Update: I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (I got a good deal through my kids’ county public schools Microsoft purchase program, under $100 for the upgrade version). Everything is going just fine, no driver issues at all. Tablet functionality is intact. I did have to reinstall the apps, but I used Windows Easy Transfer before the upgrade and when I restored from that, just about all my settings and MS Office configuration was restored.
One small benefit is now it uses all 4G of memory. It’s interesting that they set it up with a 64-bit-capable processor but not a 64-bit version of XP.
So in summary, it’s not at all the same as buying a new machine but it is an improvement, mostly, and will stave off the desire to buy a new laptop for a while.
64-bit XP was basically 64-bit Server 2003 reconfigured with the normal desktop setup/services. It was poorly supported from the driver side especially with consumer-grade peripherals.
As said, 64bit XP was not really XP, and a bit of an orphan overall. They did you a favour by not giving it to you.
Your response saved me from searching to see whether your CPU was 64bit or not, which was hugely more significant a factor than anything else mentioned in the thread. The extra memory availability from 3.4gb to 4gb will all be soaked up by Win7 itself, but you now have the ability to directly address almost unlimited memory - so you can go to 8gb or 16gb (motherboard allowing).
Newer hardware can jump from your existing 1.5GHz CPU to a quad or two quad 3.x GHz cpu, but frankly the increment there as seen by the general user is minimal. Available memory and hard disk speed are where it’s at.
The processor is pretty slow, but atleast u got dual core.
The main benefit of 7 besides stability is aero peek, the interface is simply way better with aero for small cramped laptop displays when doing a lot of multitasking.
Main issue with old laptops is slow harddrive, if you could somehow get an ssd into the thing it would still be surprisingly snappy with an old core duo processor, after all, an ssd would effectively make it close to a low end macbook air of past years.
For all the bitching and moaning I’ve been doing about Windows lately, at least Microsoft copied one thing right: hardware-accelerated window manager. With XP if a program froze or hung it would freeze the display in the ungodly white screen. Now with Vista and 7 at least you are able to minimize that bratty app and work on other things and see your desktop.
