Worth the effort to upgrade vista to 7?

[pinchthings]

I'm running Vista home premium 64 on my home gaming machine. Through school, I could get an upgrade to win7 pro64 for about 70$, which is pretty reasonable compared to retail. I don't have any complaints about vista right now...few stability issues, pretty fast, runs my games. My only concern is that so many people migrated from vista to win7, that I might not be able to depend on future software/hardware drivers/etc supporting vista as much as they will win7.

So are the new features/speed improvements worth the cost and potential headache of breaking drivers/game compatability....or "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

In case it makes any difference to your answer, here are my specs:

Core i7 920
6GB DDR3 ram
Radeon 6950
Asus P6T Intel X58

 

[lxskllr]

I don't think so. I prefer Vista, but if I were to get a computer with Win7, I wouldn't bother downgrading. They're close enough to the same. If you want a new Windows, wait until Win8

 

[Red Squirrel]

If Vista is working fine for you then I would not bother. Vista had lot of issues, mostly the fact that it was retardedly power hungry but with a Core i7 you're most likely fine. If you went with 7 you would maybe see a slight performance boost and that's about it.

Though at that price I would maybe buy it if you do plan to install it eventually either on that PC, or another one.

 

[gmaster456]

If Vista is running fine for you I wouldn't bother unless you need/want specific features not offered in Vista.

 

[Matt1970]

I used to think my Vista was ok until I installed 7. It really is that much quicker, espcially on startup, shutdown and sleep/wakeup.

 

[sunny4691]

I have used both and i can say that windows7 is pretty fast than vista, you will see faster booting and shutting down times.

 

[cheez]

So are the new features/speed improvements worth the cost and potential headache of breaking drivers/game compatability....or "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

You have answered your own question. It it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.:thumbsup:

The chances are you will run into software compatibility issues and thing will not work the way you are used to. This will take away your work and time.

Windows 7 is a fail anyway.

I would wait till how the Win 8 turns out.

:sneaky:

 

[PowerYoga]

win 7 is better in every way shape and form. Good enough to warrant a full wipe and reinstall and it has the same or better compatibility with all current generation games compared to vista.

There's no reason to use vista. It's shit.

 

[lxskllr]

win 7 is better in every way shape and form. Good enough to warrant a full wipe and reinstall and it has the same or better compatibility with all current generation games compared to vista.

There's no reason to use vista. It's shit.

BS. They're virtually the same O/S.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Windows Vista version #= 6.0
Windows 7 version #= 6.1

I am contemplating not using the vista x64 ultimate and buying 7 for my next build, but 7 on my laptop feels exactly like Vista.

 

[PowerYoga]

BS. They're virtually the same O/S.

You mean same framework? Why yes they are!

Windows 7 is faster and less bloated, which already makes it better by a far shot. There's a lot of subtle differences between the 2 OSes as well.

 

[lxskllr]

You mean same framework? Why yes they are!

Windows 7 is faster and less bloated, which already makes it better by a far shot. There's a lot of subtle differences between the 2 OSes as well.

There's subtle differences; mainly the interface, but the performance is virtually identical. I benched them both ;^)

 

[PowerYoga]

There's security related features as well, I don't remember the exact details but I'm sure some reviews online cover them.

I benched both OSes and win7 is faster on all my machines, especially on my old dinky laptop. Benchmark results within the OS itself are unremarklable, showing maybe 1-5% increase across the board (except for CPU which tied) for win7. Depending on how much of a benchmark junkie you are, this may or may not matter to you.

Boot speed for win7 is much faster though.

 

[lxskllr]

I had Win7 being 13 seconds faster on bootup. That's not a deal breaker imo.

 

[PowerYoga]

Mine was over half a minute and over a minute on my laptop. Either way there's plenty of reviews out there and you're not the one that needs convincing.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Disregarding price, I would never use Vista over Win7. It is better in every way, even if the difference is small.

If you factor in price, then $50 would be worth spending to me. $70 is close enough I would probably pay it if I had the money to spare. I would not pay full retail though, with Win8 so close.

 

[Sulaco]

I was one of those people who used Vista since the RC, and for the 3 or so years I used it, I never really experienced any problems with it. Yes, the UAC was overbearing and there were some initial driver conflicts, but other than that I never experienced anything to deserve the mountains of hate heaped on it. Maybe it's my years with Windows ME, but I can't put Vista anywhere near a category like that.

That being said, I definitely prefer 7 in pretty much every way. I paid ~$50 at release, and that was more than worth the price.

 

[BrightCandle]

Windows 7 contains lots of little improvements, whether it be the taskbar launcher or the networking setup. However all the big technical changes that make it good appeared first in Vista and they are identical kernels. Windows 7 is mostly just a GUI revamp. its a very important revamp as its quite a bit easier to use and optimises some workflows a lot better.

Its not really worth getting for its price but at the same time it is a better OS than Vista even in mostly surface ways. As the OS X crowd often show having a well designed GUI on a poor performance kernel can actually feel faster even when benchmarks show the opposite. Humans perceive things differently depending on how its shown.

 

[Mem]

I never had any issues with Vista either, as to upgrading to Win7 its a tough call especially when you have Win8 not far off so you have the option of waiting for Win8 or going straight to Win7 which I think is an excellent OS ie tweaked version of Vista ie slightly faster with some added features,end of the day you have to weigh all your options up and decide for yourself.


Don't feel bad about still using Visa there are people/gamers out there still using XP.

 

[pauldun170]

Having multiple computers in the house, windows 7 was definitely worth the upgrade from Vista 64.
Homegroup+libraries+improvement in transfer\copy speeds

Check with your school's IT head, they may have a partner program in place (I forget the actual program name) where you can score a free copy of Win7 if you are in the Computer related program or just friends with the department head.

I have 4 machines on Win7. I paid for 1@$70, 1@$20 because I ordered the disc the last two were free through school because I needed a 64bit and a 32bit (was allowed one of each)

 

[corkyg]

I directly upgraded 3 machines from Vista to Win7. Definitely worth the 25 minutes per system. Win 7 is friendlier to more hardware, and the XP mode using Microsoft's VM takes care of a lot of legacy software that Vista was not able to. Plus, security such as UAC is more manageable in Win 7.

 

[zokudu]

If you're fine with Vista then keep it. The real issues with Vista was OEMs putting it on machines that weren't able to run it and lazy developers not rewriting drivers. Both of these major issues are 99% rectified.

I wouldn't bother buying a new W7 license now if I was still running Vista. I only upgraded because I got a hold of 3 copies for free.

 

[gmaster456]

Thought I'd mention Vista loses mainstream support in April. Not sure if that's a big deal to you or not.