wndows vista wanted

[BobB]

A few years ago we got a couple of notebooks with Vista on the basis that we could load XP because we had the licenses. Trouble was a few of the peripheral manufacturers were threatened by microsoft that if they wrote drivers for XP they would be excommunicated. After a few months we replaced the Vista junk with netbooks running XP !

In the last few months we have started upgrading the computers, new ones all running Windows 7. I can not compare the speeds but at least the four running W7 are stable - an essential for business use. (We still haven't worked out how to integrate Outlook 2003 with Office Outlook 2010 though - intellectual puzzles are not all from China it seems.)

I think the previous advice to avoid Vista is correct. If you have software based upon Vista it should run on W7 because they share the same kernel, it's just that the bugs have been removed (well not quite, you still need SP 1 and the more than 100 updates since then).

W7 will run on a netbook or a notebook with 1 G byte of memory if you install the 32 bit versions but note that some W7 installs don't allow you to choose.

Another W7 problem is that the upper versions like to partition your hard disc into two portions, one for the system and the other for data. Not a worthwhile option unless you have at least 350 G bytes. If the version of W7 you choose doesn't include a re-partitioning utility you can download a free version (several available) to either change partition sizes or to all but eliminate the virtual D: drive.

Good old microsoft some say - We only use it because our clients do. I would happily junk it in all of its very expensive versions if only our clients would as well !