X460 upgrade to W7 advisable?

I understand that this Sammy X460 model is 3 years old but I am about to "inherit" my daughter's X460 and am considering an upgrade. My question to you is whether it is worth upgrading with Windows 7 or should I simply reinstall factory condition Vista. I have located on the US Samsung website what I assume is the latest BIOS 06LY03LZ but judging from these pages I may live to regret upgrading the BIOS because of heat issues. Did this BIOS version get round the problem? I have also located the necessary W7 drivers so am ready to take the plunge if advised to! Has any member been down this path and can advise me?

 

I consider that Win 7 is much better than Vista and it worked OK on the machines I put it on, including an old Samsung X60. Win 7 has a lot of the hardware drivers built-in. You will need to find Win 7 versions of some Samsung packages such as the Easy Display Manager (which makes the Fn key controls work).

Given that you may want to reinstall Windows when taking over the machine then I would be tempted to give windows 7 a try, assuming a key is available (although there's 30 days before activation is necessary). Can you post a link about the BIOS 06LY03LZ problems and is it needed to make Win 7 work properly. Heat usually means less fan activity which is less noise but may be issue if you use the computer on your lap.

This thread is also relevant.

John

PS: You should be offering your daughter a Series 7. The worse of the bugs now seem to have been fixed.

 

The overheating using newer BIOS is raised here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/302788-samsung-x460-14.html
though the thread does not (as far as I have looked) actually mention revision06LY03LZ. btw the sequence of BIOS issues is
03LY02LZ,03LZ05LY,04LY02LZ
Thanks for your thoughts- however I am still anxious to hear from someone who has actually installed Windows 7. I understand Samsung sold a W7 upgrade DVD- anyone have knowledge of how this worked?

 

I suggest that you separate this into two parts: (a) Should you update to the latest BIOS; and (b) should you install Win 7.

You can then put the BIOS issue to one side and see if Win 7 will work. I believe it will, and you probably won't need Samsung's drivers (but may need Samsung's software). However, before you start make sure that you have the Vista discs available and /or the recovery partition is working (IIRC, press F4 at the BIOS screen to get into the recovery system). Then, if Win 7 trips up you can return to the Samsung Vista installation.

John

 

Hey - Just a little bit of a heads up.

I decided to upgrade my Wife's laptop to Windows 7 x64 and pop in some additional RAM (the original 3GB wasn't cutting it)

I've been having some problems with Windows 7 since the installation. It goes on without issue, but after a few bouts of Windows automatic updates, it begins to go into a boot-cycle loop when loading up Windows.

I found that this was manifesting in 2 seperate ways. As long as I didn't have any nVidia driver software installed, I allowed it to power-cycle and selected the option to start windows normally, which would let it boot into the OS.

However, as soon as I put nVidia software on there, it will just constantly power-cycle.

From a couple of posts that I've read, I believe that I will need to run a BIOS update to get Windows 7 to run correctly with nVidia drivers on this machine. Another post (which I don't have a link to!) leads me to believe that I will need to first revert back to the factory default installation (via the recovery partition) to be able to carry out the required BIOS update.

I'll let you know how it goes!

PS: Thanks for the info on Easy Display Manager - I was wondering how I would get the FN key functionality back on the machine!