Windows 7 Home Premium vs XP Business

I have XP Professional installed on my T400 and have not yet installed but own Home Premium 7. Any thoughts or opinions on whether I am better off upgrading or staying put?

Thanks!

 

Windows 7 works great on the T400.

 

Thanks, Jed: Which version should I install? 32 bit or 64 bit?

 

I'm running 64 bit on my T400 and it's running great. How much memory do you have? If you have 4 GB or more install 64 bit. Do you use old software, if you do just install Windows XP mode.

 

Actually, Windows XP mode is not available for Windows 7 Home Premium.

As for upgrading to Windows 7, you can make a decision from the following...
1. Don't upgrade if Windows XP works just fine for you and doesn't give you any problems.
2. Don't upgrade if your hardware is not compatible with Windows 7 [printers, scanners, etc, etc]
3. Do upgrade if you want the latest Windows OS with similar performance to XP.
4. Upgrading to Windows 7 is made easy with ThinkVantage System Update. It installs all necessary drivers and software.

 

Though Win7 is excellent, why anyone would spend time and money moving a properly operating XP Pro system to it, I don't know - unless there was a critical and specific specific reason for it - e.g. If you want to run a SSD. But just because it is "as fast" and looks pretty? It is just an operating system, after all. XP is responsive, mature and proven. Unless there is something wrong with your XP, or it doesn't do what you want it to do, then don't bother. Win7 is a very fine fix for a substandard, sluggish, OS - Vista.

 

I can get Home Premium for $29 so I'm gonna go for the upgrade. Still up in the air is the 64 vs 32-bit question. Here are my specs:
T400
Core Duo 2.53ghz
2 gigs of RAM
x86 Family 6 model

 

If you intend on staying at 2GB get 32-Bit. If you plan on moving to 4 (or 6 or 8) GB in the future get 64-Bit.

It's that simple.

 

Thanks Jon, for the great, great info. I see that it's not super simple to access the memory slot so here's the dumb/lazy question: I ordered my T400 with 2GB and the invoice says: 2gb PC3-8500 1067MHZ.

1. How many memory slots are in the T400?

2. If this came installed from the factory, did they likely put in two 1gigs? Or do they usually put it in as one 2g?

If I only have to buy one 2gig module, I'll go for it and get the 64-bit Windows 7; but if I have to buy TWO 2gig modules, I'll just get the 32-bit version.

 

Run CPU-Z. One of the tabs will list your memory modules and tell you if one or both are populated.

If the T400 was ordered custom your invoice should tell you. If instead it was a pre-configured "Top-Seller" model then it probably has a single 2GB module (the vast majority of pre-configured models do).

 

There are many little interface improvements in Windows 7. At first I didn't notice much of a difference from going to XP to 7, but after a while I went back to a XP machine and wow it was a big difference (for me), Windows 7 was definitely worth it for me. Though note that I got Windows 7 Pro from the education discount thing so it was pretty cheap.