Upgrading OS, which would you recommend?

[JoeTLieb]

I'm trying to upgrade a friends dimension e510 running on a pentium D dual core 2.66mhz, 1gb ram(2x512mb), ati radeon HD 3800 series, and a 120gb HDD from XP Home to a newer OS. What's the best route?
Is there somewhere I can find vista for sale? The only thing I can find is W7, my processor is 64-bit compatible but will this old machine run it efficiently?
If I go that route i would be upgrading to 4gb ram,(4x1gb ddr2 533 ~$80+$100 for W7) my mobo won't support anything faster than 533.
It will be used lightly as a HTPC, so I will upgrade the HDD as well. Probably a WD caviar green, will the slower rpms affect playback of medium quality media?

Thanks for the feedback

[faint545]

will the slower rpms affect playback of medium quality media?

No.

The Dimension E510 will be able to run Windows 7 with those specs, but how well? I don't know. Don't even think about getting Vista. It's a pretty bad OS.

The only options I see are...

• Stick w/ Windows XP
• Upgrade to Windows 7
• Switch to Linux/Ubuntu

My recommendation? If its even an option, go with Linux/Ubuntu. It's free and not very hard to use these days and it's lighter but I wouldn't completely disregard Windows 7. Windows 7 is very user friendly and super easy to use. If its in the budget, sure go with Windows 7.

[Spools]

Try running the Windows 7 upgrade advisor tool before making the leap. You might have some driver issues that aren't resolvable.

[strollin]

Win 7 would be my choice. Vista is more resource hungry and doesn't run well with only 1G of RAM. Win 7 would run better than Vista with 1G but you'd be better off if you bumped the RAM to at least 2G.

[rwest]

If your MB is not dual channel, bump your ram to 3gig with two more 1gig stix, take the extra memory work off the hdd and stick with XP.

If it is dual channel then go Win7. I'm guessing all that's holding you back is your ram.

You never said why you need(or want) to go with a new OS. This may be the deternining factor as to your options.

[jdeb]

I do not have any problems with Vista on a desktop, I notice speed issues on laptops with all the bloatware but once you decrapify them and few tweaks all is good. With that being said as others have stated, Vista runs better with 2gb or more. Either way Win7 or Vista, I would upgrade to the max ram. The only OS that will run noticeably faster with the amount of ram currently installed is Linux. You could download Linux Zorin OS and give that a try, it will speed things up for sure.
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