I have been testing the latest version of Windows recently - Windows 7, which has been released as a beta (test version), available form the Microsoft website here. It should be available for download for another week or two. I have in installed on a laptop and a desktop at the moment and have found it to be mainly stable. I have had one or two problems, mainly to do with drivers for older legacy components.
Other than that, I have found that I like the new interface. It is not ready to test as an upgrade to a working system, but if you are fortunate enough to have an older machine lying around gathering dust then it may be worth having a go with it.
It seems to be reasonably stable, and in line with Microsoft claims, does not seem to use as may resources and Vista. Perhaps this is actually vista as it should have been, as some commentators have been saying.
The laptop has a core duo (not a core 2 duo - this was before they were released) and 2GB ram. The desktop has a P4 processor, although it again has 2GB ram. As with vista the more ram that you can add the better. I think the recommended minimum for Windows 7 is 1GB and a 1GHz processor (so some PIII processors may just scrape in there, but I don't know that I would want to run Windows 7 with a PIII).
A would suggest that a more reasonable minimum would be a P4 processor (preferably a dual core P4D) or above and 2GB ram - about the same spec as my test desktop, which is quite happily streaming music from the laptop and playing it (it is using 14% processor and 36% memory).
If you do decide to take the plunge, leave some feedback.
happy testing
Graham
1 comment:
Well G I'm just installing the beta under virtualization on the Mac should be fun! Gotta be better than Vista! Cheers B
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