Hmmmm,

@ua549

Late last year I replaced my wife's PC and peripherals because what worked on XP failed on Windows 7. The culprit was drivers. There were no updated drivers for the scanner, printer, biometric device and rfid proximity hardware. I tried the XP drivers, but they didn't work.
The onus for providing updated drivers rests with the hardware vendor not the OS provider, particularly when it comes to exotic items like biometrics and rfid.

The printer is a slight surprise as the manufacturers usually make their money out of ink, rather than the hardware; so it is in their interests to support older equipment.

I have a scanner that will only run on Windows 2000 Pro or earlier but it is very old...........same thing with a sketch pad.

My HP Laserjet 6L is recognised by Vista, Win7 and Win8, and that printer is getting on for 15 years' old. I didn't even have to go to HP for the drivers

I am sure that you tried this, but sometimes a Vista driver will work for 7 as well.

@Anna12:

Well my friend was using some old Dell 1501 and had some serious issues with Windows XP. When typing on the laptop, it will write with a delay. So, we installed W7 and works OK. Well, it freezes sometimes, but at least works, let's say... acceptable. It seems it was something about the SP.
Yes, 7 & 8 are much more forgiving than Vista, although that laptop is below specification if it is as shipped (in the UK at least). I would guess a 1.8GHz Sempron with 512MB of 533MHz DDR2 RAM.

You might try this:

<Control Panel>
<System>
<Advanced System Settings>
<Performance>
<Settings>

Check the "Adjust for best performance" option.

Click on the "Advanced" tab:

<Virtual memory>
<Change>

Set the virtual memory to 2,000MB if it is lower than that already.

Remember to click OK or Apply as appropriate to have the settings remembered.

When in use remember to close applications once you have finished with them and do not have FireFox running in the background.


@ Foxy~

And you also have to think of hardware costs.

I did hear that there was going to be a "corporate" version of Win 7 that was aimed at low spec machines?

Like yourself (and most of the pundits it would seem) I just cannot see Windows 8 as an upgrade for Windows 7.

As a case in point, my wife uses Windows 7, but the other day used Windows 8 pre-beta. I had logged in so all she saw was the Windows desktop.................she didn't even notice the difference.