tatest wrote:
If you want a Windows laptop, the current version of the OS needs two processor cores, 4 GB RAM and a minimalist 3D graphics processor (included on most of Intel's mobile CPU chips now). That's to run to operating system. Most applications need very little more resources. Windows XP was fine with about 1/8th the resources needed by Win 7 or 8, so you can't compare specs old to new to find out what is adequate.
Other operating systems are less demanding, thus a Chromebook or Ubuntu laptop can be less expensive. But to meet that price, laptop manufacturers will sell Windows laptops that are inadequate for Windows 7 or 8, and those can be annoyingly sluggish.
Absolutely not true!
Win7 actually requires LESS "resources" than XP.
MS lightened up Win7 considerably by NOT loading every known hardware driver known to man into memory when booting. The result IS a much faster loading AND running OS..
I have SUCCESSFULLY LOADED AND RUN Win 7 on a Pentium 4 (thats right, PENTIUM FOUR) at 3.2 ghz with hyper threading with only 2 gig of ram..
That PC actually runs better now than when it did with XP!
The only draw back with win7 and older hardware is lack of driver support.. The PC I loaded Win7 on MS did not support the on board video card.. Default Windows generic video driver does work but no "Areo" view.. The fix was to put a PCI video card in that IS supported that I had laying around..
