My father, a venerable old gentleman of 79 years at the time decided to buy a laptop from Aldi, and surprise me. He had no experience of computers, but wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
It was one of the first laptops shipped with Vista, and my first viewing. Vista seemed like a different beast and Microsoft had shuffled some of the functionality, but it appeared very slick if cumbersome. The laptop was shipped with 1 gb of ram, and a 1.6mhz pentium processor and it struggled to do anything. After upgrading to 2gb, it was slighlty better, but I was resigned to it being a poor performer. Eventually I added a gadget to display the processor and memory performance to the desktop, and the processor gauge indicated that the processor was working at 100% on what I would class as everyday tasks such opening programs. Dad often assumed things were'nt happening and re-keyed to open web pages and applications, resulting in duplication and even slower performance.
Last year I bought a new desktop with a pentium Quad 6600 processor and 3 gb ram, and it came installed with Vista. No discs, but a recovery partition. It worked OK, but I was dogged with niggling problems that I couln't fix - Google Earth returned an error message to say it couldn't connect to the server, my Sophos anti virus couldn't connect to the server, I couldn't share files with the other PCs in the house. I spent hours examining the firewalls and router settings, but couldn't crack the problem. When W7 was announced it was enough for me to place an order for copy.
The day came and after reading horror stories of the upgrade hanging, I decided to go for a clean install and re-install all the programs. The operation went without hitch and the new OS sparked into life, elegantly filling my screen. It was much quicker to boot up, and generally quick to respond, while carrying the look and feel of Vista. The latest version of Media Centre is definitely an improvement, and in general, things work without the constant battle with Windows asking me if I really wanted to do what I wanted (I'd turned off the User Account Controls, but was still haunted by a an announcement every time I turned the PC on). After a month I began to think about upgrading my Dad's laptop, but wasn't convinced about the claim that W7 was less resouce hungry than Vista because mine certainly seemed a bit quicker, but not significantly, but perhaps the more powerful processor had been capable of driving Vista. It was that or a new laptop, and I could see that Dad wasn't too keen on splashing out again. Yorkshire through and through.
Last friday I drove over to sort out some things on his Laptop, and put the W7 disc in chose the upgrade option. It stirred into action, and after the first re-boot it informed me that it was going to take a few hours. I retired for the night.
The next morning The laptop was waiting, requesting the key. Once inserted, everything sparked into life, and I do mean life compared to the tiresome toiling of the previous incarnation. Everything worked, everything had been exported and it was quick! the processor gauge was now hitting 30%-40% when opening. Result!
The next major breakthrough was when I connected the laptop to the TV to view photgraphs. Dad had often tried to do this under the Vista regime, but had been discouraged by dialogue box that opened. With W7, it was a case of connecting the cable, choosing the right AV channel and voila!
So there we have it from a non techinacal now 82 year old viewpoint. W7 works well and allows him to do what he wants. No crashes so far, so I have to say I'm impressed and think this is the best windows yet - I'm contemplating puting it on my Eee netbook.
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Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium SP1 - for PC - English - Quantity: 1 - 1 server, 5 clients, 5 CAL - CD-ROM, CD / DVD
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP2, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP1, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP1a - for PC - English - Quantity: 1, 3 - 1 user - CD-ROM
(+) Faster, good networking with other Windows machine, so far it has not crashed. (-) price, best to do a fresh install which will involve backup & restore of information
Windows 7 Home Premium makes it easy to create a home network and share all of your ... more
favourite photos, videos, and music. You can even watch, pause, rewind, and record TV. Get the best entertainment experience with Windows 7 Home Premium.
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Advantages: Runs really fast, Some very good features, any decent machine can run it. Disadvantages: The Price. It looks like vista and it really is just a brush up on the old OS
Advantages: smooth, quick, easy to install and use, pretty to look at, simplified for the masses Disadvantages: Vista should have been like this - Microsoft robbed us!
Advantages: smooth, quick, easy to install and use, pretty to look at, simplified for the masses Disadvantages: Vista should have been like this - Microsoft robbed us!
Advantages: Runs really fast, Some very good features, any decent machine can run it. Disadvantages: The Price. It looks like vista and it really is just a brush up on the old OS
Nov 8th, 2009
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