Is Windoze 7 any good?
Posted by: Julian H on 24 December 2009
My neighbour just spent £750 on a very nice looking HP laptop with W7 installed. I went round to set up his WIFI network for him and was surprised to discover my 3.5 year old £550 HP XP Pro laptop is much faster. Have things really moved backward?
Posted on: 24 December 2009 by silent tim
its basically what vista should have been
the slowness could be due to all the gumpf vendors preinstall, cant really guess without clarifying what felt 'faster' - personally I was impressed with how well w7 copes with very old hardware, it installed fine and autodetected all the correct drivers on a 6+ year old machine with a shonky wifi dongle which wouldnt work right on the manufacture driver let alone w7 driver
the slowness could be due to all the gumpf vendors preinstall, cant really guess without clarifying what felt 'faster' - personally I was impressed with how well w7 copes with very old hardware, it installed fine and autodetected all the correct drivers on a 6+ year old machine with a shonky wifi dongle which wouldnt work right on the manufacture driver let alone w7 driver
Posted on: 24 December 2009 by Onthlam
It took me 5 clean installs on the same computer to get W7 to do exactly what I wanted it to do. There were a couple issues with older sw I had to cope with and wait for updates. After that it has been a trooper. Nothing but blue sky. Not screen.
MN
MN
Posted on: 24 December 2009 by dave simpson
Win 7 has been superb even in beta form with my experience.
In addition to what Tim said regarding the bloatware that HP is famous for loading and running in startup, make sure he has more RAM than the minimum required. 3 GBs of memory will be sufficient (read "fast") if he's only running a web browser and Office applications.
In addition to what Tim said regarding the bloatware that HP is famous for loading and running in startup, make sure he has more RAM than the minimum required. 3 GBs of memory will be sufficient (read "fast") if he's only running a web browser and Office applications.
Posted on: 24 December 2009 by Jim Lawson
Very happy with it on my 3GB RAM HP G60.
Posted on: 24 December 2009 by dave simpson
Same here w/3 GBs on my HP dv9743cl with non-OEM build of Win 7, Jim.
Posted on: 24 December 2009 by Julian H
Thanks for the info guys. Very interesting! He has 4Gb RAM so he should have enough for his general appliations. How and what do I switch off this "bloatware" for him?
Posted on: 25 December 2009 by Onthlam
quote:Originally posted by Julian H:
Thanks for the info guys. Very interesting! He has 4Gb RAM so he should have enough for his general appliations. How and what do I switch off this "bloatware" for him?
Start/Control Panel/Programs
From there you can uninstall and turn off a bunch of Windows default stuff.
Posted on: 26 December 2009 by jon h
Make sure he has 64bit Windows 7 not 32-bit
Posted on: 26 December 2009 by Julian H
Hi Jon
He has 32bit Home Premium.
Mark
Thanks I will try and turn off some unnecessary stuff next time I go round.
How do I know what it is safe to turn off? This is what it comes with.
Recovery partition (including possibility to recover system, applications and drivers separately)
Optional re-allocation of recovery partition
Recovery CD/DVD creation tool
Symantec Norton Internet Security 2009 (60 days live update)
Notebook Help & Support
HP MediaSmart Suite
HP Total Care Setup
HP Total Care Advisor
HP ProtectSmart
Cyberlink DVD Suite
Windows Media center
Windows Mail
HP Games Console with hours of free game play
Norton Online Backup (30-day trial)
Microsoft Works
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 60-Day Trial Version
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Windows Live Messenger
Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Reader
J
He has 32bit Home Premium.
Mark
Thanks I will try and turn off some unnecessary stuff next time I go round.
How do I know what it is safe to turn off? This is what it comes with.
Recovery partition (including possibility to recover system, applications and drivers separately)
Optional re-allocation of recovery partition
Recovery CD/DVD creation tool
Symantec Norton Internet Security 2009 (60 days live update)
Notebook Help & Support
HP MediaSmart Suite
HP Total Care Setup
HP Total Care Advisor
HP ProtectSmart
Cyberlink DVD Suite
Windows Media center
Windows Mail
HP Games Console with hours of free game play
Norton Online Backup (30-day trial)
Microsoft Works
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 60-Day Trial Version
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Windows Live Messenger
Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Reader
J
Posted on: 26 December 2009 by jon h
quote:Originally posted by Julian H:
Hi Jon
He has 32bit Home Premium.
J
I'm surprised -- the 4Gig ram devices (laptops and desktops) that have gone through the lab here since release of Win7 have been (almost without exception) 64-bit.
Posted on: 26 December 2009 by Onthlam
quote:Originally posted by Julian H:
Hi Jon
He has 32bit Home Premium.
Mark
Thanks I will try and turn off some unnecessary stuff next time I go round.
How do I know what it is safe to turn off? This is what it comes with.
Recovery partition (including possibility to recover system, applications and drivers separately)
Optional re-allocation of recovery partition
Recovery CD/DVD creation tool
Symantec Norton Internet Security 2009 (60 days live update)
Notebook Help & Support
HP MediaSmart Suite
HP Total Care Setup
HP Total Care Advisor
HP ProtectSmart
Cyberlink DVD Suite
Windows Media center
Windows Mail
HP Games Console with hours of free game play
Norton Online Backup (30-day trial)
Microsoft Works
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 60-Day Trial Version
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Windows Live Messenger
Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Reader
J
If you like and if he has skype,I can look through his comp and make suggestions. We can go through his auto start/and auto process start.
In W7,there is a place called "Windows performance tool". Here, you will se how well your computer is running and the report will give you advice on how to improve the performance.
Start/control panel/performance and information tools
Marc
Posted on: 28 December 2009 by Trevp
quote:Originally posted by jon honeyball:quote:Originally posted by Julian H:
Hi Jon
He has 32bit Home Premium.
J
I'm surprised -- the 4Gig ram devices (laptops and desktops) that have gone through the lab here since release of Win7 have been (almost without exception) 64-bit.
I'm surprised too - a 32 bit os cannot make full use of 4GB ram, somewhere between 3 an 3.5 GB (depending on the system) is all that can be used. I've heard though that driver support for the 64 bit version is not as comprehensive as that for the 32 bit version of Windows 7.
Trev
Posted on: 25 January 2010 by Julian H
Hi Trev/Marc/Jon
Although the spec states quite clearly that it has 32 bit OS, the machine says 64 bit so I guess thats correct.
I have checked and the slowness is due to numerous software items that boot at switch on. I have switched these off and it has speeded things up quite a bit [although it is not as "snappy" as I would have expected].
Thanks for your guidance, Julian
Although the spec states quite clearly that it has 32 bit OS, the machine says 64 bit so I guess thats correct.
I have checked and the slowness is due to numerous software items that boot at switch on. I have switched these off and it has speeded things up quite a bit [although it is not as "snappy" as I would have expected].
Thanks for your guidance, Julian