[mikewilkinson]

Hi to all
I am planning to buy new laptop.But confused little which system to buy.So please share your experience so i can get some ideas.which one is better..?

[Montala]

Out of the two you mentioned there is no contest... Windows 7 every time.

It has been designed as a 'replacement' for Vista and is certainly more 'netbook friendly'.

If you have a look at some of the other threads on here you will find that a number of similar discussions have already taken place.

Although you mention the word 'laptop', I presume you are looking at something from the Dell Mini range, which tend to ship with Windows XP, although a lot of users have updated theirs already... and then of course there's always Ubuntu, and even OS X, but let's keep it simple for the moment shall we!

Oh, and welcome to MyDellMini!

[faber78]

i run vista and have so far decided its not worth the trouble to upgrade. vista has done fine for me on both mini 9's i own.

if i were getting a new laptop coming with my choice os, then id go ahead and get windows 7.
my 2 cents.

[BKR2879]

Originally Posted by mikewilkinson

Hi to all
I am planning to buy new laptop.But confused little which system to buy.So please share your experience so i can get some ideas.which one is better..?

Windows 7 is superior in every way, especially on lower end machines like netbooks.

It uses less memory and responds far quicker than Vista, and has some great features.

I've been using it as my main OS since the early beta builds and even back then it was better than the shipping version of Vista.

[faber78]

why go win7?

[Xiphias]

Originally Posted by BKR2879

Windows 7 is superior in every way, especially on lower end machines like netbooks.

It uses less memory and responds far quicker than Vista, and has some great features.

I've been using it as my main OS since the early beta builds and even back then it was better than the shipping version of Vista.

It only "seems" to respond "far quicker" because it has better optimized pre-fetch/superfetch. In terms of memory usage, both Windows 7 and Vista are the same - if you have extra resources, then both operating systems will try to find some way to use it.

Power that is not used is wasted power. Windows 7 isn't THAT much better than Vista - in many ways, it's just Vista re-badged with a new name. It's good, but not good enough to upgrade from Vista if there is no reason to do so.

[Montala]

Users who are already running Vista may not consider an upgrade worth while, but don't forget that a very large number bought their Mini's with Windows XP installed, and for those users I would say that it is a good idea to upgrade; particularly if you have installed a SSD, as Windows 7 recognises these as being 'different' to a standard hard drive, by supporting TRIM for example.

[holmes4]

Independent tests have shown that Windows 7 definitely has a reduced memory footprint compared to Vista and does consume somewhat less power due to improvements in the thread scheduler allowing CPUs to return to idle more often. It does not start background services until needed.

If all you look at is the screen, you might be forgiven for thinking that 7 is just as slightly reskinned Vista, but there is a lot of work under the covers that shows when you run 7 on lower-end systems.

[BKR2879]

Originally Posted by Xiphias

It only "seems" to respond "far quicker" because it has better optimized pre-fetch/superfetch. In terms of memory usage, both Windows 7 and Vista are the same - if you have extra resources, then both operating systems will try to find some way to use it.

Power that is not used is wasted power. Windows 7 isn't THAT much better than Vista - in many ways, it's just Vista re-badged with a new name. It's good, but not good enough to upgrade from Vista if there is no reason to do so.

Windows 7 is far more than just a rebadged Vista. Visually it's the same but the coding under the hood is entirely different.

The OS itself is far more responsive while using less resources, which is a good thing because then those resources are available to the programs I need to run.

Plenty of sites have shown Win 7 is better, and listed the reasons why.

Gizmodo:

Ambiguous benchmarking aside, our experience during the beta period was that Windows 7 actually ran beautifully, even on netbooks that made Vista cry like a spoiled child who'd had its solid gold spoon shoved up its butt sideways, so the difference isn't based entirely on "feelings." Even Microsoft never attempted to market a Vista for netbooks, but is gladly offering Windows 7 to that category

Engadget:

Speed is really one of Windows 7's major selling points. Particularly for the netbook set, Windows 7 can turn a machine that's nearly unusable under Windows Vista (especially if it's been saddled with the manufacturer's own set of crapware) into a quite potent workhorse. That's partly to do with the slimmed down kernel of the OS, which has lower memory requirements than Vista, but it's also due to Microsoft's rework of GUI scheduling, which means less bottlenecks and less unresponsive moments.

Wired:

You’ll immediately notice Windows 7 feels a lot faster than its predecessors, and that’s because memory management has been smartly re-engineered. In older versions of Windows, every application you have open is sucking up video memory, even if the windows are minimized. This isn’t the case in Windows 7: The only windows and apps using video memory are those visible on your screen. Windows users are accustomed to closing applications to boost performance, but that’s going to be unnecessary with Windows 7.

Granted my perspective is likely different, having worked as a PC/Network Tech and seen how bad Vista performed on a broad range of hardware. Those same machines run like a dream with Windows 7, so yes, I and the other tech's I worked with think it's very worth it.

[shines on]

Originally Posted by BKR2879

Windows 7 is far more than just a rebadged Vista. Visually it's the same but the coding under the hood is entirely different.

Actually, its not. Explorer.exe got a lot of new code, but all of the underhood changes (the new network stack, audio stack, driver model, display stack, etc) were made with the transition from xp > server 2003 > vista. They did, however, do a ton of optimizing on the new code which is evident in the performances increases over Vista.

Windows7 is far closer code wise to Vista than Vista was to XP.