Windows users: upgrading to windows 7?

Maxington · 11-03-2009, 04:01 AM

Originally posted by Das Boot

I could see Apple doing it as long as they have a certain control over the hardware. Not unlike the Windows Logo Program, but much more limited. Only certain chipsets, processors, and video cards. No minimum requirements, just requirements. Hell their OS is based on Linux, it wouldn't be too far of a stretch. They could also limit the functionality of the OS as not to lose their core business.

Considering Apple are busy suing everyone that goes near OSX on non-Apple branded hardware, both right this minute and at any time in the past, that's never going to happen. Google "Psystar" for a current example.

Anyhow, they already have control over the hardware, which is bog standard "PC" hardware, so what's the difference?

As for Windows 7, its rock solid and runs fast on old and new stuff, with some nice enhancements. I've been running the RC on various machines for a long time, and bought an OEM version for my main computer when it released.

It's safer and more stable than XP, but I wouldn't rush to upgrade from XP or Vista unless you really need to.

p0opstlnksal0t · 11-03-2009, 07:08 AM

Ive noticed that if you want 64 bit and XP64 is pretty buggy for me, Win 7 blows it out of the water in regards to stability and driver support... Vista 64 with some tweaking can run just like win 7

Ratmagiclady · 11-03-2009, 08:44 AM

What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things.

I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.)

For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components.

Thoughts?

wlachan · 11-03-2009, 01:38 PM

Originally posted by Ratmagiclady

What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things.

I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.)

For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components.

Thoughts?

There must be a trillion combinations for PCs but if I were to build a budget PC (actually I have never owned high performance PC

), I would get the cheapest Asus or Gigabyte motherboard with onboard GPU, add 4GB DDR2 ram and whatever C2D CPU you can afford. You may reuse your existing hard drive & monitor if you wish.

p0opstlnksal0t · 11-03-2009, 02:06 PM

Originally posted by Ratmagiclady

What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things.

I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.)

For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components.

Thoughts?

you should be able to find a cheap dell or hp workstation with respectable performance for 300-400 on ebay or something

flippedgazelle · 11-03-2009, 02:51 PM

Originally posted by p0opstlnksal0t

you should be able to find a cheap dell or hp workstation with respectable performance for 300-400 on ebay or something

Yup, or even on their respective websites. Both companies do a lot of heavy discounting when entering the "holiday season".

flippedgazelle · 11-03-2009, 02:54 PM

Originally posted by Ratmagiclady

What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things.

I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.)

For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components.

Thoughts?

Win7 reportedly runs quite well (compared with Vista) on even low-end machines - heck, even on Netbooks - so should run fine on just about any modern-ish PC. The real challenge is that many "budget" PC's use fairly low-quality parts, and little burps and hiccups from those parts can cause instability.

melander · 11-04-2009, 03:54 AM

I have tried Windows xp 64bit, about 20% of all the programs that I wanted to use worked.
I then changed to Vista 64 bit, that worked much better. BUT it was vista, the worst peace of software I have put into my computer, ate almost all my 4gb of ram. Games where slow. Felt like the computer needed a format c: after a week. So I did just that once a month to be able to keep running it at an acceptable level.

Now I have had windows 7 home premium 64bit for about 2 weeks and I must say its a great improvement to vista. Its back to windows xp 32bit performance but with alot more bells and whistles. Ok that it eats more ram, just flat out new started I use around 1.5gb of ram. But I have 4gb and ram is rediculusly cheap these days. Compared to my first computer back in 1993.

1mb ram, 30mb hard drive, those 640 kb of allocated memmory, dos <3 , those where the days. Tho I wouldnt fit 2xraw files on it, much less open them

heatherslightbox · 11-07-2009, 09:10 PM

I've run Vista on 2 desktops and 1 laptop and it has been weird and buggy on all 3 of them. I definitely do want to upgrade to 7--it's just a matter of when. Besides the expense involved in upgrading 3 machines, I also want to make sure that it will work with LR2.5, just in case I decide not to upgrade to LR3 right away when it comes out sometime next year.

Heather

Ratmagiclady · 11-07-2009, 11:53 PM

Insights appreciated. There's basically no computer in the house newer thatn around 2001: the possibility of a new, if cheap, holiday-priced machine, if car repairs don't eat that budget, is kind of a stopgap. Mostly cause something that doesn't work on Mac is needed for sweetie's job and somehow it seems just being on the Internet takes gigawhatsits more than it used to need just to run.

And I just can never tell where Mac's 'user friendly' puts things.

Or figure out things cause there's never a cancel-goback option.

Decent monitor meanwhile would be useful, as much as I'm trying to adapt to digital, I still can't see what I'm doing with any confidence.

Some friends who know computers but not photo say HP. Trying to think of it makes me want to dig drainage, scrub the perennially flooded darkroom space we partly rented this place for, ... again, and just go back to analog. At least it keeps working.

flippedgazelle · 11-08-2009, 12:23 AM

Originally posted by Ratmagiclady

There's basically no computer in the house newer thatn around 2001: the possibility of a new, if cheap, holiday-priced machine, if car repairs don't eat that budget, is kind of a stopgap. Mostly cause something that doesn't work on Mac is needed for sweetie's job and somehow it seems just being on the Internet takes gigawhatsits more than it used to need just to run.

So, your current household computers are Pentium 4 and/or Athlon XP based? With a decent hard drive and a GB or more of RAM, they should be able to run Windows XP pretty comfortably.

One malady common to older computers is "Windows Rot". Basically, there's just too much junk installed, hard drives have fragmented files, and even uninstalled programs leave gook behind that binds up the gears, so to speak.

p0opstlnksal0t · 11-09-2009, 07:55 AM

Originally posted by Ratmagiclady

Insights appreciated. There's basically no computer in the house newer thatn around 2001: the possibility of a new, if cheap, holiday-priced machine, if car repairs don't eat that budget, is kind of a stopgap. Mostly cause something that doesn't work on Mac is needed for sweetie's job and somehow it seems just being on the Internet takes gigawhatsits more than it used to need just to run.

And I just can never tell where Mac's 'user friendly' puts things.

Or figure out things cause there's never a cancel-goback option.

Decent monitor meanwhile would be useful, as much as I'm trying to adapt to digital, I still can't see what I'm doing with any confidence.

Some friends who know computers but not photo say HP. Trying to think of it makes me want to dig drainage, scrub the perennially flooded darkroom space we partly rented this place for, ... again, and just go back to analog. At least it keeps working.

Id say a ram upgrade and newer Hard drives all around + fresh install of Xp should get these old dinosaurs cruising right along...

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11-03-2009, 04:01 AM	#46
Maxington Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 255	Originally posted by Das Boot I could see Apple doing it as long as they have a certain control over the hardware. Not unlike the Windows Logo Program, but much more limited. Only certain chipsets, processors, and video cards. No minimum requirements, just requirements. Hell their OS is based on Linux, it wouldn't be too far of a stretch. They could also limit the functionality of the OS as not to lose their core business. Considering Apple are busy suing everyone that goes near OSX on non-Apple branded hardware, both right this minute and at any time in the past, that's never going to happen. Google "Psystar" for a current example. Anyhow, they already have control over the hardware, which is bog standard "PC" hardware, so what's the difference? As for Windows 7, its rock solid and runs fast on old and new stuff, with some nice enhancements. I've been running the RC on various machines for a long time, and bought an OEM version for my main computer when it released. It's safer and more stable than XP, but I wouldn't rush to upgrade from XP or Vista unless you really need to.

11-03-2009, 07:08 AM	#47
p0opstlnksal0t Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: houston Posts: 165	Ive noticed that if you want 64 bit and XP64 is pretty buggy for me, Win 7 blows it out of the water in regards to stability and driver support... Vista 64 with some tweaking can run just like win 7

11-03-2009, 08:44 AM	#48
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563	What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things. I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.) For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components. Thoughts?

11-03-2009, 01:38 PM	#49
wlachan Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Canada Photos: Albums Posts: 2,625	Originally posted by Ratmagiclady What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things. I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.) For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components. Thoughts? There must be a trillion combinations for PCs but if I were to build a budget PC (actually I have never owned high performance PC ), I would get the cheapest Asus or Gigabyte motherboard with onboard GPU, add 4GB DDR2 ram and whatever C2D CPU you can afford. You may reuse your existing hard drive & monitor if you wish.

11-03-2009, 02:06 PM	#50
p0opstlnksal0t Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: houston Posts: 165	Originally posted by Ratmagiclady What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things. I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.) For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components. Thoughts? you should be able to find a cheap dell or hp workstation with respectable performance for 300-400 on ebay or something

11-03-2009, 02:51 PM	#51
flippedgazelle Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: NJ, USA Photos: Albums Posts: 1,270	Originally posted by p0opstlnksal0t you should be able to find a cheap dell or hp workstation with respectable performance for 300-400 on ebay or something Yup, or even on their respective websites. Both companies do a lot of heavy discounting when entering the "holiday season".

11-03-2009, 02:54 PM	#52
flippedgazelle Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: NJ, USA Photos: Albums Posts: 1,270	Originally posted by Ratmagiclady What would you fellows think about 7 in some of the more budget machines out there? We're sort of trying to figure out a plan, here for much-needed computer upgrades: this plan might involve taking advantage of some discounts on new stuff rather than going to my first impulse: more current used things. I suspect that buying used and relatively current might involve dealing with Vista, which I'd rather not, as it does sound like it has a lot of built-in annoyances from what a friend says. Eventually I'd like to put together something reasonably suitable for the photo work, probably with a used machine, and I've about given up on learning Mac to my own satisfaction. (The Mac a friend built me is admittedly old, itself, and may have hardware problems. So I could be convinced otherwise, but here I am.) For now, though, it's cause sweetie needs the use of a Windows program for work, so it may not be the fanciest. And may be consumer -oriented with little choice about mixing and matching specific components. Thoughts? Win7 reportedly runs quite well (compared with Vista) on even low-end machines - heck, even on Netbooks - so should run fine on just about any modern-ish PC. The real challenge is that many "budget" PC's use fairly low-quality parts, and little burps and hiccups from those parts can cause instability.

11-04-2009, 03:54 AM	#53
melander Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Sweden, Umea Posts: 876	I have tried Windows xp 64bit, about 20% of all the programs that I wanted to use worked. I then changed to Vista 64 bit, that worked much better. BUT it was vista, the worst peace of software I have put into my computer, ate almost all my 4gb of ram. Games where slow. Felt like the computer needed a format c: after a week. So I did just that once a month to be able to keep running it at an acceptable level. Now I have had windows 7 home premium 64bit for about 2 weeks and I must say its a great improvement to vista. Its back to windows xp 32bit performance but with alot more bells and whistles. Ok that it eats more ram, just flat out new started I use around 1.5gb of ram. But I have 4gb and ram is rediculusly cheap these days. Compared to my first computer back in 1993. 1mb ram, 30mb hard drive, those 640 kb of allocated memmory, dos <3 , those where the days. Tho I wouldnt fit 2xraw files on it, much less open them

11-07-2009, 09:10 PM	#54
heatherslightbox Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Gainesville, FL Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,599	I've run Vista on 2 desktops and 1 laptop and it has been weird and buggy on all 3 of them. I definitely do want to upgrade to 7--it's just a matter of when. Besides the expense involved in upgrading 3 machines, I also want to make sure that it will work with LR2.5, just in case I decide not to upgrade to LR3 right away when it comes out sometime next year. Heather

11-07-2009, 11:53 PM	#55
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563	Insights appreciated. There's basically no computer in the house newer thatn around 2001: the possibility of a new, if cheap, holiday-priced machine, if car repairs don't eat that budget, is kind of a stopgap. Mostly cause something that doesn't work on Mac is needed for sweetie's job and somehow it seems just being on the Internet takes gigawhatsits more than it used to need just to run. And I just can never tell where Mac's 'user friendly' puts things. Or figure out things cause there's never a cancel-goback option. Decent monitor meanwhile would be useful, as much as I'm trying to adapt to digital, I still can't see what I'm doing with any confidence. Some friends who know computers but not photo say HP. Trying to think of it makes me want to dig drainage, scrub the perennially flooded darkroom space we partly rented this place for, ... again, and just go back to analog. At least it keeps working.

11-08-2009, 12:23 AM	#56
flippedgazelle Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: NJ, USA Photos: Albums Posts: 1,270	Originally posted by Ratmagiclady There's basically no computer in the house newer thatn around 2001: the possibility of a new, if cheap, holiday-priced machine, if car repairs don't eat that budget, is kind of a stopgap. Mostly cause something that doesn't work on Mac is needed for sweetie's job and somehow it seems just being on the Internet takes gigawhatsits more than it used to need just to run. So, your current household computers are Pentium 4 and/or Athlon XP based? With a decent hard drive and a GB or more of RAM, they should be able to run Windows XP pretty comfortably. One malady common to older computers is "Windows Rot". Basically, there's just too much junk installed, hard drives have fragmented files, and even uninstalled programs leave gook behind that binds up the gears, so to speak.

11-09-2009, 07:55 AM	#57
p0opstlnksal0t Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: houston Posts: 165	Originally posted by Ratmagiclady Insights appreciated. There's basically no computer in the house newer thatn around 2001: the possibility of a new, if cheap, holiday-priced machine, if car repairs don't eat that budget, is kind of a stopgap. Mostly cause something that doesn't work on Mac is needed for sweetie's job and somehow it seems just being on the Internet takes gigawhatsits more than it used to need just to run. And I just can never tell where Mac's 'user friendly' puts things. Or figure out things cause there's never a cancel-goback option. Decent monitor meanwhile would be useful, as much as I'm trying to adapt to digital, I still can't see what I'm doing with any confidence. Some friends who know computers but not photo say HP. Trying to think of it makes me want to dig drainage, scrub the perennially flooded darkroom space we partly rented this place for, ... again, and just go back to analog. At least it keeps working. Id say a ram upgrade and newer Hard drives all around + fresh install of Xp should get these old dinosaurs cruising right along...