Today, I took the leap and upgraded my laptop from Windows XP to Windows 7. The experience was much smoother than what I expected. If you Google "Windows XP to Windows 7" you will get warnings that this is not for the faint of heart, or advice to let a professional do it, and on and on.
My experience was not that bad. I have a Dell Latitude D820, which is a Dual Core Processor running at 2.17 GHz with 2.99 GB of usable RAM out of the 4 GB that's physically installed. This is because I have an x86 processor that is only capable of running a 32 bit Operating System. Which, in turn means that my processor can't interpret more than 2.99 GB's of RAM, no matter how much is installed.
Heeding the online warnings (and the warning given by the Win 7 installation disk), I backed up my files using a Clickfree external hard drive (highly recommended). You just plug it in, and a few minutes later, you're done. And, I also made sure that I knew where my license keys were for all of my software that I had either downloaded from the Internet or installed via a disk. This is important for XP users, since this upgrade WILL NOT keep your programs installed.
Next, I popped the Win 7 disk in, rebooted, and began the installation. If you are running Windows Vista, you use the standard installation which keeps all of your files and programs in place. But for XP owners, you choose "Custom" install and Win 7 will do a clean install on your computer. Now, what was NEVER mentioned by ANY website that I found about this installation is the fact that Win 7 actually backs up all of your old Win XP files and places them in a folder called Windows Old (or something to that affect). These files were accessible once the installation was completed. I could literally drag and drop files from that folder into my current Win 7 folders without issue. I could also restore my files using the Clickfree external drive, although in almost every instance, I needed to tell it where I wanted to place the files upon restore. This was due to the fact that my User Profile folder had a different name in Win 7 than I did in Win XP.
Feeling confident that all of my important documents had been safely stored on the Clickfree device, I opted to delete the Windows Old folder. This is a personally choice, but after the Win 7 install, I only had about 9 GB of free space on the hard drive (which is only 75 GB's to begin with). After the deletion of the old files from the hard drive, I had 56 free GB's. Much better. Don't cry for me, though. The Clickfree drive is 250 GB's and only costs $80 on Amazon, right now. Plus, I have a 150 GB external Iomega drive that sits attached to my docking station.
The only real hassle of upgrading from XP to Win 7 is reinstalling all of your software, which is mainly just time consuming. Plus, feeling confident enough to restore files like your outlook.pst (Outlook email) or Quicken backups which contain legacy data that you are going to want to use in the new operating system. Typically, it's just a matter of locating the files on your external hard drive (or Windows Old folder), placing somewhere in the new file structure, then pointing the software to it in the Options menu.
All in all, the experience was pleasant. And, more importantly, I actually think I'm going to like Win 7.
NOTE: I also wanted to throw out there that I had Microsoft Office 2003 on my XP system and read conflicting info online about its compatibility with Windows 7. I am here to say, that it runs fine on Windows 7, in my case. So, hopefully the same will be true for you.
My experience was not that bad. I have a Dell Latitude D820, which is a Dual Core Processor running at 2.17 GHz with 2.99 GB of usable RAM out of the 4 GB that's physically installed. This is because I have an x86 processor that is only capable of running a 32 bit Operating System. Which, in turn means that my processor can't interpret more than 2.99 GB's of RAM, no matter how much is installed.
Heeding the online warnings (and the warning given by the Win 7 installation disk), I backed up my files using a Clickfree external hard drive (highly recommended). You just plug it in, and a few minutes later, you're done. And, I also made sure that I knew where my license keys were for all of my software that I had either downloaded from the Internet or installed via a disk. This is important for XP users, since this upgrade WILL NOT keep your programs installed.
Next, I popped the Win 7 disk in, rebooted, and began the installation. If you are running Windows Vista, you use the standard installation which keeps all of your files and programs in place. But for XP owners, you choose "Custom" install and Win 7 will do a clean install on your computer. Now, what was NEVER mentioned by ANY website that I found about this installation is the fact that Win 7 actually backs up all of your old Win XP files and places them in a folder called Windows Old (or something to that affect). These files were accessible once the installation was completed. I could literally drag and drop files from that folder into my current Win 7 folders without issue. I could also restore my files using the Clickfree external drive, although in almost every instance, I needed to tell it where I wanted to place the files upon restore. This was due to the fact that my User Profile folder had a different name in Win 7 than I did in Win XP.
Feeling confident that all of my important documents had been safely stored on the Clickfree device, I opted to delete the Windows Old folder. This is a personally choice, but after the Win 7 install, I only had about 9 GB of free space on the hard drive (which is only 75 GB's to begin with). After the deletion of the old files from the hard drive, I had 56 free GB's. Much better. Don't cry for me, though. The Clickfree drive is 250 GB's and only costs $80 on Amazon, right now. Plus, I have a 150 GB external Iomega drive that sits attached to my docking station.
The only real hassle of upgrading from XP to Win 7 is reinstalling all of your software, which is mainly just time consuming. Plus, feeling confident enough to restore files like your outlook.pst (Outlook email) or Quicken backups which contain legacy data that you are going to want to use in the new operating system. Typically, it's just a matter of locating the files on your external hard drive (or Windows Old folder), placing somewhere in the new file structure, then pointing the software to it in the Options menu.
All in all, the experience was pleasant. And, more importantly, I actually think I'm going to like Win 7.
NOTE: I also wanted to throw out there that I had Microsoft Office 2003 on my XP system and read conflicting info online about its compatibility with Windows 7. I am here to say, that it runs fine on Windows 7, in my case. So, hopefully the same will be true for you.
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