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W7 on an old laptop

Charlie98

Charlie98

Diamond Member
I have an older (2007) Dell Inspiron 1501 that was running XP. With the demise of XP, I just figured the old lappy's days were numbered... but for giggles I tried to install W7 64-bit on it last night. To my immense surprise.... it works fine. I just assumed it would crash or have some sort of other problem or conflict with drivers or the old hardware. About 75 updates later, including 2 hardware drivers, and it's rocking right along. 😱

Specs:

AMD Turion 64x2 (TL-64)
2x1GB Crucial DDR2
120GB Crucial M500

Granted, the RAM is a little low... I'm loathe to spend another $75 on 4GB of DDR2, because if this continues to be successful I'll have to pony up $100 for a Windows license. I already updated the RAM some time ago from 512GB, and installed the new SSD a few months ago. It will also need a new battery... so we are looking at $200 to breath some new life into it.

Question: How likely is this setup going to continue to be successful? I assumed it wouldn't handle the 64-bit OS... but it hasn't seemed to be a problem. I assumed hardware conflicts... not so far.

I'm just really, really torn between putting $200 into a 7 year old laptop vs just waiting and getting a new laptop this fall. I don't mind spending the money, I just don't want to waste it if this thing is going to give me software problems. 😕
 
I'm still putting W7 on Dell D620, 30s and 800 series with no problems; the SSD and increased RAM make them useful again. I've had a problem with drivers from time to time and Vista drivers have worked so far. It can be a bit time consuming but worthwhile in my opinion.
 
dbcooper1 said:
I'm still putting W7 on Dell D620, 30s and 800 series with no problems; the SSD and increased RAM make them useful again. I've had a problem with drivers from time to time and Vista drivers have worked so far. It can be a bit time consuming but worthwhile in my opinion.
Click to expand...

32- or 64-bit? Or does it really matter?

Have you tried putting W8 or W8.1 on any of the old hardware? I'm not a big fan of W8.1, but it's a pretty fast OS... maybe it would be a better choice for the older, slower CPU.
 
I have an old Lenovo T60 that came with 98. It accepted XP, and then two years ago I put Win7 Ultimate 32bit on it. No problem at all. I keep it on hand as an emergency replacement for my T510.
 
corkyg said:
I have an old Lenovo T60 that came with 98.
Click to expand...
Corky, is that a typo? The T60 came out long after Win98 was kaput. Even the much-earlier T20 came with Windows 2000 if memory serves. The IBM / Lenovo TAW shows T60 as shipping with XP SP2, XP SP3, or Vista for all models.

I have two T60p machines and one T60, not being a fan of widescreens. They run 7 and 8.1 without incident.

Art
 
Last edited:
Charlie98 said:
32- or 64-bit? Or does it really matter?

Have you tried putting W8 or W8.1 on any of the old hardware? I'm not a big fan of W8.1, but it's a pretty fast OS... maybe it would be a better choice for the older, slower CPU.
Click to expand...

32 and 64; I don't think the D620s will run 64bit but unless I'm putting more than 3GB RAM, mostly it doesn't matter for my uses.


Have not tried W8 on any of them; W7 does everything I need and nieces and nephews seem to be more familiar with it.
 
Charlie98 said:
I have an older (2007) Dell Inspiron 1501 that was running XP. With the demise of XP, I just figured the old lappy's days were numbered... but for giggles I tried to install W7 64-bit on it last night. To my immense surprise.... it works fine. I just assumed it would crash or have some sort of other problem or conflict with drivers or the old hardware. About 75 updates later, including 2 hardware drivers, and it's rocking right along. 😱

Specs:

AMD Turion 64x2 (TL-64)
2x1GB Crucial DDR2
120GB Crucial M500

Granted, the RAM is a little low... I'm loathe to spend another $75 on 4GB of DDR2, because if this continues to be successful I'll have to pony up $100 for a Windows license. I already updated the RAM some time ago from 512GB, and installed the new SSD a few months ago. It will also need a new battery... so we are looking at $200 to breath some new life into it.

Question: How likely is this setup going to continue to be successful? I assumed it wouldn't handle the 64-bit OS... but it hasn't seemed to be a problem. I assumed hardware conflicts... not so far.

I'm just really, really torn between putting $200 into a 7 year old laptop vs just waiting and getting a new laptop this fall. I don't mind spending the money, I just don't want to waste it if this thing is going to give me software problems. 😕
Click to expand...

That lappy is more than capable of Windows 7. Hell that processor is faster than some of the lower end crap they put in lappys just a couple years ago. And 4gb of ram will only set you back about $25 on ebay.
 
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