W7 on an old laptop

[Charlie98]

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.

 

[dbcooper1]

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.

 

[Charlie98]

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.

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.

 

[corkyg]

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.

 

[ArtShapiro]

I have an old Lenovo T60 that came with 98.

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

 

[dbcooper1]

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.

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.

 

[Matt1970]

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.

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.

 

[corkyg]

Corky, is that a typo? The T60 came out long after Win98 was kaput. Art

Sorry, Art. Just failing memory. As I recall, I got it circa 2005.

 

[Charlie98]

Sorry, Art. Just failing memory. As I recall, I got it circa 2005.

...have you run MemTest? ()