Windows 7 or Windows xp?

posted on January 20th, 2011, 1:12 pm

Title say's it all. 

posted on January 20th, 2011, 1:55 pm

Title say's it all. 

Lol no it doesnt, u included vista mac and linux options. I have all 5 funnily, i just mainly use 7 and linux (knoppix)

Also which mac os do u mean? I have os9 and love it. Although 99% will have osx.

posted on January 20th, 2011, 4:29 pm

I currently use Windows XP, but I'm going to upgrade to Windows 7 soon.

posted on January 20th, 2011, 6:08 pm

to any people worried about performance and startup time, i can safely say that win7 has a good startup time, that was one of the main features they focused on.

the resources requried to run win7 of course are gonna be a bit higher than xp, but if you turn off stuff like aero and desktop window manager and sidebar you can get win7 down quite a bit.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on January 20th, 2011, 6:29 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on January 20th, 2011, 6:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A bit higher? Try one Gigabyte of RAM as the minimum (2 GB on 64-bit.) XP needs 64 Megabytes, (128 recommended, and you really don't need more than a Gigabyte unless gaming on XP.)

Startup faster than XP? Nope (well, it does start faster than Vista), but it does shut down quicker than XP. 
Windows 7 vs XP Performance Shoot-Out | PCMag.com

Windows 7 is about aesthetics, some nice new features, and speed of running stuff.
But the main selling point? It's not the piece of shit Vista was.

posted on January 20th, 2011, 6:47 pm

A bit higher? Try one Gigabyte of RAM as the minimum (2 GB on 64-bit.) XP needs 64 Megabytes, (128 recommended, and you really don't need more than a Gigabyte unless gaming on XP.)

have you ever actually used windows xp on a machine with 128mb ram? i have, i own such a machine (probably need to bin it now ) its terrible. a budget computer, lowest spec windows xp machine sold (i have one of these too) with 256mb ram, which was usable running windows xp on its own and maybe a couple text editors, but still not great. remember that multitasking back then didnt involve running that many programs for home users.

512mb is probably the minimum i would recommend.

as you say, people playing games on xp will have lots of ram, ram is dirt cheap these days and any muppet with a rubber-handled screwdriver can fit ram to a pc with their eyes closed and one hand tied behind their back, balancing a tea cup on their nose...

the requirements for win7 take into account people running it with all its fancy crap such as themes (present in xp too), aero, desktop window manager, sidebar etc. i turn all these off and use windows classic. win7 without the fancy aesthetic stuff is a lot less hungry than the specs would portray.

the tests you referenced are not relevant here as they are performed on legacy hardware, hardware no gamer will have. also the results of those tests were mostly tied (wins in roughly equal amount for both xp and win7), which is quite something for a late 2009 OS to tie with a 2001 OS on old hardware from the latter's era. performance was something they focussed on, and, as a person who has used 98 xp vista and win7, it shows. it is about time microsoft got it right.

posted on January 20th, 2011, 7:15 pm

Can I vote both 7 and XP? Since I have both?

posted on January 20th, 2011, 7:26 pm

Can I vote both 7 and XP? Since I have both?

nope, these are radio buttons, one selection only, if they were tick boxes they would let you select multiple up to a limit that the op decides. a mod might be able to change the poll options

even though the poll question is phrased as "what do you have" i think the intention is to find out your primary os.

i have windows 98, xp, vista, 7, xp mode in 7, os9, osx, knoppix and ubuntu. but i use windows 7 most, followed by knoppix. so i voted win7.

posted on January 20th, 2011, 7:29 pm

as you say, people playing games on xp will have lots of ram, ram is dirt cheap these days and any muppet with a rubber-handled screwdriver can fit ram to a pc with their eyes closed and one hand tied behind their back, balancing a tea cup on their nose...

Do you want to actually try that!?  Installing ram is easy, but doing it that way is reckless!  Chances are that the computer would never run again.  In fact, I guarantee that if you install ram that way, that computer will never run again!

posted on January 20th, 2011, 7:33 pm

I might need to add: newer hardware has quite often Problems with windows xp because the drivers are mainly written for win7 (was the main reason why i switched to win7).
So far wherever i installed it: Win7 starts up damn fast, is stable and quite easy to handle.
And: Myles is right: you can put it down to win xp style, but seriosly: the design doesnt take THAT much performance.
Anyone remembers the order in which the OS have been released so far?
Win 95 (crap), Win 98 (ok), Win ME (crap), Win XP (OK), Win Vista (Crap), Win 7 (OK)
What comes next ?

[Anonymous]

posted on January 20th, 2011, 7:33 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on January 20th, 2011, 7:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

well on my desktop you dont even need the screwdriver, just some clips to slide to open. so i do believe i could do it with my eyes closed. one handed would be difficult, but i would relish the challenge. balancing a tea cup on my nose i sadly cant do anyway.

---

EDIT:

Win 95 (crap), Win 98 (ok), Win ME (crap), Win XP (OK), Win Vista (Crap), Win 7 (OK)
What comes next ?

thats the home OSes, you skipped all the business ones and server ones. some home users did use the business OSs like nt and win2000. it wasnt until xp that they unified the OSs and just had windows XP home edition and windows XP pro

and windows 8 is next hopefully lol

posted on January 20th, 2011, 7:35 pm

Do you want to actually try that!?  Installing ram is easy, but doing it that way is reckless!  Chances are that the computer would never run again.  In fact, I guarantee that if you install ram that way, that computer will never run again!

Nah, you'll be fine. You don't even need a screwdriver. As long as you don't have the machine it plugged in you can throw tea all over the place as long as you dry it out and clean it a bit before turning it back on.

posted on January 20th, 2011, 7:35 pm

I have a mac running win 7 under bootcamp. So I took "mac", because it is one. o_O

posted on January 20th, 2011, 10:29 pm

the tests you referenced are not relevant here as they are performed on legacy hardware, hardware no gamer will have. also the results of those tests were mostly tied (wins in roughly equal amount for both xp and win7), which is quite something for a late 2009 OS to tie with a 2001 OS on old hardware from the latter's era. performance was something they focussed on, and, as a person who has used 98 xp vista and win7, it shows. it is about time microsoft got it right.

Windows Xp vs Vista vs 7

A test could be invalid due to bad hardware if the OS used something specific to newer hardware. This is not the case.

posted on January 20th, 2011, 11:13 pm

A test could be invalid due to bad hardware if the OS used something specific to newer hardware. This is not the case.

thats not true, tests can be invalid if they are performed on a machine nobody in the population (the fleetops community here as we are on the fleetops forum) will have.

these performances tests only serve to confirm that windows xp has fewer features than windows 7, something we all know. nobody can expect a new operating system with many more features to use less resources, that is just ridiculous. if you take any 1 system capable of meeting both requirements, and install an old OS on it, then of course more resources will be available on the older OS as it uses less of everything. the entire OS9 OS could fit on a 128mb usb stick, while windows 7 comes on a DVD, obviously OS9 uses far less ram.

comparisons on the same system should be taken with a pinch of salt. you could get 2 identical machines, install win7 on one and win95 on the other, and a simple number crunching program would run faster on win95 because it uses less ram and less of the processor etc.

a more meaningful performance comparison is comparing windows xp on an average xp rig, vs win7 on an average win 7 rig. it will show that win7 isnt bad at all. plus you get new features.