Should I upgrade from Vista to 7?
 

Typing this on my lunch break on my work XP machine.

Picked up a cheap ($400) Pentium desktop for email/spreadsheet/word processing and light Internet use at home.

It is running Vista 64 home with 4GB ram.

Any reason I should upgrade to Windows 7?

Thanks!

Yes, to get off Vista :)

Sounds like my laptop. I haven't switched because I am too lazy. I don't have any problems with Vista. I don't have user account control so no annoying warnings and I got rid of all the gadgets and crap. It is like a cooler looking version of xp for me.

Yes, upgrade to Windows 7 if possible. Immensely better and more reliable.

Thank you!

I have been in the tech field for over 20 years and fully aware that every other version on Windows sucks donkey parts.

However I work with a lot of different machines with different operating systems... as far back as DOS and Win95... some Mac systems... even a few Linux... even played with my dad's new Windows 8 machine (that he is totally lost on... and so am I... but I managed to figure it out).

So I can get around or over almost anything in an operating system.

But what is the big improvement in 7 over Vista?

7 yes 8 no

or go with mac in a hackintosh

but you should not have paid 400 for an older pentium box NOW
esp if the chip/laptop is as old as vista is

Box is five to seven years old... maybe even older... Vista was just out, whenever that was.

I had a PC running Vista 64bit. I ran it for several years until the hard drive died. I never had a problem with Vista or speed or stability. I would not recommend upgrading unless you are having a problem.

General instability, crashing and such, with Vista, and trouble synching external devices. I swapped to Windows 7 - problem solved. If you're not having issues with Vista, no need to change, but Windows 7 is known to be extremely reliable in these fronts.

Vista is the biggest steaming pile of dung MS has ever put out and yet windows 8 is trying hard to eclipse that effort!

Upgrade to 7, avoid 8 like the plague

Windows 8 is a mystery to me. I played with it for a few minutes at my buddies house who is in IT and I had to ask where something was several times and he kept saying "oh its there, you just have to to do this, then this, then that and there it is" and my only thought was "so they just added 3 steps to get anything I'm interested in?"

I dont know why MS tried to completely reinvent their UI in one giant change. What kind of response did they expect when you change something people have been used to for over 30 years?!?

can you do up a GUI on Wilbur?

(just a digression...)

again, leap frog OS. 98-xp-7-?

never buy the odd ones-
2k-vista-8

I went from the previously mentions Windows Vista 64bit machine to a Windows 7 64bit machine. Win 7 is fine, but frankly, I can't really find much that feels like a huge improvement or upgrade. I'm also in IT, and have some experience with various __nix systems over the years plus most of the Windows stuff and DOS. I don't actually work on Windows boxes though. I never had any problems with 7.

oh you never saw windows me then

is that a rhetorical question?

vista = suckage. IMO. YMMV.

between proper OS's, MS seems to feel the need to bend over their consumer base a bit more roughly.

Vista was the Windows ME of operating systems.

Oh, wait....

that's right - it is the opposite of Porsches, where (in general) you should only buy the odd numbered models (911, 993, 997) and avoid the even ones (964, 914, 924, 944, 996)

I have an issue with the comment about 964 and 914.

i had a similar spec machine to the OP's in mid 2007 except I only had 2 gig of ram. I found vista to be very resource hungry and switching to windows 7 made an amazing difference to my gaming experience. a fresh install of vista didn't change anything but the change to win7 that came after was like putting fresh suspension on an old car. this came in the form of higher graphics settings, faster fps with the same hardware, and for some reason, it reduced my ping to the busier Aussie servers by nearly 2/3's.

I don't play video games, so maybe that is why it doesn't bug me.

If the PC is stable running Vista, you shouldn't upgrade. If it's crashing a lot, or otherwise problematic, then I would consider an upgrade but only if you have 4 GB of RAM.

You can pare out most of the garbage that made vista problematic, and if it's not on a corporate network (ie. home use) then it should run fine. I am writing this from a Vista PC right now. So it does work.

Windows 7 is definitely better, but to do it right, you need to clean install. Don't do an upgrade. You'll just drag vista issues into Win7.

PM me if you have more questions.

new laptop has 8 on it ....I want 7 back :(

upgrade from vista to 7 was a good thing

yes, definitely a clean install for 7.

for Flieger, true :) another POV re: my machine is it couldn't run more than a few processes at once smoothly, often locking up. for me that was an open browser, watching a movie, having ms office open and sometimes 3rd party stuff like movie editors. for what was at the time technically a competent box of parts, installing win7 made it make sense again.

my 2 vista installs were doing something unusual and i know i'm not alone. After a year of running like that (I had a 3rd install of vista running on a separate drive in case I didn't like win7. i never used it) was happy it was corrected.