Notebooks & Netbooks

[banditfraser]

Hi Everyone

i have an Acer Aspire Laptop model BL50 running windows XP.  I want to upgrade it to Win 7.  i have run the windows upgrade advisor and it tells me that the machine will take the upgrade although a custom install of the 32 bit systemm is required.  The laptop is an older model which is mainly used by my husband for playing card games etc and occassionally using the internet.  there is a 1.7 GHz processor and !.0GB of RAM which appears to be adequate.  Can anyone give me advice about the upgrade, such as what to do and what not to do etc.  i know about backing up my settings off-line and reinstalling programs etc.  Most the Acer programs re-installed on the machine are never used and I was thinking of leaving them out of the re-install.  any advioce would be appreciated. 

[JackE · Accepted solution]

If it were mine, I wouldn't do it. First, I think 1gb of ram is inadequate for anything but Windows 7 starter, not a full-blown Win7 32-bit version. Second, it's unlikely the drivers for all the various peripherals on your machine will operate properly under Win7. Third, WinXP is a great OS --- I and some of my legacy software programs like it so much that I have it running as a virtual system on my new Win7 machine. Fourth, I  recommend shopping around for a newer machine and operating system if you want to upgrade instead of taking a chance on disabling or making a nightmare out of your older machine --- there are some great new affordable deals out there.

Jack E/NJ

[banditfraser]

Thanks for that advice. I'm really hesitant to change from XP considering how little use the laptop actually gets but I am concerned once Microsoft stops supporting XP.

[JackE · Accepted solution]

What are your main concerns? I'm also still happily using Win98SE for some of my legacy software and obsolete Logitech hardware  without problems even though MS stopped supporting it years ago. And remember, at some point in time Win7 will cease to be supported. 8^)

Jack E/NJ

[Alan-London · Accepted solution]

I too still run XP on one machine that has been isolated from the Internet (and thus effectively not supported or updated) for many years.
I haven't told it that support will cease in April but I see no reason to believe it will not continue to run perfectly!

Playing the odd card game is highly unlikely to have an impact. However, Internet use may potentially prove problematic as you will not receive Internet Explorer updates or benefit from future development. That said, development stopped with IE8 anyway. If the browser became an issue, there are alternatives.

I fully agree with JackE. Stick with XP - it was/is a fine OS.