As the above says - I've  got two netbooks (Asus 901 with 2Gb RAM) plus three desktops (all similar  Intel® Core 2 Duo E4500 CPU's on Asrock Conroe1333-D667 motherboards with varying peripherals and memory) and all are currently running XP.  The two netbooks are used by the kids and for SkyGo, one desktop is used very infrequently and the other two daily.  All run currently run Office 2003 or a combination of Office 2003 and Star Office.

 

So - XP support and security updates are dropped in April so suggestions please for updates (I'm currently thinking they should easily run Windows 7 but do I need to upgrade and what is the cheapest approach for all 5 machines?)

 

Cheers

I presume that you're running WIMPs rather than touchscrrens? If so, I'd recommend W7 over W8 not just because only every other version of Windows is any good, XP was good followed by bad Vista followed by good W7, but because W8 defaults to a touchscreen interface which has bugged the H*11 out of almost everyone I know who's used it with WIMPs.

you could always ditch Windows and get Ubuntu for free.

or just run them as they are, i bet millions of pcs around the world will do just that

Windows 8, no need to use the touch screen stuff with 8 and even better in 8.1, absolutely no reason to use Windows 7. Unless its cheap.

I'm told by a reliable friend that Win8 has very good performance on older hardware. 8 might work ok. It'll take a bit of getting used to.

Edited 26 March, 201412 yr by Aspman

Windows 7... 8 does my head in

Windows 8 is great IMO, once you've got to the desktop, rather than metro.

 

It's just Windows 7 but with really good, subtle improvements. 

 

Cheapest way - any students in the house?

 

Ubunutu would be a cheap and fast alternative though. 

+1 for the students idea. If you know someone with a .ac.uk email account, Microsoft do massive deals for students. AFAIK the only OS from there though is Win 8.

you could always ditch Windows and get Ubuntu for free.

 

Definitely the best idea 

 

I love Ubuntu, quick, easy and fun to use and best of all free.

I recently upgraded to Windows 8.1 (64 bit) OEM from windows 7 (64 bit) retail that was running on a 5 year old AMD Athlon II 4 core powered Asus motherboard with an old embedded graphics chip (ATI 4200) and 4 GB of memory and its fine. Good speed, no hesitation, although it takes a little time to get used to the new interface. I find that Windows 8 runs well with my Logitech keyboard with a built-in touch pad (I don't use a mouse) - although the touchpad doesn't appear to support the touchscreen "Pinch" function, it supports everything else. I think W8 runs marginally faster than W7, although the overall Windows performance Index hasn't changed mainly due to the limitations of the old graphics chip.

 

With kit that is over 5 years old, you might need to run the compatibility checker, as I did prior to deciding what version to get i.e. 64 bit or 32 bit. By so doing I found that my 11 year old Packard Bell laptop wouldn't support 64 bit versions of Windows 7 or 8 but would support the 32 bit version.

 

So to save dosh, and bearing in mind that Windows 9 release is about a year away,  I bought the OEM version of windows 8 (64 bit) and installed that in the media centre and left the Laptop with Windows 7 (32 bit). That saved me £70 against the full retail version of W8 ( includes 64 and 32 bit version), priced at approx. £180. The laptop which has an Intel single core processor and only 1GB of memory is fine for speed with W7 with everything, including Office 2010,  except IE11 - that is tragically slow. So I've swapped it out for Opera which is not 100% but is much better than IE11.

 

It may well be that Windows 8 has too much system overhead for netbooks and something like Chrome or Linux might be better.

 

Nick

Edited 31 March, 201412 yr by Clunkclick

nowt wrong with W 8.1

Cheers guys and apologies for the delayed responses - been busy!

 

Sounds like I can manage for a short while and went through the process of updating all of the machines yesterday (and will do again tomorrow) but slowly coming round to the idea of changing to Win7 for the desktop (if I can get a cheap copy from somewhere) as that will do us to 2020 or so apparently and then if I have problems for the netbooks I may switch to Linux(they were available with Ubuntu but I've heard Puppy or CrunchBang works well?  (all are standing keyboard / mouse and touchpad inputs (no touch screens) so I reckon Win 8 is probably not a good move???

 

Any comments / thoughts / further suggestions?

OS X 10.9.2

 

 

Commonly know as a Mac    

Absolutely no need for a touchscreen with Windows 8, absolutely no need to use the Metro UI.

Cheers guys and apologies for the delayed responses - been busy!

 

Sounds like I can manage for a short while and went through the process of updating all of the machines yesterday (and will do again tomorrow) but slowly coming round to the idea of changing to Win7 for the desktop (if I can get a cheap copy from somewhere) as that will do us to 2020 or so apparently and then if I have problems for the netbooks I may switch to Linux(they were available with Ubuntu but I've heard Puppy or CrunchBang works well?  (all are standing keyboard / mouse and touchpad inputs (no touch screens) so I reckon Win 8 is probably not a good move???

 

Any comments / thoughts / further suggestions?

Nothing wrong with Win 8.1. Simply bypass the "Modern" UI and boot straight to the desktop. Also turning of the swiping, hot corners etc is easy with something like classic shell installed.

I'd give can give another vote for Win7 . I took up the initial download ,and on my slowing PC, saw a speed increase. Second update, better all round, and commercial update- brilliant. I now run 64 bit /ultimate with no blue screens, any programs rot responding get shut down and the PC runs sweet. I also run XP, an on the odd occasion I use it to run older hardware, I'm frustrated by the slow load up times and performance problems.

Consider fitting an Ssd boot disk for w7 or w8 ... makes a huge difference.

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk

So Amy recommendations for where to get a reasonably priced legit copy of 7 as the prices seem to vary dramatically...

Forgot to say I can get office cheap through work but apparently not the os

Ubuntu, and open office. Try them both.( free..so no loss). If not happy go Win8.

Was going to remind you about the Office 2013 deal Mark. £8.95 

Enterprise agreement doesn't stretch to the OS for staff though. Best option is usually to pickup an OEM copy from Ebuyer or similar and buy some RAM or a hard drive to meet OEM requirements.

Ubunto is really easy. Add Libre office, also free and you're good to go.

Firefox and Thunderbird work as normal (whatever that means on a computer OS) but chrome and some linux browsers and email clients are available too.

I have used Puppy for a few years as a recovery system. It can work entirely on a small stick or CD and does not need to put on the HDD at all, although you can if you want to use it like that. Once loaded you can then look at your crashed system and extract files.

It is basic so it can fit in the small space, but unless a swoopy GUI is critical to you, it

functions just like every other Linux.

The partner has just put Zorin on a couple of old laptops, everything functions as expected. One of them was a dual boot before, but now both just linux. The Lenovo stuff could have bricked the laptops, but turned out not to be a problem. It picked up all the network stuff on its own. She grabbed my emiling list off my desktop with permission, so all ready now.

The lower system overheads mean they fair zip along now.

You might get a cheap Win7 disc from a PC fair, or I think I saw them on Amazon for £80 (H.P. 32 bit).

£72 inc VAT on Ebuyer - 32bit and 64bit is the same price:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?filtercat=396&limit=10&q=windows%207%20home%20premium%2064%20bit&sort=price%20ascending

 

If you're not upgrading anything else at the same time, RAM or HDD for example, just add the cheapest stick of RAM you can find to the order - OEM requirements then met; job done