J. P. Gilliver (John) said:
In message <
[email protected]>, glee
Windows 7, and even more so Vista, requires somewhat better hardware
than XP to run optimally. Every version of Windows has had that same
behavior over its previous version... needing more memory, faster
[]
Agreed. My first "IBM-compatible" computer (I'd had others before
that) came with a DOS and Windows 3.1, and 4M of RAM; I think it just
about ran in that, though I remember doing a lot in DOS as it was
quicker. I did add more memory - IIRR (it's a long time ago!) I got it
up to 16 or 32M, and it ran well. I had the same (16 or 32M) when I
got '95, and it crawled again. I found 98SElite worked pretty well in
128M - I didn't find adding more made much difference, though might
have if I'd been processing video, I think. I've used XP with 256M,
and found it painful; when I got this netbook with XP, it had 1G.
After about a year I fitted the 2G I'd bought, and it seemed to make
little difference. (My PF is usually around 700M.)
Does 7 run _well_ on a single core with 1G? 2G? 3G? 4G? Does it make a
difference whether it is Starter, Home Premium, Pro, or Ultimate? I
ask with genuine curiosity; in 7's early days I heard some claims that
it actually ran better than XP on very limited hardware (e. g. 1G
RAM), though that might have been Starter only, and conversely I've
heard others say it's no good on single-core. My only actual
experience of 7 has been on a multicore (I don't know how many) with
4G, on which it seemed to run fine. I also didn't find I hated it as
much as I'd expected to; I did find some of the new way of doing
things irritating and installed Classic Shell (and didn't use
libraries), but that might change with familiarity.
I've got an older laptop with Win7 Ultimate on it (an upgrade from
Vista) and using Aero, that has a single core processor (AMD Mobile
Sempron 3600+, which is ~2GHz) and 2GB of DDR2. It runs Windows 7 quite
well, but I don't do any CPU-intensive work on the laptop.... it is
mainly for Internet, some audio ripping, web site management. If I was
doing TV recording or video editing, it would, I'm sure, fall down
without at least a dual core and more memory. Windows 7 will show more
performance with more memory than with a faster processor, up to a
point. Single-cores are pretty much a thing of the past these days, but
there are still a lot out there (and here). Win7 does run well on more
limited hardware than Vista did, but better than XP on that hardware? I
doubt it. Win7 Starter is found on netbooks, has more limited features
(you can't even change the desktop background) because most netbooks are
optimized for power-saving, not performance, and use low-performance
power-saving processors. They also have relatively small hard drives
that are very limiting. Most that I have worked on are slow and
inconvenient.
My XP desktop also has a Sempron, a 2300+ of about 1.6GHz, and 1GB of
memory. The Windows 7 laptop is considerably faster in everything
except file manipulation. Vista and Seven are notorious for taking way
too long to move, copy or delete files. Even if I increased the memory
in XP to 2GB, I don't think it would catch the Windows 7 laptop.
The differences in Explorer annoy me too but the capabilities aren't
missing, they are just in different places like context menus, and we
old guys don't like having to do it a different way.
I did not like
Vista but there have been a number of improvements over it, in Seven.
I do NOT look forward to Windows 8.... launching programs from a desktop
of tiled icons with no Start menu is, to me, a throwback to Windows 3.x
and the AOL of the early 90's.
