In The Real World
How it happens on the streets
Tuesday 27 October 2009, 1:44 PM
Is Windows 7 better than Vista on (Slightly) Older Hardware?
I have one solitary customer who wanted the latest version of Windows installed (I do have other customers but none want Windows 7) on his HP/Compaq Presario R3000 Intel Celeron laptop as soon as Windows 7 became available. As this machine is 4 or 5 years old, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to see whether Win 7 REALLY works well on hardware that's lacking some muscle. What follows is a short account of what took place.
This laptop had Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3, so there was no direct upgrade path. Not a bad thing really, as this would mean a totally clean installation of Win7 and therefore no question as to whether "junk" from the old installation was causing any problems. This model of laptop has 256 MB of RAM built-in and a single user-accessible memory slot for expansion which, according to a data sheet downloaded from HP, will accept up to 1 GB of RAM. So when I pre-ordered Windows 7 Home Premium, I also ordered a 1 GB PC333 SODIMM memory module. My customer Ian, a recently retired park keeper, is not too tech savvy, especially with regards to computing. But he has a fairly logical mind and is a good thinker, so he had already taken the time to back up all his digital photos and a few office documents to an external hard drive. He hadn't sussed out how to back up his e-mail from Thunderbird, so when I got the laptop from him I decided to pop the hard disk onto my desktop (Ubuntu 9.04) PC on a 2.5 to 3.5 inch IDE adapter and back up the "Documents and Settings" folder from the laptop.
So to the actual installation. For convenience, when I had backed up the Docs n Setts folder, I re-partitioned the laptop drive from my PC using GParted and formatted as NTFS, then I copied the backed up stuff back onto the laptop hard drive in a folder called "Old Stuff". Then I returned the drive back to the laptop, installed the extra 1 GB RAM and started up with the Windows 7 32 bit DVD in the drive. Interestingly, as some RAM is shared for graphics (ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 IGP) the total RAM available is now 1.1 GB. The basic installation was smooth and painless and took just over 35 minutes to get to a working desktop. This seemed OK even though partitioning and formatting had been done earlier. However, the graphics was driver-less, as was the High Definition Audio. No sound, and cartoon graphics was just a bit of a shocker! This isn't the latest hardware but also not so old as to be forgotten, so why no Radeon 9000 IGP or Hi Def audio? Do Microsoft still want people to buy the latest hardware despite claiming that Win7 is more lightweight? Do they want to ANNOY us into hardware upgrades by making it hard to get certain slightly older devices working knowing as they do that Win7 will only get slower through time in the "automatic updates & upgrades" process? So comes the merry dance of finding and downloading suitable drivers.
Before connecting to the Internet from the new Windows 7 installation, I decided to see how Ubuntu would support the hardware, so I rummaged about for a Live CD but could only find Ubuntu 8.04 in my home-made collection of CD's. This is almost a year and a half old but I booted to it anyway. What do you imagine was going to happen? Can you guess? Of course you can - everything on this laptop worked correctly including the Hi Def sound and the 9000 IGP graphics which also had the correct wide screen resolution automatically set. Why is a year-and-a-half-old Linux based distro RUNNING FROM CD better than the shiny new Windows 7 installation with regards to hardware support? You decide for yourself.
Satisfied that the hardware is working (my Live CD verified that), I re-booted back to Windows 7 to browse the HP/Compaq website to try to find drivers for the sound and graphics. No problem connecting to my CAT 5 network. Soon we were able to search the HP site, find the laptop model and then search for drivers based on operating system. Windows 7 is in the list of operating systems so we selected that and clicked "Search". As you might expect there were no drivers whatsoever for Windows 7 for this laptop. We ran the search again selecting "Windows Vista" this time. Still no drivers for this laptop. Only when we searched for Windows XP drivers did we get the list of drivers for this laptop. The necessary driver installation packs for graphics and sound were downloaded. These had to be run in Windows XP compatibility mode (I chose Windows XP SP2 and SP3 modes and found no difference) as they wouldn't work running directly. The sound began to work (I love some of the new exclamation sounds when you click something stupid) as did the graphics, but after every reboot the ATI Control Panel causes a Windows compatibility message to come up. This has to be clicked on to get rid of it every time you start the machine but the graphics on wide screen resolution continues to work satisfactorily. Since installing the sound and graphics drivers in Windows XP compatibility mode, the boot-up time has increased considerably. It takes almost twice as long to boot up as it had done before the XP sound and graphics drivers were installed. If this were my computer and for some unknown reason I wanted Win 7, I'd be really annoyed by this. Having to install drivers in Windows XP mode is NOT annoying as this only needs to be done once, but a slow boot-up is with you each and every time you use the machine, and that REALLY IS annoying.
Having already used Thunderbird, old Ian was in a better position than a lot of ex Windows XP users as far as getting his existing mail and settings onto his new Windows 7 installation was concerned. All we had to do was to copy the Application Data\Thunderbird and the Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird data from his backed-up profile folder to his new one. A slight problem was that the Windows 7 profile folders are slightly different from the Windows XP ones. Not only are the new profiles in the C:\Users\Username folder rather than C:\Documents and Settings\Username but the folders inside \Username are slightly different as well. For instance, there's now an "App Data" folder. So the simplest way to determine where to copy the Thunderbird data was to make a new mail account (I set up a temporary one on my local Dovecot IMAP server) so that all folders would be created in the correct locations, then I could copy the backed up data to those locations. After that, the Thunderbird mail profile had all his old e-mail in it, Lightning calendar extension, and POP3 account login details ready to go.
By the time I was at the stage of copying his old Thunderbird profile to the new system, Ian had called round full of excitement - like a child who knows a present is coming his way and who can't think of anything else and can't exhibit a modicum of patience. And, in my attempts at being warm, friendly and human, rather than geeky, nerdy and mechanical, I invited him to see what I was doing even though in my heart of hearts I just wished he'd have waited another hour or two. As this valued customer hovered over my left shoulder, I came across one of the security changes in Windows 7. I couldn't browse system protected folders including those in the user's profile folder, even when running Windows Explorer "As Administrator". I could switch off the "Hide protected system folders" as one could in XP and Vista, and I could see hidden folders, but I could not get into them. At this stage I was thinking of telling Ian to change his name to "Chip" to assist him to feel right at home on my shoulder, but I refrained and instead started to panic because I couldn't find how to get into those Application Data folders. So in a stroke of pure genius, I told him that was to prevent human error damage to the system, so I'd have to re-boot to my Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD and do the data copying from there. I did and it all worked perfectly.
After starting back into Windows 7 with all e-mail in tact, Ian asked if he would have been better using the built-in Microsoft mail client. It was then that I looked for it and found none. Microsoft have included NO MAIL CLIENT with Windows 7 Home Premium! He smiled and yet simultaneously grimmaced as he realised that he'd previously made the right choice with Thunderbird but wondered why a free third party package was better for such a new purchase as his Win7 operating system.
A few more formalities had to be handled such as anti-virus software (AVG Free works perfectly), a user space browser (Firefox installed without a hitch), and office software (OpenOffice.Org installed OK but took a long time to start on its first run - subsequently started normally).
Is Windows 7 the O/S that Vista ought to have been? Well, in terms of performance on this particular hardware, Windows 7 is just the same as Vista. With loads more RAM than the old Windows XP installation had, the machine is still much slower than it had been. Absolutely nothing is "snappy". Having said that, Ian swiped the system out of my sweaty palms before I could spend any time with the finer details of the software so system optimization may yet pay dividends (or it may not).
Is Windows 7 better on less beefy hardware than Windows Vista was? From this experience I can honestly say that it isn't. The system overhead seems to be the same on Vista as on 7. Businesses will still have to shell out loads of money on hardware upgrades to get older machines to work with Windows 7. Or they'll have to buy new machines. And yet, all the hype from Microsoft is that 7 will reduce the need for that. Not true.
Windows 7 MIGHT be a better performer than Vista on NEW HARDWARE, although even that's doubtful, but it certainly doesn't seem to be any better on hardware that's only a few years old. What do you think? Has Microsoft only recycled the Vista code to get the public to buy 7 in the mistaken belief that it's better than Vista when it's actually only Vista with a few cosmetic changes? Or did they really release a new product?
This laptop had Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3, so there was no direct upgrade path. Not a bad thing really, as this would mean a totally clean installation of Win7 and therefore no question as to whether "junk" from the old installation was causing any problems. This model of laptop has 256 MB of RAM built-in and a single user-accessible memory slot for expansion which, according to a data sheet downloaded from HP, will accept up to 1 GB of RAM. So when I pre-ordered Windows 7 Home Premium, I also ordered a 1 GB PC333 SODIMM memory module. My customer Ian, a recently retired park keeper, is not too tech savvy, especially with regards to computing. But he has a fairly logical mind and is a good thinker, so he had already taken the time to back up all his digital photos and a few office documents to an external hard drive. He hadn't sussed out how to back up his e-mail from Thunderbird, so when I got the laptop from him I decided to pop the hard disk onto my desktop (Ubuntu 9.04) PC on a 2.5 to 3.5 inch IDE adapter and back up the "Documents and Settings" folder from the laptop.
So to the actual installation. For convenience, when I had backed up the Docs n Setts folder, I re-partitioned the laptop drive from my PC using GParted and formatted as NTFS, then I copied the backed up stuff back onto the laptop hard drive in a folder called "Old Stuff". Then I returned the drive back to the laptop, installed the extra 1 GB RAM and started up with the Windows 7 32 bit DVD in the drive. Interestingly, as some RAM is shared for graphics (ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 IGP) the total RAM available is now 1.1 GB. The basic installation was smooth and painless and took just over 35 minutes to get to a working desktop. This seemed OK even though partitioning and formatting had been done earlier. However, the graphics was driver-less, as was the High Definition Audio. No sound, and cartoon graphics was just a bit of a shocker! This isn't the latest hardware but also not so old as to be forgotten, so why no Radeon 9000 IGP or Hi Def audio? Do Microsoft still want people to buy the latest hardware despite claiming that Win7 is more lightweight? Do they want to ANNOY us into hardware upgrades by making it hard to get certain slightly older devices working knowing as they do that Win7 will only get slower through time in the "automatic updates & upgrades" process? So comes the merry dance of finding and downloading suitable drivers.
Before connecting to the Internet from the new Windows 7 installation, I decided to see how Ubuntu would support the hardware, so I rummaged about for a Live CD but could only find Ubuntu 8.04 in my home-made collection of CD's. This is almost a year and a half old but I booted to it anyway. What do you imagine was going to happen? Can you guess? Of course you can - everything on this laptop worked correctly including the Hi Def sound and the 9000 IGP graphics which also had the correct wide screen resolution automatically set. Why is a year-and-a-half-old Linux based distro RUNNING FROM CD better than the shiny new Windows 7 installation with regards to hardware support? You decide for yourself.
Satisfied that the hardware is working (my Live CD verified that), I re-booted back to Windows 7 to browse the HP/Compaq website to try to find drivers for the sound and graphics. No problem connecting to my CAT 5 network. Soon we were able to search the HP site, find the laptop model and then search for drivers based on operating system. Windows 7 is in the list of operating systems so we selected that and clicked "Search". As you might expect there were no drivers whatsoever for Windows 7 for this laptop. We ran the search again selecting "Windows Vista" this time. Still no drivers for this laptop. Only when we searched for Windows XP drivers did we get the list of drivers for this laptop. The necessary driver installation packs for graphics and sound were downloaded. These had to be run in Windows XP compatibility mode (I chose Windows XP SP2 and SP3 modes and found no difference) as they wouldn't work running directly. The sound began to work (I love some of the new exclamation sounds when you click something stupid) as did the graphics, but after every reboot the ATI Control Panel causes a Windows compatibility message to come up. This has to be clicked on to get rid of it every time you start the machine but the graphics on wide screen resolution continues to work satisfactorily. Since installing the sound and graphics drivers in Windows XP compatibility mode, the boot-up time has increased considerably. It takes almost twice as long to boot up as it had done before the XP sound and graphics drivers were installed. If this were my computer and for some unknown reason I wanted Win 7, I'd be really annoyed by this. Having to install drivers in Windows XP mode is NOT annoying as this only needs to be done once, but a slow boot-up is with you each and every time you use the machine, and that REALLY IS annoying.
Having already used Thunderbird, old Ian was in a better position than a lot of ex Windows XP users as far as getting his existing mail and settings onto his new Windows 7 installation was concerned. All we had to do was to copy the Application Data\Thunderbird and the Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird data from his backed-up profile folder to his new one. A slight problem was that the Windows 7 profile folders are slightly different from the Windows XP ones. Not only are the new profiles in the C:\Users\Username folder rather than C:\Documents and Settings\Username but the folders inside \Username are slightly different as well. For instance, there's now an "App Data" folder. So the simplest way to determine where to copy the Thunderbird data was to make a new mail account (I set up a temporary one on my local Dovecot IMAP server) so that all folders would be created in the correct locations, then I could copy the backed up data to those locations. After that, the Thunderbird mail profile had all his old e-mail in it, Lightning calendar extension, and POP3 account login details ready to go.
By the time I was at the stage of copying his old Thunderbird profile to the new system, Ian had called round full of excitement - like a child who knows a present is coming his way and who can't think of anything else and can't exhibit a modicum of patience. And, in my attempts at being warm, friendly and human, rather than geeky, nerdy and mechanical, I invited him to see what I was doing even though in my heart of hearts I just wished he'd have waited another hour or two. As this valued customer hovered over my left shoulder, I came across one of the security changes in Windows 7. I couldn't browse system protected folders including those in the user's profile folder, even when running Windows Explorer "As Administrator". I could switch off the "Hide protected system folders" as one could in XP and Vista, and I could see hidden folders, but I could not get into them. At this stage I was thinking of telling Ian to change his name to "Chip" to assist him to feel right at home on my shoulder, but I refrained and instead started to panic because I couldn't find how to get into those Application Data folders. So in a stroke of pure genius, I told him that was to prevent human error damage to the system, so I'd have to re-boot to my Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD and do the data copying from there. I did and it all worked perfectly.
After starting back into Windows 7 with all e-mail in tact, Ian asked if he would have been better using the built-in Microsoft mail client. It was then that I looked for it and found none. Microsoft have included NO MAIL CLIENT with Windows 7 Home Premium! He smiled and yet simultaneously grimmaced as he realised that he'd previously made the right choice with Thunderbird but wondered why a free third party package was better for such a new purchase as his Win7 operating system.
A few more formalities had to be handled such as anti-virus software (AVG Free works perfectly), a user space browser (Firefox installed without a hitch), and office software (OpenOffice.Org installed OK but took a long time to start on its first run - subsequently started normally).
Is Windows 7 the O/S that Vista ought to have been? Well, in terms of performance on this particular hardware, Windows 7 is just the same as Vista. With loads more RAM than the old Windows XP installation had, the machine is still much slower than it had been. Absolutely nothing is "snappy". Having said that, Ian swiped the system out of my sweaty palms before I could spend any time with the finer details of the software so system optimization may yet pay dividends (or it may not).
Is Windows 7 better on less beefy hardware than Windows Vista was? From this experience I can honestly say that it isn't. The system overhead seems to be the same on Vista as on 7. Businesses will still have to shell out loads of money on hardware upgrades to get older machines to work with Windows 7. Or they'll have to buy new machines. And yet, all the hype from Microsoft is that 7 will reduce the need for that. Not true.
Windows 7 MIGHT be a better performer than Vista on NEW HARDWARE, although even that's doubtful, but it certainly doesn't seem to be any better on hardware that's only a few years old. What do you think? Has Microsoft only recycled the Vista code to get the public to buy 7 in the mistaken belief that it's better than Vista when it's actually only Vista with a few cosmetic changes? Or did they really release a new product?
PreviousComments on this post
This comment has been deleted at the users request
This comment has been deleted at the users request
Win7 is Vista re-deux. Supposedly a new and streamlined OS, not really. Win7 is missing some "features" from Vista eg. Windows Mail, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery. While the debate whether or not these were "features" is academic they are missing. There is no compelling reason to "upgrade" to Win7 if your not a fan of Vista. Win XP was and still is a stable 32bit operating system. If you really want a 64bit OS there are many alternatives such as Linux. Yeah yeah I know that everyone is tired of hearing about Linux but the price is right FREE. I believe the debacle that is Win7 will push many users to try alternatives such as Mac or Linux.
I love the way running Linux live (mint is my choice) just lays a windows installation free to roam and shift data around. I liked the e-mail solution.
Windows 7 does run on hardware that Vista would cripple. The intel atom seems to cope with it very well. The intel celeron integrated architecture seems to benefit. as well.
When I first installed 7 on my acer one, I just let the 1 gb of ram handle things for a while. I managed to run a duel monitor set up with a spread sheet, a .avi movie (2 ish hours was 980MB) and many tabs open in firefox with lots of re-freshing and page loading. It coped with the tasks well only kicking up a fuss when I tried to stream the i player so it was in a window side by side with the movie on the external monitor.
Now I use a 2GB SD card dedicated for 'ready boost'. This really does work well and makes the little machine perform more like it has 3 GB of ram.
I also installed 7 on a vista running advent 5311. It ran in to a little trouble with the video driver but getting into the properties where the driver should have been was a far more useful experience than it is with XP and windows fetched and offered me a driver whilst telling me it had solved a problem for me.
I think they are on to a winner with this one, and at long last there a decent ads emerging showing people the OS.
Oh sorry, you said older hardware! Yes it does run better. I've installed it on a 2.4ghz fully blown pentium 4 laptop, and an equivilent AMD athlon laptop chip (acer ferrari 3200). Both where 'upgraded' to 1gb of ram and both worked well. Vista just wouldn't have it at all with these older laptops.
