Windows 7
I have installed Windows 7 on my dell latitude xt in hopes it would speed up my system.
I stayed put through the plague commonly known as Vista. The main reason being Windows XP was a mess until the first service pack was released. It’s always better to not waste time and let others endure the head aches.
When it comes to my opinion on Windows 7 the answer might be surprising. I am pretty impressed with its performance. It has ran very well on my system with the only problem being a lack of drivers for the Tablet functionality of my Laptop.
Lets take a look at some bench mark tests done by www.maximumpc.com
| Windows XP (x86) | Windows Vista (x64) | Windows 7 (x64) | XP to Win 7 | Vista to Win 7 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| File Transfer(small) (sec) |
|||||
| Download | 46.9 | 56.3 | 21.8 | +53.52% | +61.28% |
| Upload | 20.5 | 16.5 | 16.9 | +17.56% | -2.42% |
| File Transfer (large) (sec) | |||||
| Download | 46.2 | 4.3 | 4.1 | +91.13% | +4.65% |
| Upload | 4.9 | 4.6 | 3.9 | +20.41% | +15.22% |
| Application Benchmark | |||||
| Photoshop (sec) | 141 | 127 | 140 | +0.71% | -10.24% |
Windows 7 had the fastest download of a small and large file along with the fastest upload of a large file. So Windows 7 looks like the best choice in regards to networking. It did a little better with Photoshop than xp but vista was the fastest.
My Recommendations:
New Computer:
Use Windows 7 if you buy a new computer with Windows 7 pre-installed on it. You should not have any problems.
Vista to Windows 7
Make the switch. You will not likely run into any issues with drivers or hardware , and it should perform faster.
XP to Windows 7
Make sure all of your hardware is supported. For example I am having issues with drivers considering there are not any Tablet drivers available for the Latitude XT. Windows offers a XP Migration utility to ease the process of changing over. I cannot attest to its quality considering I reformatted my hard drive.
Overall its a very slick interface so upgrade when you can, there is no real rush its only going to get better.
