Is it worth it

Hi everyone, I have been happily running with windows xp for many years, took me a while to get on with it after being out of touch with PCs since the days of the old DOS, pre windows 3.1. I could see it had many flaws and gradually found ways round them to get a system I could get on with but lately have had enough, no matter how hard you try and keep the registry clean on xp it always clogs up with rubbish, same with missing shortcuts (even though they arent) overfull temp folder and many more annoying compounding problems.

At the moment I have an Intel 3.4G duo with 2G 800MHz RAM, HD 3850 Radeon grfx card a couple of SATA drives and various other bits and pieces I use like digi camera, multi card reader/docking station, printer etc etc.

I just ran the compatibility thing from the microsoft site and it says I can install windows 7 on my PC. I would not waste my time doing an upgrade on the unreliability of microsoft in the past making sure things were removed correctly so would go for a completely fresh install with the full package available for the home user.

What I want to know is would it really be worth it, spending around £90-100 on this operating system when my Processor is about 3 years old, had to replace the mobo last year and bought a new grfx card and power supply at the same time, am kinda stuck like most of you I would imagine in that if I did buy it I definately could not afford a new mobo and processor. Yet that might change at a later date so are the same rules still applying that allow you to re-install the software once you have replaced a mobo and processor.

Many thanks in advance for your opinions.

Hi Dippy - Welcome to w7forums

If you purchase Retail and not OEM then you can change motherboards without any problems with activation. The OEM's are locked to a specific motherboard upon activation.

With your specs, I would say you could even go for 64Bit. I would not consider 3years as being too old. One of Microsoft's boasts is the ability of 7 to run on older harware.
I have several computers at home, icluding a couple of laptops. Only one is younger than three years, the oldest 5 years. All run windows 7 mostly out of the box, 100%. (Mostly? - I had to scout for a couple of drivers for one of the laptops, but it was not a great problem.)

Honestly, with your specs, Win7 will fly. 7 isn't anywhere near as demanding as Vista was. Although it still clogs up over time as Windows is wont to do, 7 is much better about it than XP was. It's much better about many things, in fact...

I personally think it's the best Windows release yet. Heck, even the release candidate was the best I had used, at the time. However, as always, people's mileage varies... If money is a concern, you may want to give a Windows 7 trial a shot before you commit to the OS.

Hi Dippy

Yes changing to Windows 7 is worth it, I ran Windows XP from its first release and its a great OS but as soon as i started running Windows 7 (RC1 at first) i found what i did not think was possible ... Windows 7 was better. I pre-ordered Windows 7 Pro Retail and now a few months on i have never regretted it. If you decide to buy Windows 7 do go retail with a clean install i think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Welcome!

Windows7 Home Premium purrs like a kitten on my old P4 3.2G with 2g memory and a radeon card.

Yep, like others have said, it should work very well on your machine.

I'd say it's worth it, as it sounds like your PC could do with a clean install of an OS anyway, so you may as well go for Windows 7 and make the most of your PC. You should be able to get Home Premium OEM for around £65 I think.