GF's T60 (32-bit Core Duo 2GHz) needs a fresh OS: XP or 7?

[Crunch]

Hey all, I was wondering what you guys think about this. I have Win 7 Ultimate running on my GF's T60, which has not seen a fresh installation of a new OS in 3 1/2 years! It's seen tons and tons of software installs/de-installs, crashes, etc., etc., so I want to do the obvious and get her a bigger drive and re-do everything, since it takes forever to boot and load apps, etc. I maxed out the RAM already and yes, I can add an SSD, but I thought about downgrading her to Win XP. Is this a good idea anymore? Of course, the thing originally came with WinXP, but Win 7 is the more secure and stable OS, isn't it? I also bought a couple of Win 8 Pro licenses and it is supposed to be faster than Win 7. Using Start8 to get the Win 7-like desktop to run on Win 8 would make the learning curve minimal.

So...on a T60 with a Core Duo 2GHz, should I go with XP, stay put and re-install Win 7, or, which is likely the silliest move, to Win 8?

Thank you to my fellow T6x compadres. It's good to be back and it's even better to see y'all are still around.

[RealBlackStuff]

I have Win 7 Ultimate running on my GF's T60, which has not seen a fresh installation of a new OS in 3 1/2 years!

W7 only came out in July 2009, so I doubt your above statement has any value...

[Cigarguy]

Ask the primary user what he/she prefers and load that OS. If you don't have Win 8 now, then it'll cost you $$ to put Win 8 on there. Win 7 runs pretty good on these machine.

[TTY]

I can only tell you what you should not install: Windows XP. Extended support for XP ends April 2014, it's not worth the hassle to install it.

[Medessec]

Yeah... I'd stick with Windows 7. XP's going rapidly out of date, and there's not going to be a huge performance difference on the machine between a clean Windows XP install, and a clean Windows 7 install.

[ilakast]

Between XP or 7, I would say Vista
If on 7 it is running fine, on Vista it would fly and the looks are the same IMHO.

[dr_st]

Win7 is not generally heavier than Vista, and it does have a few improvements.

[pianowizard]

Between XP or 7, I would say Vista

I am the biggest Vista fan on this forum. However, considering the limited specs of this T60 and the fact that XP will be phased out in just a year, I think staying with 7 (which is a tiny bit faster than Vista) would be the best among these three OS's. If you can get Windows 8 to work, that would be even better than 7 but I suspect there would be driver issues.

[spuddog]

If you have the license, I would go with win 8. It's faster than win7, but I have 8gb ram and an ssd. I am running win 8 on an x201, a desktop and an HP 6715 laptop. No driver issues at all.

Scott

[cadillacmike68]

I would stay with 7, but you shouldn't have to re-install it, just get a good clean up utility and get all the garbage off the machine.

[Mazdarese]

I have Win 7 Ultimate running on my GF's T60, which has not seen a fresh installation of a new OS in 3 1/2 years!

W7 only came out in July 2009, so I doubt your above statement has any value...

Unless he upgraded in-place.

[hhmcsv]

................and I am a very, very happy camper with my T60 with SSD and Win8, fantastic crisp and responsive machine and very fast startup
(and got the Win8 upgrade for "no money" in december..... )

[Kasm279]

I am the biggest Vista fan on this forum. However, considering the limited specs of this T60 and the fact that XP will be phased out in just a year, I think staying with 7 (which is a tiny bit faster than Vista) would be the best among these three OS's. If you can get Windows 8 to work, that would be even better than 7 but I suspect there would be driver issues.

Actually, you can generally user drivers from as far back as XP (or sometimes even 2000) on Windows 8. Anyway, I'll +1 with Windows 7.

[taichi]

I am the biggest Vista fan on this forum...

I have Vista 32 Ultimate on my T60P and never have had a single issue with it...and it boots quickly.

Why do you like Vista? (Given the army of haters.)

[pianowizard]

I have Vista 32 Ultimate on my T60P and never have had a single issue with it...and it boots quickly.

"Quick" or "slow" is subjective.

Why do you like Vista? (Given the army of haters.)

When compared with XP, 7 and 8, Vista has the best user interface. In my hands, it's also more stable than XP and 7 (haven't use 8 long enough yet to know how stable it is). It's much more secure than XP and is functionally almost as modern as 7.

[ajkula66]

In my hands, it's also more stable than XP and 7 (haven't use 8 long enough yet to know how stable it is). It's much more secure than XP and is functionally almost as modern as 7.

An interesting statement regarding stability.

I've had zero stability issues with W7 which is not something I could ever say about XP. Would love to know how W7 failed you in this respect when compared to Vista...seriously. I might be overlooking something important.

Vista's biggest downfall in my usage scenario is lack of native TRIM support.

[dr_st]

Vista's biggest downfall in my usage scenario is lack of native TRIM support.

Indeed. It's somewhat surprising and saddening that Microsoft leave TRIM out of Vista, even though they backported almost every important core feature of Win7 back to Vista eventually (WDDM 1.1, DirectX 11 spring to mind).

I like Vista too. It's the OS on my primary desktop, and has been very stable and pleasant to use. I do not reinstall operating systems generally, so it will stay there forever. But if I am to build a new system these days, I will probably go with Win7, since it has also been working well for me (on other machines), and has a few extra niceties that Vista doesn't.

I think there may be one problem that I have been experiencing more with Win7 than with Vista - the situation when all browser windows just freeze for about 30 seconds. But it may have more to do with the particular installation, because it's not been happening on all systems.

[pianowizard]

I've had zero stability issues with W7 which is not something I could ever say about XP. Would love to know how W7 failed you in this respect when compared to Vista...seriously.

The browser freezing problem that dr_st mentioned is one example. Another problem that annoys me is that on both of my HP Elite desktops, Windows Explorer needs to restart way too often, like a couple times a week. On my Dell Optiplex 9010, 7 sometimes has problem ejecting USB drives or shutting down, kind of reminding me of Windows 98. On all three computers, I am using the factory-installed Windows 7, so it could be HP's and Dell's fault rather than 7's. I haven't used XP in such a long time that I don't remember exactly what its problems were, though I certainly remember the occasional blue screen.

Vista has never, ever given me any problem, aside from being a bit slow on obsolete (i.e. Core Duo, Pentium D and older) machines. IMO, it's the most reliable version of Windows. Windows 8 seems really solid as well, though it's still too early to say for sure.

[dr_st]

I think you just jumped on Vista late enough to avoid all the problems faced by early adopters. The core OS is just fine, but Microsoft did not do a good enough job of preparing the OS for release together with the rest of the hardware and software vendors. Hence a lot of the initial backlash, complaints about instabilities and glitches.

Like you, I adopted Vista late, after SP1 was already out, and when most drivers were brought up to standards. I installed it on hardware that was released already with Vista in mind, so the compatibility problems were non-existent.

The only issue that was major enough to bother me for a long time, and for me to remember after all these years, was a hard freeze I experienced during certain patterns of network traffic. Turned out to be some obscure bug in the Ralink driver for my wireless adapter, which was triggered only on operating systems with 4GB of RAM or more (probably some small part of the driver did not handle true 64bit addresses correctly). Ralink did eventually fix it, but months too late, after I and many others had given up and purchased a different wireless adapter, with an Atheros chip.

[pianowizard]

I think you just jumped on Vista late enough to avoid all the problems faced by early adopters. The core OS is just fine, but Microsoft did not do a good enough job of preparing the OS for release together with the rest of the hardware and software vendors. Hence a lot of the initial backlash, complaints about instabilities and glitches.

IMO, back in 2007, the biggest complaint of Vista was that it was a resource hog. I did get a taste of that through an X61 tablet bought directly from Lenovo in Dec 2007. That tablet had Core2 Duo, 1GB DDR2 RAM and an 80GB 5400rpm HDD, and Vista was so slow that the tablet was a major pain to use (and back then I was used to slow outdated computers, like running XP Pro on a 300MHz Thinkpad 240!). After that experience, I bashed Vista and avoided it like the plague for 3 years, until I rediscovered it in early 2011. So, I was actually an early adopter and hated Vista just like most other people. It's a shame that so many people have continued to refuse to give Vista another try. Even on computers that already have a Vista COA, many people would still downgrade to XP, one year before support for XP expires!

BTW, I just Googled up a Jan 2007 discussion of Vista: http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... =8&t=36947 . Notice how I stupidly bashed Vista based on my experience with Beta 2!

[Oglon3r]

Vista SP2 is pretty much as fast as Windows 7 but of curse everybody hated it by then already.
Either way Windows 7 x64 will be the way to go. If your gf however feels adventurous then stick WIN8 on that baby and let it rip. it is a bit faster than 7 on many benchmarks and you can get used to the start thing right away.
There are two simple things to learn about it and run it like a pro.
One of them is that Windows+X will give you all the admin tools you need.
And the other is once you go to metro you can type anything you want and find pretty much everything inside your computer without the bothersome search bar.
Good luck

[dr_st]

IMO, back in 2007, the biggest complaint of Vista was that it was a resource hog.

Good point. In fact, I believe you and I have discussed this point before, and I shared my thoughts on it, so I will not repeat them here.

Nevertheless, I believe that Vista's resource footprint could be diminished with a few tweaks. Needless to mention, most people did not know about these tweaks and with the default settings inadequate for most low-to-midrange computers of the time, it's easy to see how most people's perceptions would be shaped.

[farmall]

The easy way to tell would be to multiboot (fully updated) Vista, 7, and 8 default installs on the same PC then run the same benchmark software on each.

No need to speculate when you can test ending all doubt. Any "tweaks" could be applied to all OS then benchmarked.

It's trivially easy to install an OS (the more you do the quicker you get at it) so OP could simply try his options and see what comes of it.

my GF's T60, which has not seen a fresh installation of a new OS in 3 1/2 years!

Imaging whatever Windows version you install would be a good idea. The best way to "troubleshoot" deteriorated Windows installs is to blow them away. With preparation that's no problem at all.