Do I change vista to XP or win 7?

[anthony]

Hi,

I know that the answer will be here!

My wife has a 3 year old lappy that she hates (mainly due to vista). She has got a mac book now and so I can have the laptop. So, do I install XP or windows 7?

I have various programs like starry night pro, the sky. It'd be nice for maxim or CS3/4 to run on it. At present I run my SXv H9 and SBIG ST2kxcm on an XP machine and pretty much everything works.

Windows 7 upgrade will be £70 or so and Xp will be £70 or so (that would include someone getting and installing the right drivers etc so that XP runs the newer hardware in the laptop.)

How easy is the process of getting windows 7 to run all of our older xp based programs and hardware? That is my fear. I'd like to learn about win 7 but time is at a premium at the moment.

What are peoples thoughts?

Thanks

Anthony

[MikeP]

Hi Anthony,

XP is tried and tested, so you can be sure that your apps will run OK. Windows 7 seems to be well regarded but I think to be safe, you'd need to buy one of the more expensive versions that can run / simulate XP. I suspect that would be more than £70.

Mike

[arad85]

Personally, I'd downgrade to XP. If you can find an old scrap XP machine, you can transfer the licence to teh new machine at next to zero cost.

I have 2 lappys running Win 7 here, and I much prefer it to Vista. Having said that, I'm not trying to run any old software on it. I think for astro use, and a 3 year old machine, I'd prefer XP (I run XP on my desktops very nicely). I also downgraded a 3 year old Vista machine to XP recently and it speeded up no end...

As to Win7 running XP programs, you could install a virtual machine (the Microsft Virtual XP only runs on specific hardware with hyperthreading support and on Pro/Ultimate not Home). Depending on the implementation of the drivers, you'll have varying levels of success in a virtual machine like VirtualBox....

[barkis]

Windows XP Pro. will be more than adequate, if you are using the Lappy as tool for your astronomy. I don't believe I have heard anything negative about the OS. I own 3 computers, and XP resides on all of them.

Sorry, I can't comment on W7. I know nothing about it.

Ron.

[TheThing]

Nah, keep with Vista.

[anthony]

Cheers guys

That was speedy and very useful.

Anthony

[NickH]

XP (and I am a software engineer)... for that kind of machine..

Vista is ...challenging shall we say..:-) (a euphemism for carp!)

[johninderby]

The biggest difference I noticed between Windows XP and Windows 7 is that 7 runs so much faster, it's much more efficient and uses less system resources. It's actually a smaller more compact operating system, so if your PC is struggling with XP switching to 7 will speed it up.

But I would say don't get the basic Windows 7, get one of the better versions that has XP compatibility as well as the Virtual XP machine.

John

[MishMich]

I'm not keen on Vista. Problem I found with XP is it has had so many SPs and updates thrown at it over the past five years or so it runs like a dog, even on a virgin installation. I had a 3-year-old laptop, and I got so sick of XP's performance I stuck Ubuntu linux on it.

I have two PCs running Vista, and never liked it, and one of them now has Windows 7, and the other will follow as soon as I can transfer the critical stuff to my new laptop.

I've just upgraded with a new laptop, and went for Windows 7 on that, and liked it so much I decided to upgrade the two Vista PCs and my partner's Vista laptop.

Most things I have tried seem to work on 64 bit Windows 7, and I leave it turned on for a week at a time without any issues. It has a couple of hiccoughs - outdoors one night it just shut down, and once it has frozen while in sleep mode, and I couldn't find any way of getting it back up without rebooting.

Things that don't work tend to be old software, 16 bit especially. So, the version of The Sky as bundled with Celestron, version V I believe, don't work, and a few 'freeware' programs. Things that I have working on mine:

DSS

Registax

Iris

wxAstroCapture

Opticstar

Stellarium

Cartes du Ciel

K3CCD

Maxim DL (trial)

AstroArt (trial)

Office (Word, Excel)

Gimp 2

Photoshop Elements

Canon Utilities

Macromedia Fireworks 8

Pixinsight (trial)

mind you, I'm not sure about getting Win7 to work on a 3-year-old laptop, is it powerful enough? If it already has Vista, try running the checker MS provide. You run it on the laptop, and it gives a report on the computer, saying what won't work and what should, and which drivers you need to get hold of, or components you may need to change. I found on my PC the things it said would have problems didn't, and one thing it didn't mention did (a Hauppage DVB card - which was a pain under Vista as well).

M

[NickH]

Must admit, barring on the ASUS SSD machine, where it did run slower than XP, Win7 is good...the premium edition's XP mode works well too

[barkis]

Personally, I'd downgrade to XP. If you can find an old scrap XP machine, you can transfer the licence to teh new machine at next to zero cost.

...

How do you go about doing that., and does it apply to OEM versions too?

Ron.

[arad85]

But I would say don't get the basic Windows 7, get one of the better versions that has XP compatibility as well as the Virtual XP machine.

John

Most laptops don't have the hardware support necessary to run the Virtual XP (it needs hardware virtualisation see: Windows Virtual PC: Configure BIOS). You can find out if your processor has this feature by googling your processor number (e.g. T4300) and "hardware virtualisation".

All versions of Win 7 are XP compatible, but only Pro, Ultimate and Enterprise will support Virtual XP. You can of course run any number of other virtual machines (VirtualBox, VMWare etc...) but you don't get a free XP for that - you will have to buy another copy.

As to speed, I thought 7 was around the same sort of speed as XP on a like for like machine. If you've had an install of XP for a while, you may be surprised what's been lurking around that is slowing the OS down - especially if you've added a lot of software....

[arad85]

How do you go about doing that., and does it apply to OEM versions too?

Ron.

Are work scrapping any old lappys running XP? Look for one in the paper going free... Doesn't need to be anything special, just come with the licence. You then phone Msoft up and transfer the licence. The licence can be put on any machine as it is thats what you own. It's not tied (other than in an activation key) to any particular piece of hardware.

[johninderby]

I was intending to upgrade my PC running XP, but after switching to Windows 7 Premium I decided not to bother. The machine is fast enough now that I don't feel any urgent need to upgrade.

A well written efficient OS from Microsoft that actually works as advertised.......I know it just doesn't seem natural.

John

[NickH]

Yup...after the mungefest that was Vista, nice to see them coming back, and Natal looks good too!

[MishMich]

It is creepy. Version upgrades that just work. OS that works and does not let you down at critical moments. Things don't just hang there eating away at the CPU or RAM. Perhaps somebody threw out the code Bill Gates copied from somebody else 25 years ago.

[russ]

I've changed all our desktops to Win7 now. Such a great OS. Fast, stable and nice to use......hard to believe that's talking about an MS system and not a Mac.

Still have the laptop loaded with XP but did a fresh install last week and boy did it speed up once the dross had been cleared out. Still tempted with Win7 for the lappy too but XP is running so well now i won't bother for a bit.

Big thumbs up for Win7 though Funny how Bill Gates leaves the company and they turn out a decent product? Shame they are up to their eyeballs in grief with Office.

Russ

[NickH]

yup...the R&D teams are good...people like that muppet Balmer...well, he's just a whole new ballgame!

[MishMich]

I still don't get what they were thinking of with Office - take an interface that works and everybody is familiar with, shuffle, put everything back in a way that you can't find where anything is. Whose idea was that? I hope they sort that one out soon.

The only reason I kept Windows the past three years is because I need EndNote, and it plugs into Word, and there is nothing else that comes remotely close to it for linux. But having to use this version of Word has been a royal PITA.

M.

[Neutrino]

Balista Vista and enter 7 (th) heaven!

I am no expert, but have had both on my four year old laptop, 7 runs far better, the million updates on XP throttle the performance.

If you like vista then you will love 7.

[roundycat]

MishMich, in post No 9 above you list 14 applications that can be used for astro imaging. I use two. Many people seem to argue that various apps do not run well, if at all, on newer operating systems. Loading XP with everything you can get your hands on makes it run like a dog apparently. My version of Office still works as well as it did in 2000 when I installed it, ditto Word.

It seems that all the folk intent on installing as many programs as possible and updating everything they have as soon as they can are the folk running into problems. If I installed the other twelve programs that you have and I don't would mine be as slow as yours?

Am I missing something?

Dennis

[NickH]

Balista Vista and enter 7 (th) heaven!

.

If you like vista then you will love 7.

If you like Vista you want sectioning...lol

[TheThing]

Seriously, keep Vista. There's nothing wrong with it. Loads better than XP or 7.

[NickH]

Contrary to what almost all industry analysts, every software engineer, most of the MS staff I know and even MS marketing seem to think...but hey ho...

[TheThing]

Ah, so you believe the press.... Not long ago it was popular to 'knock' Microsoft full stop. Now XP and 7 are acceptable, but it's become popular to knock Vista. Seems to be a fickle world to me.

I've had Vista on two machines and never had any problems with it at all. I have XP on two machines and there is really no difference. That's just experience and you can't argue with someone's experience. You can disagree with it, as you are entitled to do, but you can't argue with it.