Upgrade path from XP to beyond

[peachy001]

To be honest, I think some saving up is in order. Although, I have not seen a decent i5 with a new monitor for less than ?600. I know I could go for the i3, but I really only want to do hardware upgrades infrequently. I welcome anyone dropping me a link to any decent site that sells PCs at decent prices. I had even considered getting someone to build one for me, if that would work out cheaper. I fancy Windows 8, as it should out last 7. They have some budget Zoostorm PCs all over in UK, but not sure on them.

 

[Kavu2]

Similar storyline here...but an even older lifeline(2002)...Dell Dim 8250 1.5 Rdram. Tricked out nicely w/tons of legacy s/w & h/w, but it had slowed to a crawl with the passage of time and technology. In attempts to 'extend' the lifespan I bought W8 but it wouldn't install due to new encryption(?) tech requirements....so started looking desperately for cheap W7 install, but it turns out that W7 is more expensive than W8 due to undue paranoia. Finally fate stepped in and whispered in my ear...."move on", as my video graphics card died. And I wasn't going to throw MORE money into the aging computer.

In the meanwhile, I had been using a WP8 HTC 8x for almost a year and the Metro/Modern interface was old hat by now. In essence, I learned W8 on my phone. I edged into a Dell venue 8 Pro tablet and finished out my transition.

So when the video card died and I still needed a PC for more than a tablet could provide with comfort, I got a Lenovo i5 PC from Newegg with all the room for expansion down the road. I've already added more USB 3 ports and Bluetooth. And while not tricked out to the degree the Dim 8250 was, it is INFINITELY faster and doesn't take the ENORMOUS effort to keep safe that XP did.

And the W8 Metro/Modern scary monster thing?....well I find I'm spending more time in Metro than on the Desktop, and look at it now as a Dinosaur. And my old Dim 8250...well I can't believe I ever got anything done at all on it. Life has not skipped a beat in this new Modern, Metro world. And not surprisingly when I look at iPhones/Android phones I see just a sea of Apps to search vainly thru for the task at hand, while Microsoft's vision presents a clean and simple path to get things done.

And something conveniently overlooked by W8 naysayers...you don't even need to EVER go into Metro if you want to live your PC life on the Desktop. And W8.1 will apparently be allowing booting straight to Desktop if that serves your needs best. And with my spouse's W7 at home to compare....W8 is without a doubt, faster and safer hands down. And you can do everything in W8 that you could in W7....it's just shiny and new and may have a different hairdo....and takes a bit of minimal effort. I learned W8 in one day and I'm an old guy

I've moved on and haven't looked back.

 

[peachy001]

Nice post, I think I need to take that route and stop faffing about. Starting to wish my employer offered more overtime!

 

[pankaj981]

Intel Core 2 CPU 2.00 GHz
2GB RAM
256 ATI Radeon X1300PRO (lists it twice)
Western Digital 240 GB hard drive

Those are quite good specs, better than the ones I have installed Windows 7/8.1. To give you an example, I had 8.1 x86 running on an old HP SR1730IL (in-laws PC) w/ the following specs:
Intel Pentium 4 524 HT 3.06 GHz
3 GB 667 MHz DDR2 RAM
Onboard ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics (128 MB shareable)
80 ATA HDD
Windows 7 SP1 Pro x86
MS Office 2007

I had 8.1 on it for a while but for some reason it wasn't activating, had to use my spare Windows 7 licenses. I would say the performance is better than decent on it. My in-laws use it for basic word and excel processing along w/ Skyping and internet surfing and casual HD movie viewing. Shutdown and system restart is only performed when needed, everytime else its put to hibernation, makes the PC boot faster. The performance was definitely somewhat better on 8.1 than 7.

I would suggest, unless you hit a bottleneck you can stick w/ your current specs and upgrade to 7 or 8.1 with minor hiccups (Driver issues for legacy X1300 PRO but would work). Upgrading RAM to 4 GB and Video Card to a DX10+ would definitely help.

 

[stephen_az]

Firstly, I am well aware that this thread may be a request for tech types to square the circle, but hear me out.

I have a very old Del Vostro machine from Around 2007, the machine runs XP at the minute, but I am well aware that come early April MS will stop supporting XP. Now I am highly reluctant to throw away a working PC, and wondered if there was any way of throwing on a newer OS. I realise the size of the task would favour the brave, and a bit of tech savvy would help. Sadly, I possess neither of the aforementioned attributes, although I have curiosity in abundance.

I note that MS are offering some kind of transfer tool to assist users, but I suspect it is for more modern machines.

As if to ramp up the difficulty still further, I also have MS office on their, but no backup disc. It is a legit license, and I need Office for work and study.

So is it possible to keep Office and add a more modern OS to a machine that has seen more Olympic games than Michael Phelps?

In anticipation of some cheapskate comments, I must advise that I am financially challenged, rather than swimming in cash, but reluctant to spend it.

I really think MS is missing a trick here, there are gazillions of users in my boat that don't wanna get rid of working hardware and the associated licenses. MS should consider offer people like me the chance to give 8 a chance. They could have a lower rent version that allowed us MSophiles the opportunity to move on. Overnight they would be able to add huge swathes of users to the Windows 8 headcount.

I understand why they haven't done this thus far, but I have noted other comments on the interweb that seem to suggest people have experimented the install on older hardware than mine, with mixed results.

Finally, don't shoot me down for asking. Oh, and I will post my specs shortly.

No offense but I think you need to do your homework on the subject. Microsoft has hardly missed a trick on this one. Windows 8.x will run easily and with resources to spare on an old netbook (I have done it as have others). If you meet the absolute minimum specs, it will run quite well. They have also already cut licensing fees for end users quite a bit. They are not, however, a charity and there is no reason why they should give things away for free. With respect to a direct upgrade path from XP to 8.X, that is simply not going to happen. There have been three major OS upgrades since XP which have included significant changes throughout the architecture.

 

[Editguy1900]

I upgraded a Asus laptop manufactured in 2007 with similar specs to 8.1 and it runs great. Went from nearly two minute boot time down to twenty seconds. Runs much better than it did with the original OS. Windows 8.1 is an excellent OS. in spite of what naysayers say.

 

[peachy001]

I would suggest, unless you hit a bottleneck you can stick w/ your current specs and upgrade to 7 or 8.1 with minor hiccups (Driver issues for legacy X1300 PRO but would work). Upgrading RAM to 4 GB and Video Card to a DX10+ would definitely help.

can I pick up one of those video cards cheaply? When I took it into a local PC store they looked at me like I was bonkers. However, they are likely top end users.

Also, I reckon that it may be more cost effective to just save up and upgrade the lot, the whole driver issue is one that I don't fancy faffing with. If I fo end up upgrading I can afford to then muck about with the spare machine. Trouble is, I can't risk not being able to use a PC.

 

[peachy001]

No offense but I think you need to do your homework on the subject. Microsoft has hardly missed a trick on this one. Windows 8.x will run easily and with resources to spare on an old netbook (I have done it as have others). .

no offence taken, I appreciate you taking the time to read my question and give me your opinion. I hadn't known anyone that had done it, and to be fair, when I see minimum specs listed I am always quite cautious as to what level of performance can be achieved at those speeds. As for homework, these forums formed part of my homework. When I searched for answers before I tended to drop into forums and sites of real PC geeks, they had the where with all to get out of any mess they got into. The forums here tend to be a bit friendlier and less confrontational, makes asking a silly question feel less silly. I wasn't about to faff about registering on another site, that I would likely not use again, to then get shot down for an impertinent question.
MS may not have missed a trick, but I reckon a lot of the answers on here, including yours, point to the fact that, contrary to the expectations of many, Windows 8 would actually run on older machines. I know they are not a charity, although the philanthropy of Gates sort of actually means they are closer than most businesses. However, there were rumours that they may consider giving 8 away with Bing, as some kind of cut down version. So maybe they could drag a couple of reluctant upgraders along that way. Again, thanks for the contribution, it has helped.

 

[peachy001]

I upgraded a Asus laptop manufactured in 2007 with similar specs to 8.1 and it runs great. Went from nearly two minute boot time down to twenty seconds. Runs much better than it did with the original OS. Windows 8.1 is an excellent OS. in spite of what naysayers say.

Thanks for that, there are a lot of posts here that are filling me with confidence. I am currently favouring the buy new route, and then play about with my old one and do it that way. I need the security blanket of a working machine. Good to hear a lot of people have tried it on old machines and won!

 

[pankaj981]

can I pick up one of those video cards cheaply? When I took it into a local PC store they looked at me like I was bonkers. However, they are likely top end users.

Also, I reckon that it may be more cost effective to just save up and upgrade the lot, the whole driver issue is one that I don't fancy faffing with. If I fo end up upgrading I can afford to then muck about with the spare machine. Trouble is, I can't risk not being able to use a PC.

I would definitely help but before that I would need the specs of your current PC's motherboard. I would say, download a program called Speccy (shows detailed specs of all peripherals connected to your machine) and post your existing motherboard details from it. Also do mention how much are you willing to spend. Also what do you currently use your machine for? (gaming, work, word processing, etc..)

 

[fdalbor]

I just bought a new HP Envy 23 touch screen with 8.0 on it (ugraded to 8.1) and it is fine. But I decided to keep my old Compaq desktop so I bought the full version (you can't use the upgrade on XP) of 8.1 and put it on the Compaq. It only has 2GB of ram a 300GB hard drive a Nvdia 6150LE video board and a single core Athlon64 3.8. It runs great under 8.1, much better than it did under XP(32bit) and I am a big XP fan. I think 8.1 will run on just about anything as long as you have a 64bit processor and 2 GB of memory.

 

[peachy001]

I would definitely help but before that I would need the specs of your current PC's motherboard. I would say, download a program called Speccy (shows detailed specs of all peripherals connected to your machine) and post your existing motherboard details from it. Also do mention how much are you willing to spend. Also what do you currently use your machine for? (gaming, work, word processing, etc..)

I will have a look. Use it mainly for work.

 

[pankaj981]

I will have a look. Use it mainly for work.

As long as your work doesn't involve anything that needs a powerful machine, you should be fine

 

[peachy001]

Nothing major at the moment. I will hunt down those other specs.