Having revived my old XP desktop with Windows 8 I ought to report that I have updated my five-year-old Dell Vostro 1000 laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 8. The laptop was getting rather slow. Actually Vista made it rather slow. I should think it would have been quicker in the first place with XP.
It wasn’t as though I didn’t have a choice in speeding up the old machine. Given that all applications would need to be re-installed, I did think seriously about installing Ubuntu. After all Ubuntu is quick and not demanding on memory.
Just the same I thought it would be better (on balance) to “update” to Windows 8. I was allowed to reinstall Microsoft Office without a new key as MS licenses are linked to the motherboard. I like Open Office and installed that. It runs well .
I installed my other favourites which are the decent browsers, i.e. Firefox, Chrome and Opera; anything other than Internet Explorer. That is just as slow and cumbersome as in Vista, or at least that how it seems to me.
I also have the Tweetdeck client program. All fine and dandy.
So, the machine runs much more quickly. It boots quickly. It shuts down rapidly. It syncs with my other Windows 8 machine, the one which was revived by being updated from XP. That means it uses the same theme and has the same tiles leading to the same applications and social media things.
The one major difficulty in installing Windows 8 on this old machine was that it trashed the graphics driver and installed a generic one which meant that the display definition was much worse than before. The ATI website tool failed to detect one suitable for my ATI IGP Xpress 1150 graphics. After much head scratching, a visit to the Dell Support Forum brought a link to a suitable download, so all is fine now, and our screen quality is restored.
Of course the laptop does not have all the bells and whistles of touch-screen, but it is a new quicker version of itself. For everyday use with nothing too specialised in the way of software, Windows 8 has turned out to be a good choice for this maximum 2 GB machine, and is not too greedy for this older machine.
I hate throwing out equipment just because it is ageing if it is perfectly serviceable. Windows 8 has transformed the laptop back into a useful piece of equipment. I just thought you might like to know before throwing out your old machine.
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Hello, Jon!
You made a good decision of switching to Windows 8. When you run the same Windows OS for more than a year, its gets pretty slow regardless. But Windows 8 has done a great job in keeping the resource requirement minimum.
Switching from Vista, which I consider the worst MS OS yet, you’d be experiencing a really great boost in performance.
Let me know in case if you face any problems. I’ll be glad if I can help. 🙂
Thank you, Amit. You wrote a useful commentary.
As you say, Windows 8 makes less demand on memory. I hate getting rid of machines which might still have a useful life. Therefore I am pleased I could revive a laptop using Win 8 as I did a desktop a while ago.