Upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7?
I have an 8 year old Dell XPS computer with XP on it. Now that I am seeing the end of the road for XP, I have been thinking about my options. This computer, when it was purchased, was a very high end ...
Forum Discussion
What applications, what peripherals are important to you?
Win7 lets you go to 64-bit, if your hardware is ready for 64-bit, but then all drivers are new and not everything from XP and earlier eras has 64-bit drivers. I have scanners, video capture devices, videocams, and still cameras I cannot connect to Win-7 64-bit. I have game software unstable in Win 7, and have had to update or replace productivity, photo editing, and video editing and processing software. But if you have no specialized hardware, no critical software that can't be replaced functionally be something newer, you might want to upgrade.
However, if you have a compelling reason to go to Vista/Win 7/Win 8 (three iterations of the system beyond NT/2000/XP), I'll repeat what has been said. Buy a new system. A $500 system today will outperform a $3000 system built when XP was new, been there, done that. I have two Win 7 systems, laptop and XPS deskside, get 99% of my use, cost a small fraction of my XP systems. But I keep an XP system alive (and anither as backup) to run the hardware and apps I've not been able to replace. Have a couple Ubuntu systems too, but that's a whole different issue.
Win7 lets you go to 64-bit, if your hardware is ready for 64-bit, but then all drivers are new and not everything from XP and earlier eras has 64-bit drivers. I have scanners, video capture devices, videocams, and still cameras I cannot connect to Win-7 64-bit. I have game software unstable in Win 7, and have had to update or replace productivity, photo editing, and video editing and processing software. But if you have no specialized hardware, no critical software that can't be replaced functionally be something newer, you might want to upgrade.
However, if you have a compelling reason to go to Vista/Win 7/Win 8 (three iterations of the system beyond NT/2000/XP), I'll repeat what has been said. Buy a new system. A $500 system today will outperform a $3000 system built when XP was new, been there, done that. I have two Win 7 systems, laptop and XPS deskside, get 99% of my use, cost a small fraction of my XP systems. But I keep an XP system alive (and anither as backup) to run the hardware and apps I've not been able to replace. Have a couple Ubuntu systems too, but that's a whole different issue.
