Upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7?

[Like2Travel]

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 computer that listed for almost $3000. I know that I could buy a new Dell with Windows 8 or Windows 7. I have already helped a friend change from and old XP computer to a new one with Windows 8. I am pretty sure I don't want Windows 8. It might be great on a touch screen computer, but on a computer with a mouse and keyboard it's a piece of crap. I could buy a new Dell with Windows 7. This is not a bad option except I just hate to buy a new computer with one generation old operating system. That brings me to a third option, upgrade the Dell that I have.

So far, I have installed and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. The result from that look pretty good. I have taking the Advisor print out to a local computer repair store and was told the computer would probably do OK with the upgrade. I would have to install some new drivers, reinstall most all of my software, and maybe buy a newer version of some software. It is also possible that there might have to be a hardware upgrade to the video card.

Has anyone done an upgrade to Windows 7? If so, how did it go? What problems? How did the system perform after the upgrade? Did you have to buy any new software because the old version wouldn't run on 7? Did you have to install any new hardware?

[tatest]

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.

[LarryJM]

whitebb wrote:
I purchased a year or so win7 and then bought win 7 professional one time upgrade and it gives me a 64 bit OS and a 32 bit virtual machine for older software, works better than regular win 7.Works so good I even purchase it for wife. good luck. She is the game person, not me.

That's what I have done for the last two laptops I have bought. I made sure I got the Win7 professional version and that way 99% of my old software and hardware still works.

Larry

[burlmart]

The progress thing was joking. I still use Office 97 and Strollin' has indicated it should run fine in W8 using compatibility mode.

[Wayne_Dohnal]

Like2Travel wrote:
I would like to hear of any other programs that failed on W7. Most of what I have heard is that nearly all programs that run on XP will still run on W7. Thanks.

I made a post about this about a year ago. Rather than repeating it, here's a link http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/26255901/gotomsg/26327005.cfm#26327005 . I didn't remember every single issue then, and don't now either. One that I didn't list is the electronic service manual for my 1994 Audi won't run on Win 7. I made the painful conversion to the Windows Live email client which is worse than Outlook Express but nevertheless worked. Then one day it quit working demanding a mandatory update. The update didn't work and I made another painful switch to the Thunderbird email client, which in the long run was a good move. I've switched to Open Office rather than pay for a new version of Word. The old one (Word 97) ran fine on XP, not at all on Win 7. Yes it's old but did everything I needed it for.

[mileshuff]

burlmart wrote:

mileshuff wrote:
I've got several 32 bit programs that run fine in XP but will not run in Windows 7 64 bit and some won't even run in Win 7 32 bit. Microsoft has always been terrible at backwards compatibility. It's fine for casual users who have common off the shelf programs but quite different for those of us using high level applications, CAD, Programming languages etc.

It's called progress

Progress? Reliability, consistency, compatibility, are far more important than having the latest new techno gadget. When you have a corporation that invests millions into new software, some custom, you do not want to have to do it all over again ever few years when a new OS comes out. Way to costly. Stability and continuity is essential. If we know in advance that spending millions now for new software that won't run in 3-5 years we have to think twice. Progress is not wiping out massive investments every few years.

[Chris_Bryant]

elkhornsun wrote:
Hate to tell you this Chris but I seriously doubt that 5.25 floppies are going to make a comeback

Hey- I was a subscriber to Byte when Jerry Pournelle warned against 5 1/4" floppies- 8" were the omly way to insure data integrity.
I do have a couple of thousand dollars of hardware dependent on copy protected 5 1/4 inch floppies (and Apple DOS 3.3).

[elkhornsun]

Hate to tell you this Chris but I seriously doubt that 5.25 floppies are going to make a comeback.

Microsoft decided to release differnt flavors of Windows 7 and to my knowledge you need Windows 64 Pro to be able to run all 32-bit and 64-bit programs. The Pro version has an XP emulator capability to run older programs written to run under XP. There is a separate upgrade to 64-bit Pro you can buy - not cheap.

[Chris_Bryant]

Heck- I have programs on 5 1/4" floppies-

Glad that 32 bit is no big deal- I couldn't imagine it.

[burlmart]

mileshuff wrote:
I've got several 32 bit programs that run fine in XP but will not run in Windows 7 64 bit and some won't even run in Win 7 32 bit. Microsoft has always been terrible at backwards compatibility. It's fine for casual users who have common off the shelf programs but quite different for those of us using high level applications, CAD, Programming languages etc.

It's called progress

[mileshuff]

I've got several 32 bit programs that run fine in XP but will not run in Windows 7 64 bit and some won't even run in Win 7 32 bit. Microsoft has always been terrible at backwards compatibility. It's fine for casual users who have common off the shelf programs but quite different for those of us using high level applications, CAD, Programming languages etc.

[joebedford]

One of my machines is still running XP. It works fine - I'm not going to change it. When something fails, I'll recycle it.

[fj12ryder]

Running a 32 bit program isn't a problem with 64 bit Windows. The main difference is that 64 bit Windows 7 can use more than 3.5 gig of memory, which is all that Windows 7 32 bit can use.

I'm running 8 gig of memory and the extra memory is very, very nice when working with large video or photo files.

[mlts22]

Maybe I've been lucky, but all my 32 bit programs work without issue in 64 bits of Windows. Of course, 16 bit stuff won't work, but that is what XP Mode is for in Windows 7.

[Chris_Bryant]

You mean 64 bit WIndows will not run a 32 bit program?
Dohh!