So, how annoying is it to use Windows 7 on old computers?

So here I have my old Compaq Evo N600c, and one of my friends asked me why didn't I install Windows 7 on it, and my answer was a quick "Cause its from 2003?".

The thought came to mind again and made me think how well would it run on here? Problem is, I don't feel like killing XP and Ubuntu just to try getting it installed when I have everything already set.

The hardware in question is probably equivalent to a current netbook (or quite a ways off) 1.2GHz Pentium 3m processor along with 768MB of SD RAM. Another reason I didn't bother was because I didn't feel like trying to find a driver for the sound card in this thing, which I don't even think exists for Win 7.

Should I just leave the poor thing as is?

 

personally, i wouldnt bother with it, but windows 7 should run fine on it (aero might not work though) and if the driver that you have doesnt work, i have a feeling a driver may be available on windows update

but again, if everything's set.. i wouldn't bother, especially since your laptop is much faster

 

I had it installed on a P4 2.8Ghz with 1GB of DDR RAM, and an MX4000, and it was too slow to complete simple tasks. Opening Explorer took about 3 or 4 seconds, and Internet Explorer took about 8 seconds to open. Boot time was a little over a minute, and I personally found the machine too slow for daily tasks.

This was on a clean install BTW, with absolutely no programs at all,and only the core Windows services running. Nothing unnecessary was running at all.

Aero was absolutely unusable - NVIDIA has no Windows 7 or Windows Vista drivers for older cards like the MX4000, therefore rendering it pretty much useless, even for Flash hardware acceleration and the like. Even if NVIDIA had drivers available for the card, it probably still would have been pretty useless.

I personally recommend sticking with XP.

 

Win 7 is supposed to work easier than Vista, and has no problems running even on a mere modern day netbook.

2GB of RAM helps a lot when using Vista on a netbook I image 7 may have similar results.

 

I have a Compaq Evo N600c somewhere laying in a cupboard. Almost the same configuration with 1024 MB SD-RAM.
If it's working fine, I wouldn't bother the hassle. Let it run XP if you're happy with it.

For Vista systems it's more interesting to switch to Win7.

 

Win 7 runs better than Vista on older systems. Although I find that if you're using less than 2gb of memory, XP is a better choice.

 

The oldest thing i've got win 7 running on is an upgraded Vaio RS620G, and it runs flawlessly P4 3ghz, 2gb ram, 256mb ATI Radeon (idk the number) with Aero running

 

Probably because you didn't have enough memory. Win7 needs at least 2 gig.

Gary

 

I have a stripped copy of Windows 7 Ultimate running on an old Dell with a Celeron 1.4GHz with 1GB of RAM. Aero does not work, but the laptop itself runs flawlessly. Again, the copy of windows is highly stripped, ie, the install fits on a CD.

 

That sounds exactly like my desktop file server, although I only use it for torrenting and serving files, which it does well enough for a headless unit.

Well, considering the max amount of RAM I can use here is 1GB, I'll probably just leave everything as is; it might be my throw-around laptop I only use maybe once every 10 days, but I want it to at least work when I am using it
But am I somewhat right in assuming it would run about as fast as it does on a netbook?

 

Install Linux on it (together with XP).
And watch it fly

 

I already have XP SP3 and Ubuntu 10.04 on it, and already decided to leave it alone as is because it works well enough :<

 

I wouldn't upgrade it. 768MB isn't going to be enough to do much in anything later than XP, and drivers are likely to be an issue. I probably would have left it on an older Ubuntu LTS, actually - with GNOME, Ubuntu probably does scale better than KDE 4, but that's a very recent OS for that old of hardware. But if 10.04 runs well enough now, no point in reverting it.

Also, investing $100 in non-transferable software for such an old machine doesn't make sense.

 

Probably a lot slower. Windows 7 on my friend's Acer Aspire One with N450 is pretty speedy.

 

I was able to use Windows 7 Ultimate on my P4 2.8 Desktop... Ran pretty good! Not as speedy as what other machines would be, but I was able to install Adobe Master Collection and use Dreamweaver... I didn't find that much of a slow down.