AverageNinja
Average Penis Too
After chilling out on Windows XP professional for years, I decided that I’ve had enough. I wanted Windows 7. Of course, I knew this wasn’t without a risk, so I made some preparations.
To make sure that if anything went wrong, I could just switch back to Windows XP, I got a new IDE drive out, which I had for a while, and swapped it for my current HDD. My old drive is now just chilling out, minding it’s own business.
Installation
I got Windows 7 Ultimate, and made my External HDD usable for installing it to my HDD (optical drives were broken, driver issue). Windows was loading files for about half an hour, and then the installation screen showed up. After sellecting the options I wanted to use it started to install windows 7. Everything was perfectly fine, I installed and no problems. At this moment I’ve still had no issues. The whole process was clear and easy. Even a complete Computer-Newbie could do it. Some extra points for this
Here you can see the Installation almost being completed.
Now, to the more important part, Drivers, Windows Updates, Antivirus and basic software installation.
Basic Software, drivers and Windows Updates.
Driver installation with old components on Windows 7 is really easy. You just download the drivers and run them in compability mode. This gave me absolutely no errors, and they worked perfectly fine! After a couple of reboots it was time for an antivirus and some basic software.
For antivirus, I chose Avast Free Antivirus, which I had been using for years now, and never had any problems with it. After installing I had to reboot the system of course and there, I had an Antivirus.
After all those things came another, rather irritating part: Windows Updates. Not hard to install of course, but very time consuming and irritating. After the first scan Windows said: 42 important updates were found. I was like: Ah, okay, that’s not a lot. But after those 42, windows found another 34. Aaaargh! Well, afterwards, I had to install 88 Updates
Installing drivers, antivirus etc. went extremely smooth. I expected errors with the drivers, but compability mode just worked.
And there you have it, my Windows 7 PC was pretty much ready for use, but that was not it for me.
Readyboost
Windows 7 was not really slow, a bit faster than before even! But I wanted more.
I dug up an 1,85GB USB-Disk and used it for ReadyBoost (which pretty much is Virtual Ram). This gave me a pretty decent boost. If you have an old USBStick laying around, I would really suggest using it for readyboost. Works great.
Backup
After all this, it was time to set an backup and download basic software. The backup was a problem, it said: “parameters invalid”. But I googled a bit, found a fixit utility, and when I started the FixIt utility, the first thing it said was: “Creating RestorePoint”. Checked my External HDD, and there was a backup image file. Done.
Basic Software Installation
Now, you want to install some basic software, don’t you? Well I did want to, and I did it.
I got Windows Office 2010 and installed it. At this very moment, I’m writing this review on Word 2010 without any problems. I installed CPU-Z, AtubeCatcher, UTorrent, Office 2010, Winrar, Prime, Skype and a lot more, and all without any problems. If you ask me, installing programs on windows 7 might even be a bit faster!
I’m running windows 7 on a 38,1GB HDD, and I still have 12,2GB’s free.
Irritations? Hardly.
So far I only have one small irritation point, and that is youtube on google chrome. When I want to listen music and browse the OC3D Forums, youtube slows down when I change the tab. But hey, I’m running a single core processor (Overclocked to 1,80GHZ). Windows 7 performs very well at this moment.
Windows 7 on an old rig performs quite good, actually really good.
I've fallen in love. Most of the times it is faster than Windows XP, and even the Aero Themes worked great!
Features Compared to Windows XP
When comparing the features from Windows XP to Windows 7, the first thing I'd say is the interface. I love the interface of Windows 7. It's clear, basic, to the point, easy to use and looks amazing. Other features are of course that Windows 7 supports 64Bit. Also Windows 7 has better compability with newer programs and games.
Another feature I really like is called: "Snap".
Snap allows you to use two programs at the same time, which is really handy.
To activate snap, you just have to slide a program to the left or the right of the screen until one half of the screen turns blue, like this:
If you have done this correctly, you would get something like this:
Obviously, you can do this with two windows at a time:
This is really handy. For example with school, when you need to write an essay. You can just have Word open in one corner and wikipedia on the other corner. This would make writing essays really easy.
Interface
As I said, I love the interface of Windows 7. It's really easy to use and it looks awesome.
Files can be sorted in various maps which are pre-installed. As we can see here, we have: "Documents", "Music", "Pictures", and "Videos".
Not everyone will use them but for me it's a gift from heaven. Another cool feature is the option to easily move from drive to drive, like this:
This makes it extremely easy to move from drive to drive, and I love it.
Conclusion
Windows 7 is a great OS, even on an older rig. It's easy to install, to use and to configure.
Even Computer-Newbies could easily configure this. Compared to Windows XP this was an enormous upgrade, and I'm happy that I've done this.
Score: 9,5/10. It's fast, clear, and makes my desktop look better. No issues at this moment, and it all looks great.
To make sure that if anything went wrong, I could just switch back to Windows XP, I got a new IDE drive out, which I had for a while, and swapped it for my current HDD. My old drive is now just chilling out, minding it’s own business.
Installation
I got Windows 7 Ultimate, and made my External HDD usable for installing it to my HDD (optical drives were broken, driver issue). Windows was loading files for about half an hour, and then the installation screen showed up. After sellecting the options I wanted to use it started to install windows 7. Everything was perfectly fine, I installed and no problems. At this moment I’ve still had no issues. The whole process was clear and easy. Even a complete Computer-Newbie could do it. Some extra points for this
Here you can see the Installation almost being completed.
Now, to the more important part, Drivers, Windows Updates, Antivirus and basic software installation.
Basic Software, drivers and Windows Updates.
Driver installation with old components on Windows 7 is really easy. You just download the drivers and run them in compability mode. This gave me absolutely no errors, and they worked perfectly fine! After a couple of reboots it was time for an antivirus and some basic software.
For antivirus, I chose Avast Free Antivirus, which I had been using for years now, and never had any problems with it. After installing I had to reboot the system of course and there, I had an Antivirus.
After all those things came another, rather irritating part: Windows Updates. Not hard to install of course, but very time consuming and irritating. After the first scan Windows said: 42 important updates were found. I was like: Ah, okay, that’s not a lot. But after those 42, windows found another 34. Aaaargh! Well, afterwards, I had to install 88 Updates
Installing drivers, antivirus etc. went extremely smooth. I expected errors with the drivers, but compability mode just worked.
And there you have it, my Windows 7 PC was pretty much ready for use, but that was not it for me.
Readyboost
Windows 7 was not really slow, a bit faster than before even! But I wanted more.
I dug up an 1,85GB USB-Disk and used it for ReadyBoost (which pretty much is Virtual Ram). This gave me a pretty decent boost. If you have an old USBStick laying around, I would really suggest using it for readyboost. Works great.
Backup
After all this, it was time to set an backup and download basic software. The backup was a problem, it said: “parameters invalid”. But I googled a bit, found a fixit utility, and when I started the FixIt utility, the first thing it said was: “Creating RestorePoint”. Checked my External HDD, and there was a backup image file. Done.
Basic Software Installation
Now, you want to install some basic software, don’t you? Well I did want to, and I did it.
I got Windows Office 2010 and installed it. At this very moment, I’m writing this review on Word 2010 without any problems. I installed CPU-Z, AtubeCatcher, UTorrent, Office 2010, Winrar, Prime, Skype and a lot more, and all without any problems. If you ask me, installing programs on windows 7 might even be a bit faster!
I’m running windows 7 on a 38,1GB HDD, and I still have 12,2GB’s free.
Irritations? Hardly.
So far I only have one small irritation point, and that is youtube on google chrome. When I want to listen music and browse the OC3D Forums, youtube slows down when I change the tab. But hey, I’m running a single core processor (Overclocked to 1,80GHZ). Windows 7 performs very well at this moment.
Windows 7 on an old rig performs quite good, actually really good.
I've fallen in love. Most of the times it is faster than Windows XP, and even the Aero Themes worked great!
Features Compared to Windows XP
When comparing the features from Windows XP to Windows 7, the first thing I'd say is the interface. I love the interface of Windows 7. It's clear, basic, to the point, easy to use and looks amazing. Other features are of course that Windows 7 supports 64Bit. Also Windows 7 has better compability with newer programs and games.
Another feature I really like is called: "Snap".
Snap allows you to use two programs at the same time, which is really handy.
To activate snap, you just have to slide a program to the left or the right of the screen until one half of the screen turns blue, like this:
If you have done this correctly, you would get something like this:
Obviously, you can do this with two windows at a time:
This is really handy. For example with school, when you need to write an essay. You can just have Word open in one corner and wikipedia on the other corner. This would make writing essays really easy.
Interface
As I said, I love the interface of Windows 7. It's really easy to use and it looks awesome.
Files can be sorted in various maps which are pre-installed. As we can see here, we have: "Documents", "Music", "Pictures", and "Videos".
Not everyone will use them but for me it's a gift from heaven. Another cool feature is the option to easily move from drive to drive, like this:
This makes it extremely easy to move from drive to drive, and I love it.
Conclusion
Windows 7 is a great OS, even on an older rig. It's easy to install, to use and to configure.
Even Computer-Newbies could easily configure this. Compared to Windows XP this was an enormous upgrade, and I'm happy that I've done this.
Score: 9,5/10. It's fast, clear, and makes my desktop look better. No issues at this moment, and it all looks great.
