Upgrade to Windows 7 or buy new laptop?

[Hobby6]

Hi,

I'm hoping you may be able to offer some advice. I'm think about upgrading to Windows 7 in the next 6 months or so and I'm not sure whether I'd be better off upgrading my current laptop (spec below) or save the money and put that towards a new laptop.

I use my laptop for work and while I wouldn't say I demand a great deal from it I do use programs such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver and it seems to handle these fine. Basic spec details below so your thoughts would be interesting.

Toshiba Qosmio F20
1.5gb RAM
Intel Pentium M 1.6gz processor (798mhz)

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello Hobby6, welcome to Seven Forums!


The price of laptops has come way down lately, it may be worth a new one.

 

[karlsnooks]

I thoroughly agree. You should look at the present laptop prices.

the system you have will work but you will not be anywhere as near pleased as you would be if you got a new laptop which of course would give you Win 7 at the same time.

 

[richc46]

I think there is only one person that can answer the question and that is you.
The two previous posters have noted that the price of computer has come down, and I agree. If you can afford a computer with significantly better specs than the one you have, I would say go for it. If your budget is tight and you can get by, why not wait. Use what you have spend the 125 or so dollars for Windows 7 and use it until the next OS is introduced. You will have the most up to date OS, with a new computer without a strain on your budget. We both know than by the time Windows 8 is introduced the computer that you buy today will already be outdated.

 

[Hobby6]

Thanks for all your thoughts.

I live in the UK and having looked around to get a laptop that is a step up and worth buying (eg 2gz processor or more and 4gb ram) the prices seem to be around £500 which is obviously a considerable difference to the £60 I can pick up the upgrade for (Id be upgrading from XP.)

Considering this, how have you found Windows 7 in terms of its demands on your system, is it demanding more resources or managing them better? (regardless of whether you upgraded from XP or Vista) as if I feel my laptop will run as well or better than it does now with XP, I think the upgrade maybe the path I go down.

 

[richc46]

Its not as demanding as Vista. I do not know about XP. I can tell you this, you will like the OS. I had Vista for about a year and installed Windows 7, when it was released and I am glad that I did. I was lukcy, got it at a pre order rate $50.00 (about 30 pounds). Make sure that you buy the upgrade version, you can do a clean install, even with the upgrade.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

If you're using XP now I would not try an upgrade, too many problems; do as Rich says and do a clean install with an upgrade Windows 7; have a look at the tutorial at the link below.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html?ltr=C

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
ask the question THE OTHER WAY ROUND.

1) What do you do NOW with your current laptop.

2) What do you WANT to do with your laptop that you can't do with your existing one.

3) Is the laptop too slow -- unless you spend a LOT of money laptops running Internet or simple office apps are all much the same speed .

Your current Laptop will run W7 JUST FINE.

If you need a desktop type replacement for your laptop then get a new one -- but unless you are going to spend HOURS doing photoshop on your existing laptop I'd keep it and upgrade to Windows 7.

Instead of spending around 700 EUR / 680 GBP on a new laptop -- you could get a REALLY GOOD FAST desktop for that money - probably with 4 - 6 GB RAM insatlled as well.

Hold your money for a while -- but if you ARE going to buy a new computer in the UK -- buy it before the VAT goes up -- whoever wins the forthcoming election (rumoured to be around May 6th or so) the VAT is BOUND to increase to possibly a totally mind boggling and wallet busting 20%.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Darryl Licht]

I agree with what many have said here regarding lappy prices dropping, but jimbo brings up some great points...

If all you do is surf the net and create simple documents an OS upgrade may be all you need. But yes, that upgrade to Win7 would require you to back up all your user created data to some other media.

If you do much more than that or your lappy is basically used as a portable desktop, then today's multicore CPU's and huge quantities of RAM are the way to go... not to mention the benefit of moving to 64bit OS found in many laptops today.

 

[Zen00]

This is an important point, before updating to Windows 7 check out your laptop drivers, make sure that Toshiba is offering Windows 7 versions for your machine.

 

[karlsnooks]

Although I disagree with the decision and believe that you will regret the decision, I strongly recommend you go to:
Windows 7 Compatibility Center home

which will answer many of your questions and I'm sure that site will point to a program from Microsoft which you can download which will indicate whether your computer is Win7 compatible.

From my experience, assuming that the laptop is compatible, then your system will run only slightly slower than with XP on it. I have Win7 on an ASUS 1002HA netbook with 2 G ram.

Be sure to also follow the advice regarding going to the Toshiba site. See if they have any drivers/utilities for Win7 and your laptop. I am sending this to you from a Toshiba which originally came with Vista installed. Since them I've installed XP on it, reinstalled Vista, and finally clean installed Win7. After the clean install the laptop functioned. After all of the MS updates, functioning was improved. Then I went to the Toshiba site and did not use their all-in-one update program but rather separately downloaded and installed some drivers and utilities. My Toshiba works better yet now.

One very important point--check for a bios date and update the bios before proceeding further. That bios update will help you avoid problems especially in the area called power management.

As said, go to the Toshiba site. If you still have update/upgrade questions, be sure to post an iinquiry there. I've always found Toshiba to offer excellent support,although you might need to spend sometime to find the correct location to get feedback.

Good luck. Don't really know where you're getting the prices. We do better here and also in Germany.
karl

 

[Little Darwin]

As far as the specs you mention, it should run.

I upgraded my Acer Aspire One to Windows 7 from XP shortly after Windows 7 was released, and I enjoy the OS more, and it seems to perform just as well.

My Aspire One has a 1.6 mhz Atom processor, 2 GB of memory and a 160 GB hard drive. In my case, there are some minimal limitations due to video capabilities.

FYI - Now that the one driver I was waiting for is available, I just upgraded my desktop from Vista, and it is great!

 

[CassieFWinTeam]

I agree with Karl, be sure to visit the Windows 7 Compatibility Center (Windows 7 Compatibility Center home) before going through with the installation of Windows 7. Only you can make the decision at hand, but here are some cool Windows 7 features to check out, and help you with your decision: Windows 7 features - Microsoft Windows.

Cheers,
Cassandra
Microsoft Windows Outreach

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Caution needs to be taken whenever you update the BIOS, if it's done wrong you can/will disable the machine, it should only be used as a last resort.