Installing Windows 10 On A 7-Year-Old Laptop

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These guys thought it would be easy to install Windows 10 on a seven year old Atom powered laptop. Guess what? It is. ;)

Since Microsoft made so many changes to Windows 10 in order to make it work on the majority of devices out there, we performed a quick test to see how smoothly it can run on a 7-year-old Acer Aspire One powered by Intel Atom N450 processor clocked at 1.66 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, and a 320 GB hard disk.
 
Heh, just cutting a tiny little bit of bloated code can do miracles...
 
My parents are STILL rocking that exact laptop. It actually runs (windows 7 starter) pretty decently for basic web browsing etc as long as you don't load it up with tabs.

I've seriously thought about throwing a $50 SSD and a 1GB of RAM upgrade in it, probably be just fine!
 
yep, when they rewrite code to use less cpu cycles, everything slowly becomes better.
 
Not surprised since Windows 10 is designed to work on a broad range of hardware which include low powered devices. It should run pretty good for basic computing for anything made in the last decade. Impressive if you think about it.
 
No biggie.

I installed it on a 2005 spec XP Tablet Edition Toshiba Tecra laptop.

Worked just fine.
 
We've all known for years that Windows has been a fat, over-bloated, heavy operating system in which you practically needed a quad-core CPU and gobs of RAM (and maybe even an SSD for your system drive) to be anywhere close to having decent performance. And that's just for the OS itself, never mind any other add-on programs.

With the way things are going, Windows 10 is indicating that Microsoft has been very successful in trimming the fat off of Windows and getting it to be a very lean operating system capable of being run on a variety of hardware including low-cost and/or low-power hardware such as tablets, phones, and Raspberry Pi's.
 
8.1 runs great on a 2007 Thinkpad x61s. If 10 is lighter than 8.1 surely it'll be even better. Only thing is it won't help PC sales.
 
We've all known for years that Windows has been a fat, over-bloated, heavy operating system in which you practically needed a quad-core CPU and gobs of RAM (and maybe even an SSD for your system drive) to be anywhere close to having decent performance. And that's just for the OS itself, never mind any other add-on programs.

Windows 8.1 has been reported by a number of folks as running well on Bay Trail Atom devices with as little as 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. I have a couple of such devices and while they can chug with a lot of open apps they do run pretty well for most basic tasks better than would have thought. With 2GB they run even better. So it's hard to say that Windows currently is that bloated when as a full desktop OS it can run on what is essentially upper range phone hardware.

These device won't run Crysis but given the power of the hardware they wouldn't regardless of the OS.
 
We've all known for years that Windows...
Has anyone ever noticed that posts like this are usually backed up by bro-science? I use that term loosely when Im talking to a group of people that are easily influenced by what other people say... and then spout the same things even if they aren't true.

Opinions of Windows and most things Microsoft have been plagued by bro-science driven bro-knowledge since as long as I can remember.
 
My previous post being said... I installed 8.1 on my old Atom based netbook (one of the FIRST Eee PCs) and it runs better then ever.
 
Has anyone ever noticed that posts like this are usually backed up by bro-science? I use that term loosely when Im talking to a group of people that are easily influenced by what other people say... and then spout the same things even if they aren't true.

He's probably one of those people who whine and refuse to upgrade to 8 which has been out for nearly 3 years but still whine about bloaty Vista/7. For me Vista to 8 was a huge difference on dual core and spindle drive.
 
He's probably one of those people who whine and refuse to upgrade to 8 which has been out for nearly 3 years but still whine about bloaty Vista/7. For me Vista to 8 was a huge difference on dual core and spindle drive.

So many people got caught up on the Windows 8 UI problems that many didn't realize a lot of what was good about Windows 8.x. It's ability to run well on low end hardware got missed.
 
Has anyone ever noticed that posts like this are usually backed up by bro-science? I use that term loosely when Im talking to a group of people that are easily influenced by what other people say... and then spout the same things even if they aren't true.

Opinions of Windows and most things Microsoft have been plagued by bro-science driven bro-knowledge since as long as I can remember.

It depends. It used to always annoy me back when people talked about how much faster/more efficient/better for low-end hardware Linux is. When I was in high school I ran XP on an ancient 90Mhz Pentium 1 ThinkPad we had in JROTC. It ran just fine, even with the Luna GUI enabled. Trying to install any Linux distro with a comparable GUI was a disaster.

The bullshit and FUD about Vista also annoyed me (it's one of my favorite operating systems, honestly), but I'm in complete agreement with pretty much all of the hatred directed at Windows 8 and 10. There's still nothing new here for desktop users and the Metro crap just needs to go.
 
We've all known for years that Windows has been a fat, over-bloated, heavy operating system in which you practically needed a quad-core CPU and gobs of RAM (and maybe even an SSD for your system drive) to be anywhere close to having decent performance. And that's just for the OS itself, never mind any other add-on programs.

With the way things are going, Windows 10 is indicating that Microsoft has been very successful in trimming the fat off of Windows and getting it to be a very lean operating system capable of being run on a variety of hardware including low-cost and/or low-power hardware such as tablets, phones, and Raspberry Pi's.

They have been doing this for at least a decade now. Vista ran better than XP on the same hardware, 7 ran better than Vista, 8 ran better than 7 and so on. Every version they remove more and more of the legacy code and optimize the kernel just a little bit more. So as a result you end up with a faster more optimized OS with every release. You have never needed anything that you said there to get decent performance from your computer.
 
It depends. It used to always annoy me back when people talked about how much faster/more efficient/better for low-end hardware Linux is. When I was in high school I ran XP on an ancient 90Mhz Pentium 1 ThinkPad we had in JROTC. It ran just fine, even with the Luna GUI enabled. Trying to install any Linux distro with a comparable GUI was a disaster.

The bullshit and FUD about Vista also annoyed me (it's one of my favorite operating systems, honestly), but I'm in complete agreement with pretty much all of the hatred directed at Windows 8 and 10. There's still nothing new here for desktop users and the Metro crap just needs to go.

fully agree.
 
Yes, it is true that past versions of Windows has been bloated and yes, Windows 8.x has less fat than past versions of Windows but Windows 10 takes it even further than Windows 8.x when it comes to trimming the fat off of Windows.
 
Yes, it is true that past versions of Windows has been bloated and yes, Windows 8.x has less fat than past versions of Windows but Windows 10 takes it even further than Windows 8.x when it comes to trimming the fat off of Windows.

how so, specifically?
 
I personally would love to find out how Windows 10 will operate on a notebook with an Intel Core 2 Duo with only 4 GBs of RAM. I have one of those sitting around here, I might put it on it just to find out how well it runs.

I have several virtual machine installations of Windows including XP, 7, 8.1, and 10. All of the virtual machines have the exact same specs (except for the XP VM that only has 2 GBs of RAM assigned to it) and XP is by far the slowest of the bunch. Windows 7 is four times as fast as Windows XP on almost the same VM specs. 8.1 is twice as fast as Windows 7. Windows 10 is well... not quite twice as fast but does seem faster than 8.1 on the same VM specs.
 
how so, specifically?
Just by how it runs. Right-click something, the menu appears faster. Programs load faster.

It doesn't have to be faster, it just needs to "appear" faster for a better user experience.
 
Yes, it is true that past versions of Windows has been bloated and yes, Windows 8.x has less fat than past versions of Windows but Windows 10 takes it even further than Windows 8.x when it comes to trimming the fat off of Windows.

Not really.

Windows XP ran fin on 1GB ram Atom netbooks.

Then Windows 7 ran fine on the same 1GB ram Atom netbooks.

I'm failing to see how Windows 10 has improved on any of the previous OS versions. Visat was the odd-man-out, and Microsoft made it thrir mission to fix the issues with Windows 7. Efficiency has been a fixed thing form a very lonh time now.

The only thing Windows 8 added was Connected Standby, which is essential for making laptops and tablets with longer battery life, and the new compressed WIMBOOT option. But those features has no effect on Windows resource usage while running.
 
The bullshit and FUD about Vista also annoyed me (it's one of my favorite operating systems, honestly), but I'm in complete agreement with pretty much all of the hatred directed at Windows 8 and 10. There's still nothing new here for desktop users and the Metro crap just needs to go.

There's actually some nice stuff for desktop users in Windows 10. Nothing new in the realm of desktops OSes but new to Windows out of the box.

Coming from Windows 7, desktop users will get multiple desktops, improved task switching with track pad gestures, improved window management with the enhanced window snapping and better multiple monitor support with task bars across multiple monitors and much improved high DPI monitor support and independent monitor scaling.

And the way the modern stuff has been redone can be useful for desktop users simply because apps now run in Windows. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, etc. are all just programs that run on the desktop without needing a browser.
 
This actually doesn't surprise me at all.

Although I despise the UI (which is easily fixed/removed via ClassicShell), Windows 8.1 actually runs much better/faster on older hardware with less memory than Windows 7 does, so Windows 10 following suit is only logical.

At one of the places I work, we have upgraded a bunch of our old Vista Business laptops that, for some insane reason we have still been paying for SA on, to Windows 8.1 Pro and it has literally breathed new life into them. Most of them had, at most 1Gb or 2Gb of memory, and rather anemic Core Duo or Turion64 generations processors -- and they run MUCH better and faster than they ever did when they were brand new (with Vista).

And, although I agree with an earlier post that a lot of the reasons that Vista was so maligned was simply FUD, there is no amount of argument that can refute the fact that it could be annoying slow on a system with only 1Gb of memory. Windows 8.1 on 1Gb, while not wonderful, actually seems to function more quickly than most similar XP systems I've dealt with do.

Say what you will, but it is pretty obvious that Microsoft has been putting a lot of effort into removing 20 years worth of bloat and spaghetti code "under the hood" and finally optimizing things a bit.
 
Has anyone ever noticed that posts like this are usually backed up by bro-science? I use that term loosely when Im talking to a group of people that are easily influenced by what other people say... and then spout the same things even if they aren't true.

Opinions of Windows and most things Microsoft have been plagued by bro-science driven bro-knowledge since as long as I can remember.
Bro-science. I like that terminology. It is bang on. There is another part to it that I have observed. That Bro-Science is often started by someone who installs a new OS / buys a new computer but doesn't read the manual or bother understanding the new concepts. So just shouts and screams that he can't do things like he could in Windows 95. When I still see people complaining that they "can't save user data in Program Files" I just want to scream!! :rolleyes:
 
There's actually some nice stuff for desktop users in Windows 10. Nothing new in the realm of desktops OSes but new to Windows out of the box.

Coming from Windows 7, desktop users will get multiple desktops, improved task switching with track pad gestures, improved window management with the enhanced window snapping and better multiple monitor support with task bars across multiple monitors and much improved high DPI monitor support and independent monitor scaling.

And the way the modern stuff has been redone can be useful for desktop users simply because apps now run in Windows. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, etc. are all just programs that run on the desktop without needing a browser.

You should get a job with Microsoft Marketing because this reads like an ad. Oh wait...
 
Just by how it runs. Right-click something, the menu appears faster. Programs load faster.

It doesn't have to be faster, it just needs to "appear" faster for a better user experience.

Gotcha. So you're basing your assertion that "even more fat was trimmed since Windows 8" on nothing technical or verifiable, only an anecdotal "feeling".

I've had the opposite experience: tools that were perfectly snappy as Win32 programs, but now rewritten as XAML apps in Windows 10, take longer to load/appear and are crash prone. The MS feedback forum is full of these complaints. The XAML start menu also feels bloaty and less responsive compared to the old DirectUI version. With the move to UWP/XAML things are not headed in a good direction for desktop users.
 
You should get a job with Microsoft Marketing because this reads like an ad. Oh wait...

Strange. I can't recall a single ad that starts out making the point that many of the new features in the advertised product are already in existing competing products.
 
I'm happy that someone tried 10 on an old Atom. I've got lots of netbook-y goodness laying around and while I prefer Linux, I still have to use Windows for a few things and I was kinda considering installing 10 on one of them.
 
I put windows 10 on a 2007 dell inspiron 1420. Took awhile to get the right drivers for audio and wireless but works fine.
 
Not really.

Windows XP ran fin on 1GB ram Atom netbooks.

Then Windows 7 ran fine on the same 1GB ram Atom netbooks.

Which sort of leaves out Vista in the middle, for good reason. While Vista was NOT nearly as bad an OS as everyone made it out to be, it was sort of the peak of resource requirements for Windows to run reasonably. Vista on 1Gb was generally much less pleasant than XP with 1Gb was. Vista Home Basic with no Aero and everything optimized was usable on 1Gb and wasn't horrendous, but it was noticeably laggy.

Also, while Windows 7 Starter (sans Aero) on netbooks with 1Gb wasn't terrible, it wasn't wonderful either. With no programs running, it would generally do quite well and often "felt" better than XP did -- but once you started running any programs you would tend to get RAM constrained much more quickly than you did on XP.

3Gb of RAM is really the "sweet spot" at which a fully patched, up to date Windows 7 system is really acceptable right now. It's not bad with 2Gb, but you notice it. With 1Gb, it's nice til you try running anything.

With Windows 8, the "sweet spot" seems to have moved down to 2Gb -- and 1Gb is actually still useful and actually not that much different feeling than a 1Gb XP system would be.

With Windows 10, performance may actually be better than Windows 8. So, I have to give Microsoft some credit on this one.

On the other hand, I don't like some of the other changes they've made to Windows 10 and the new update policies I detest. I run updates when I want to run updates and I do not want my machine rebooting itself without my permission and messing up what I'm working on -- and, quite frankly, I haven't rebooted the machine I'm working on since sometime back in January.
 
All versions of Windows from this century run just fine on pretty much any hardware that's mostly within spec. MS has done a fantastic job making it run on so much hardware.

You just have to know how to install it properly. IT empathy I call it. So many (even here) don't have a clue.
 
The main issue running XP and Windows on Netbooks was the depth limitation of the screen. A lot of option menus were deeper than the 600 pixel depth allowed.

Not a slick experience.
 
3Gb of RAM is really the "sweet spot" at which a fully patched, up to date Windows 7 system is really acceptable right now. It's not bad with 2Gb, but you notice it. With 1Gb, it's nice til you try running anything.

I would tend to disagree now. Day to day you can get by with 3GB on 7 but even with 4GB if you do a fresh install and then run all updates it will now choke and grind to a halt with 4GB.

6GB is the minimum for 100% smooth use at all times. If not break the 200+ updates into chunks of 40-50 at a time.

But YMMV.
 
The main issue running XP and Windows on Netbooks was the depth limitation of the screen. A lot of option menus were deeper than the 600 pixel depth allowed.

Not a slick experience.

So much this and it's still a persistent problem today for those of us extreme enthusiasts who use netbooks for pretty much all of their computing. While we may not be like wimping out and building a desktop attached to a 4k screen, packing it full of modern hardware that we leave in our signatures, sometimes we still have to plug a netbook into an external monitor to properly view a website or, like I'm doing right now, work on some document design stuff between posts in Word 2013. I know gamers wouldn't run into problems like that because they're just fooling around, but people with more meaningful needs should have had like a slightly higher resolution screen to begin with in pretty much every netbook that was made right from the start.
 
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