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W10 Compatible ?

C

CHE

pfm Member
I usually use Win7 Pro on a Dell i7 to run some specific legacy software but I guess I should have a Win10 machine at some point. I have a Dell M65 kicking around with 4Gb or RAM which looks like it would be nominally good enough for basic internet browsing, which is all I would use it for.

I was wondering if I added a SSD, like perhaps the one DV suggested in other thread, if this would make a usable W10 machine - any views please ?

The follow up question is, if the M65 is a practical machine, where do I get a copy of Win10 from ? I seem to remember there was a way to download it from somewhere - anyone have the link please ?

CHE
 
Get Windows from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO

If I understand correctly this PC has both a SATA and a PATA disk connector.
and the SSD that I pointed to is SATA.

I am running Win 10 on a 12 yo 32 bit Thinkpad.

You can if you want upgrade your Win 7 to 10 for free.

Also you can run Windows 10 as a VM in a Windows 7 installation and run a Win 7 VM in a win 10 installation so no need to keep two machines. I have a similar problem in that I had to keep a machine with XP on it to run a particular piece of software required to configure external hardware as the manufacturer didn't provide updated software and drivers for that hardware beyond XP. A way of selling new kit by obsoleting the older but working kit. So now I run XP in a VM and have got rid of the old laptop.

Cheers,

DV
 
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Thanks for the above advice; M65 now happily running Win10 !

But I tried 'Edge' as a browser and it's terrrrrrribly slooooooooooow, so what else is much better for a laptop with limited RAM ? I generally use Chrome on my Win7 laptop - is that the best there is for this application ?

CHE
 
CHE said:
Thanks for the above advice; M65 now happily running Win10 !

But I tried 'Edge' as a browser and it's terrrrrrribly slooooooooooow, so what else is much better for a laptop with limited RAM ? I generally use Chrome on my Win7 laptop - is that the best there is for this application ?

CHE
Click to expand...

I like Firefox
 
CHE said:
Thanks for the above advice; M65 now happily running Win10 !

But I tried 'Edge' as a browser and it's terrrrrrribly slooooooooooow, so what else is much better for a laptop with limited RAM ? I generally use Chrome on my Win7 laptop - is that the best there is for this application ?

CHE
Click to expand...
I’d give Firefox a try. Not a fan of Chrome because I’m not a fan of Google’s approach to privacy.
 
CHE said:
But I tried 'Edge' as a browser and it's terrrrrrribly slooooooooooow, so what else is much better for a laptop with limited RAM ? I generally use Chrome on my Win7 laptop - is that the best there is for this application ?

CHE
Click to expand...

Are you sure you have the latest version of Edge? This is now based on Chromium, and is pretty slick here. The old version was a cludge, especially with extensions
 
I've used Firefox in the past but it was worse than Chrome in my view.

Nero said:
Are you sure you have the latest version of Edge? This is now based on Chromium, and is pretty slick here. The old version was a cludge, especially with extensions
Click to expand...

I ran all the updates but will check again. Oh, and no extensions added as yet and still hopeless.

CHE
 
I normally use Firefox but also have Chrome on my PC for the [very] few sites that don't like Firefox.
I suggest trying that set up.
 
Edge is based on Chromium and “supposedly” is the fastest browser on Win 10 according to a few surveys, personally I think it sucks. I use Firefox but recently have had to use Chrome now and again for some sites that don’t work properly on FF at present.

It should be OK with 4GB RAM but definitely runs a lot better with 8GB especially if you have an older chipset that shares the RAM for graphics and doesn’t handle memory management that efficiently. You might just have to put up with it.

You can Google for a crib on what stuff to change, services to stop/disable to speed the PC up. There are a few scripts out there that make it easier. Just be careful you don’t open a security hole. Tuning what runs at startup and typically hang about in the System Tray can help free up resources/memory.
 
Interesting that the minimum system requirements for W10 are the same as for Windows 7. Granted, you can't run much more than a couple of small applications on that spec, but that was true back then too.

The "new" Edge browser is available here: Download New Microsoft Edge Browser | Microsoft

SSD will help a lot with performance - if the laptop has only 4Gbyte memory, it will be doing a lot of swapping, so faster disk will make that less painful. But before spending cash, though, check the maximum speed of the laptop's SATA interface: no point in getting a 6Gb/sec drive if you're connecting it to a 3Gb/sec controller.
 
Thanks for your suggestions. I just installed Opera on the M65 and it seems much quicker than Edge, so I'll use that. Interestingly on my Win7 Pro i7 laptop there seems little difference in speed between Chrome (which I've used up to now) and Edge - is there any advantage to Edge; can't see much myself ?

KrisW said:
SSD will help a lot with performance - if the laptop has only 4Gbyte memory, it will be doing a lot of swapping, so faster disk will make that less painful. But before spending cash, though, check the maximum speed of the laptop's SATA interface: no point in getting a 6Gb/sec drive if you're connecting it to a 3Gb/sec controller.
Click to expand...

I don't know how fast the controller is but W10 boots up fast enough from SSD for my liking - previously had XP on the machine so you can see it's basic !

CHE
 
You'll know when you have the new edge they ram it right down your mouth from the get go.

Also if you don't trust google, I would probably avoid Opera. Apparently the new kid ont he block is Vivaldi.

I'll be sticking with Chrome.
 
garyi said:
You'll know when you have the new edge they ram it right down your mouth from the get go.

Also if you don't trust google, I would probably avoid Opera. Apparently the new kid ont he block is Vivaldi.

I'll be sticking with Chrome.
Click to expand...
If you’re real paranoid get yourself some darkness and use Tor :)
 
KrisW said:
SSD will help a lot with performance - if the laptop has only 4Gbyte memory, it will be doing a lot of swapping, so faster disk will make that less painful. But before spending cash, though, check the maximum speed of the laptop's SATA interface: no point in getting a 6Gb/sec drive if you're connecting it to a 3Gb/sec controller.
Click to expand...
If this were really true you'd wonder why M$ still provides the latest Windows 20H2 to the 32bit CPU architecture that can use 3GB of memory and have the old SATA bus at 1.5GBps.

The latest Windows runs O.K. on an old T.60 32 bit machine with 2GB memory. Funny thing is that a 120GB 6GBps SATA SSD is at 14 quid cheaper than an older and slower SSD at around 40 quid. An SSD does speed up this T.60 and it boots into Windows ready to log in at around 10s after the BIOS splash screen.

The thing is with Windows updates on slower machines is to leave it alone for a few hours so that all the background activities have been completed and the CPU/disk/network usage has dropped to 2% or less. The other thing is to reject all the cloud services that can slow things up.

I am using Chrome and it works O.K.

Cheers,

DV
 
Yeah anything less than 8gigs ram for windows 10 is going to be a bad time. I have a microsoft specific surface go here with 4 gigs. Its a bad time.
 
garyi said:
Yeah anything less than 8gigs ram for windows 10 is going to be a bad time. I have a microsoft specific surface go here with 4 gigs. Its a bad time.
Click to expand...
I don't buy this explanation. I am running the latest 20H2 Windows Enterprise (thats the full blown version) in a VM with 4GB RAM and just 2 CPUs and basic stuff like Edge and Office Professional Plus 2019 (the one you install onto the computer) both run well.

Perhaps you are running some hungry applications that are overloading your hardware resources? Don't forget there is more than just say memory e.g. quad channel RAM is faster than dual or single channel etc

I thought you were au fait with VMs so why not configure a few and test out Windows?

Cheers,

DV
 
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