Windows upgrade question

[lincsman]

So, a friend wants me to upgrade to a newer windows onto his computer. He has windows xp, and his computer has a dual core (or maybe it's hyperthreaded) and he has 2BG of RAM and a radeon x1600 mobile video card (it's a laptop). Thing is I have an unused copy of windows vista that I could install, but I have heard bad things about it. Also my brother has a version of windows 7, but I'm concerned that the laptop will have trouble running it. I'm also tempted to just recommend to keep xp, but it is no longer supported so I think that's why he wants an upgrade. What should I do? HELP! lol. He is offering money for the work and hes a good friend so I want to make the right choice. Also I don't have a copy of xp so if I upgrade the process is probably irreversible. Thanks.

 

[aldan]

if you can get windows 7 on it,and you should be able to,you can upgrade to win10 for free.i would recommend adding more ram tho but its not a deal breaker,just make it a little quicker.

 

[johnb35]

I would just get a new system. I wouldn't upgrade anything that originally had XP on it unless it had high specs and still within 5 years old.

 

[jmurray01]

Vista would run fine, I'd recommend that.

 

[voyagerfan99]

Vista would run fine, I'd recommend that.

If it can run Vista then it can run 7, which would be better.

 

[beers]

I would just get a new system. I wouldn't upgrade anything that originally had XP on it unless it had high specs and still within 5 years old.

Pretty much this. You can even get newer laptops around $200 that both come with a modern OS and would roast the crap out of his current one (such as this: http://slickdeals.net/f/8053397-del...ent=u323290&utm_campaign=tu-9999#post77722085 ).

 

[johnb35]

Pretty much this. You can even get newer laptops around $200 that both come with a modern OS and would roast the crap out of his current one (such as this: http://slickdeals.net/f/8053397-del...ent=u323290&utm_campaign=tu-9999#post77722085 ).

At least someone agrees with me. A laptop originally installed with XP is probably only gonna have a max ram of 2gb which would run horrible on vista or 7.

 

[jmurray01]

At least someone agrees with me. A laptop originally installed with XP is probably only gonna have a max ram of 2gb which would run horrible on vista or 7.

I've got 2GB of RAM on a Vista desktop and two 7 laptops which run just fine.

 

[beers]

Unless your loading screen looks like this:

2 GB is becoming outdated even for basic productivity.

 

[johnb35]

Only having 2gb of ram on vista is gonna be slow. I've worked on pc's with vista and have 3gb on a fresh install and they run like crap.

 

[jmurray01]

Unless your loading screen looks like this:

2 GB is becoming outdated even for basic productivity.

Depends what you class as "basic productivity". With 2GB of RAM running 7 Home Premium I can watch a 1080p YouTube video whilst instant messaging on Skype and checking emails.

That said, I do intend on upgrading the Acer Aspire to its maximum of 8GB RAM when I get paid as it does bog down from time to time and I want to get back into video editing etc...

I just hate it when people say it is impossible to run Vista or 7 with 2GB of RAM, because it isn't!

 

[johnb35]

I just hate it when people say it is impossible to run Vista or 7 with 2GB of RAM, because it isn't!

We didn't say it was impossible to run with only 2gb just that it would be very slow/laggy because of it. 2gb of memory on XP was very fast but when running the same on Vista, its very slow.

 

[lincsman]

Well the guy is just going to buy a new laptop. There's also more to it than how much RAM it has. It also depends on what kind of RAM and its speed. On his laptop it runs awful.