OT: Vista Home Premium or Win 7

[pheasant16]

With smart phones and a computer tech that wasn't much good, my brother
in law gave me two older Aspire 5735 laptops that he was going to
junk.(very long story)

Did a factory reset on them and now have 2 usable laptops. A new battery
and a little extra memory would make them very serviceable for non
graphic intense use for a long time.

Now that Vista and Win 7 have been around and fairly well vetted, what
was the huge drawback to vista? (I still use XP).

I do have a little experience with 7, and the limited experience from
resetting them it "feels" real similar. Do have a couple 7 Home Premium
licenses left, but am saving them for when the desktop conks out and
need to build another.

Daughter is going back to grad school, and thought I would give her one
for school use.

Will Vista serve well or should I change it to 7 before giving it to her?

Thanks

Mark

 

[Paul]

With smart phones and a computer tech that wasn't much good, my brother
in law gave me two older Aspire 5735 laptops that he was going to
junk.(very long story)

Did a factory reset on them and now have 2 usable laptops. A new battery
and a little extra memory would make them very serviceable for non
graphic intense use for a long time.

Now that Vista and Win 7 have been around and fairly well vetted, what
was the huge drawback to vista? (I still use XP).

I do have a little experience with 7, and the limited experience from
resetting them it "feels" real similar. Do have a couple 7 Home Premium
licenses left, but am saving them for when the desktop conks out and
need to build another.

Daughter is going back to grad school, and thought I would give her one
for school use.

Will Vista serve well or should I change it to 7 before giving it to her?

Thanks

Mark

In a review, it looks like that laptop comes with Vista. Update
to SP2 and you're done. No need to waste Windows 7 for that.
I have Vista SP2 in a virtual machine, and it looks perfectly
usable.

I have never updated a new copy of Vista, so don't know what's involved.
You can check the machine to see what service pack you're already at.
The purpose of having a redistributable, is so you can wipe and restore
at a future date, if needed (restore from recovery partition provided
by Acer, then reinstall SP2 on top, then Windows Update etc).

(Example of a redistributable)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd262148.aspx

The laptop is reviewed here.

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/acer-aspire-5735-4624/4505-3121_7-33309965.html

2.0GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Intel Pentium T3200 @ 2.00GHz Passmarks = 1021

Should be good for a basic note-taker, depending on
battery life for a model like that. It's a bit heavy
though, and weighs six pounds.

The processor is 35W, to give some idea how much it'll eat the battery life.

http://ark.intel.com/products/37160...M-Cache-2_00-GHz-667-MHz-FSB-Socket-P?q=t3200

It would probably help if it had a copy of Microsoft Office
on it, or some other word processing software.

And don't be insulted, if the recipient doesn't want to
haul it around as a primary solution. It would make an
excellent backup solution. I've heard of university
students dropping their primary computer while on
campus, and then being in a bind to finish an assignment
that night. As a "base station computer", it can be pressed
into service, if something like that happens. As laptop
or mobile theft will be an issue on campus anyway, never
hurts to have a backup solution waiting in the wings.
I'll never forget how pissed one of my university professors
was, when his $1000 calculator got stolen. When students run
out of drinking money, hide your stuff

Paul