Fresh Windows XP vs Fresh Windows 7

[Antero90]

So I had my desktop in dual boot for about a year and a half. To keep things organized I partitioned the drive into 3. One for Windows 7, another for Windows XP and the other for general stuff.

All worked fine up until Windows 7 started to grow in size abnormally, it got to a point where I had to unsinstall Office because the space just got smaller and smaller and smaller.

Windows XP has worked fine so far, it also has some issues with space, but it's more related to me making it's partition a bit too small.

Right now im getting a bit tired of not being able to use my desktop. Windows 7 keeps complaining about space while Windows XP also has space issues.

Im considering going back to the «One OS to rule them all», but im kinda undecided if I pickup Windows 7 or stay at XP. One thing I will change this time is the version, im installing the 32 bit version because of RAM and also because I got the laptop and it comes with Windows 7 64.

Any opinions?

[immortius]

Win 7 does tend to grow over time as it picks up updates. Try running the Disk Cleanup utility that comes with it, it makes it reasonably simple to remove some crash dumps and things you don't need, and on the More Options tab you can get rid of the older system restore points. Also, turning off hibernate frees several gig apparently.

In general my recommendation is if you have 2GB of memory or less, stay with XP, if you have 4GBs or more, Win 7 (64bit).

[Antero90]

In general my recommendation is if you have 2GB of memory or less, stay with XP, if you have 4GBs or more, Win 7 (64bit).

That would make it quite simple, since I never got to upgrade to 4 GB, so there is not much to upgrade from XP to 7 in 32-bit? One of the reasons I had to revert to XP was because some older hardware does not have drivers for 64 bit. On the other hand Win 7 does have DX 10 and my card is DX 10 as well, that is probably what is holding me from dumping 7.

[Chainsaws]

XP is about ten years old now, TEN YEARS! Windows 7 is a far better operating system and is a lot better supported.

I went with the choice of going for 7 and dealing with any driver issues (although with anything semi-modern you just install and it finds the drivers for you). There are some annoying incompatibilities with older (and not so very old eg Thief 3) games. If that bothers you I would still go for the dual boot option with Win 7 as my primary OS (there's always XP mode but ... bleh)

64 bit XP is a definite no, it's a horrendous OS. Regardless of your memory amount I would install 64 bit 7 as it future proofs you and I haven't encountered any downside to it yet.

If you do choose XP MS just announced that it will be supported (security update wise) until 2014 so you have a couple of years to save up for hardware

Of course YMMV but that's my 2 cents worth on the topic.

[immortius]

It is worth avoiding 32-bit version of Win 7/Vista due to video memory shenanigans. It is unfortunate you have devices without 64-bit drivers though.

[Machine]

The Machine uses 64 Bit Windows 7 and has no problems, you would do well to follow his lead.

[Antero90]

The Machine uses 64 Bit Windows 7 and has no problems, you would do well to follow his lead.

The voooooice..... muuuuust.... ooooobeeeey.....


*Little voice in the corner* Hey, if you are going rambo at least do a backup huh?

[NeuroFunkeR]

it depends on your rig i say, if you got a dualcore or more processor, with atleast 2gb ram, go with win 7, but if you still use singlecore for some reason, then XP makes more sence.

[Thebos]

I have one PC originally built for Win9Se (circa 2000). 1.8Ghz AMD Athlon, 768M of SDR RAM. Win 7 32-bit performs as well as XP when only running several programs. Added benefit for Win 7 is some peripherals that had driver issues no longer have driver issues- they simply work.

[lightfoot]

To ensure that nothing runs at more than the speed you are used to, you need to install a new windows version whenever you buy a new PC. You don't want to get frightened by the speed of your new rig.

So many people who tried Vista a few days, but 'downgraded' again. I feel a bit more tempted to give 7 a try, but not too much. Yes, they say that it is sleeker than Vista, and yes the drivers, but I think I can resist. I wouldn't pay a cent for it, and even if I got it for free, it has political, aesthetical, and practical points against it. (For example, I simply don't like the way they move stuff around and re-organise with every version. Feels like in a supermarket, where you are supposed to run thru all the shop looking for stuff.)

I guess it is possible to dual-boot into XP OR seven somehow. Likely is a pain to install such a system. Well maybe not, the bootloaders that come with modern linux distros can do such things, maybe even with ease. Space is cheap, and if you had several HDDs you won't even have to juggle several partitions.

I mean, there are more alternatives, you possibly could have both. Maybe the easiest way for that is to go triple-boot and have eg. Ubuntu or Linux Mint install the bootloader as last step.
You asked for opinions, well XP is relyable and I am used to it. Guess I will have to switch one day, but if I felt like adapting to a new system, I'd rather choose to get more accustomed to the universe of free software.

Best OS Micro$oft ever did, was Commodore BASIC anyway.

[FixXxeR]

I was hesitant to move away from XP to Win 7 so when I updated my rig I put it on a dual boot for a while and had the same games / programs installed on each OS - after a while I disabled the XP on boot and went with Win7, a little while after that I took XP off entirely.

Never had a problem with Win7, its been a pleasure to use.

[immortius]

I found that I could use my scanner (which lacks Win 7 drivers) Win 7's via XP Mode. This is basically a virtual machine running XP, only available in the higher-end versions of Win 7 though.

[Moses2k]

Permit me to be the voice of reason.

You should run Haiku. You'll boot fast and won't be able to run any games because there aren't any for it! It follows that you will be more productive.

[Machine]

Moses with an "off the wall" niche comment? never!

[Moses2k]

Zany, I know.