Windows 7 Hardware Requirements
Ever since I received two packs of Windows 7 installation disks in the mail from Microsoft (one set of 32 bit and one set of 64 bit), I’ve been installing it on everything I could get my hands on and giving the extra discs to friends and relatives, so I’ve seen it install on a wide variety of hardware. I’ve installed Windows 7 as an in-place upgrade on Vista SP1 and SP2 computers and as a clean install. I’ve installed it on laptops and desktops, from an ultra-compact Sony VAIO notebook to a brand new Core i7 desktop. The only failure was when I tried to install it on my first-generation EeePC, which has only a 4 GB solid state drive; there simply wasn’t enough storage space. I joked that if I could find my old VIC-20, in a box somewhere in my garage, I would try to install Windows 7 on it. I’m mightily tempted to buy a MacBook Air just so I can install Windows 7 on it. Whenever I buy a new house, I get an immediate compulsion to convert the garage to a room. And now, whenever I see a new (or old) computer, I feel the same sort of compulsion – to convert the existing operating system to Windows 7.
One of the big complaints I heard most often about Vista was that the hardware requirements given by Microsoft were overly optimistic, and that the OS might run on those specs, but not acceptably. The good news is that the hardware requirements for Windows 7, listed on the Microsoft Windows 7 web site, are entirely realistic – and in fact, we’ve seen the OS perform adequately with less resources than specified.
Processor and memory requirements are the same for 32 bit Vista (all editions except Basic) and 32 bit Windows 7: 1 GHz or faster and 1 GB of RAM. Disk space requirements are similar: 15 GB of free space for Vista, 16 for Windows 7. However, I and others have installed Windows 7 Ultimate on systems and VMs with only 512 MB of RAM, and the OS ran okay as long as you didn’t open too many applications.
In every single case, I found that Windows 7 performance was better than Vista had been on the same hardware. Because Windows 7 uses the same driver model as Vista, upgrading from Vista to 7 doesn’t present the same sort of hardware compatibility problems that people encountered when upgrading from XP to Vista. And I’ve actually discovered that several old XP applications that didn’t work on Vista will run on Windows 7, even without the benefit of XP Mode. In fact, application compatibility was a big focus for Microsoft in the development of Windows 7.
The only serious driver problem that I encountered in any of my Windows 7 installations was with a Soundblaster X-Fi soundcard in the 64 bit edition on a Dell XPS 710. Even when I installed the 64 bit beta driver for Windows 7, I couldn’t get it to work properly (I was able to get sound at one point, but it was garbled and distorted). Every other device either worked right off the bat after Windows 7 installation, or (in the case of a TV tuner card) worked fine after I downloaded and installed the latest driver from the hardware vendor’s site.
I’ve also found that Windows 7’s multi-monitor support is excellent. It more seamlessly recognized that multiple monitors are present and automatically extended the desktop without my having to go in and configure it to do so. I didn’t have the problem of the system wanting to do mirrored monitors, instead of desktop extension, as I did when I first moved from XP to Vista.
Bottom line: Windows 7 will run acceptably well on hardware that was severely taxed by Vista. I had a laptop I had written off as practically useless with Vista – and I really did not want to go backward and install XP on it. Windows 7 turned it into a delight to use. And on the latest and greatest Nehalem-based (Core i7) PCs, the OS really struts its stuff. For more about that, you can read my “7 on 7: The Reality Rocks” post on my Windows Live Spaces blog.
Debra Littlejohn Shinder
deb@shinder.net www.debshinder.com
csand on October 05, 2009 at 05:06 PM
Should I take advantage of some of the current deals on laptops with Vista and use the free Windows 7 upgrade? If so, is there any concern with the the upgrade process? Is a clean install possible when upgrading from Vista to 7? Is a new computer already loaded with 7 a better option than Vista and the upgrade? Any help/advice is greatly appreciated.
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