even if you decide to upgrade to Win7 later (I wouldn't wait too long since it may become unavailable later), the added RAM will make the machine run much better. I couldn't find any specs for your machine but you can use this to find out what RAM your machine can take.

 

[MadforitSteve]

I have already tried quite a few tweaks and it is still working way too hard all the time.
I think I might well try XP as there is no way i can afford to upgrade the ram for a while, but I have got both XP and 7 ready to install so I think that is gonna be my only option for a while.
I was at one point thinking that the HDD might be on it's way out because of how slow everything was but after trying allsorts of things I really think it is just down to the small amount of RAM that the system has got.

I just noticed that my avatar has been changed,,,where can I find why this has been done.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Keep in mind that XP's end of life is 04/08/2014.

 

[whs]

1GB of RAM is not enough for Vista or Windows 7. Plus moving to Windows 7 will cost you at least $100.

If I were you, I would install Linux Mint which works very well in 1GB. That costs you nothing. This is an easy system that you will understand very fast. Here are a few tutorials I made on how to set it up.

And the 32bit .iso you can download from here: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=119

 

[FuturDreamz]

My sister's old Thinkpad runs Windows 7 with 1GB of ram. I wouldn't say it's speedy, but she's happy with it and says it runs faster than when it had XP.

I'd recommend getting a small usb drive to use for ReadyBoost. It actually does help a little bit.