Has anyone upgraded a netbook from xp to vista. Cant afford windows7. My net book is an Acer AO531H.

That’s not an upgrade.

Why do you want to? Unless you’ve got specific incompatibility problems leave it alone. Vista is very resource hungry (so it’ll probably make your machine run more slowly) and you may find if it’s an older netbook that there are no Vista drivers for some of your inbuilt hardware. It’s really not worth the hassle unless there is a very sepcific reason for doing it.

7 is the only real option. Vista only “works” on a high powered desktop and even then it’s shite at best. Ubuntu netbook edition is free and very good. Failing that there are plenty of “free” ways of getting 7.

Vista is crap. Win7 can be bought as an upgrade from Software for Students for about £30. If you can’t spring to that you need a life laundry

Noooo do not do it, Vista is an operating system crime and it wont run well on any atom netbook, Xp is a very good system keep what you have got and buy something that will bring pleasure not pain. I took vista off my notebook and replaced it with XP. So much quicker.

How about windows7 then? Will that work on an atom. I want to upgrade due to the fact ie9 works really well on my other laptop with vista installed. Also I use the media centre in vista with a tv card loads.

Also if I were to buy it from software for students, (my sons go to a school on their site) who would it be registered to. Has anyone gone down this route before?

I got a copy using my 6 year old son as the student. He can’t register or buy the copy, so all has to be done in the name of a responsible adult.

In the absence of that, I did it.

is there any education deals on 7 for teachers ?

failing that – cheapest way to get 7 onto an XP machine (machine is specced well above the 7 requirements)

Upgraded a laptop last night from vista to 7 the difference is staggering, so much faster.

As already said do not put vista on a netbook it would be awful, save up and get 7

Vista is crap, I had it and left Windows for good. Ubuntu Netbook on a Dell, Ubuntu desktop on wife’s Lenovo. My old Thinkpad will get Kbuntu or Lbuntu, need a chat with the lad at the local laptop shop, he’s into it big time.

Ah, and we were doing so well, we lasted nearly two hours before someone answered a Windows question with “Linux.”

Now, where are the Mac boys, they’re late…?

I’ve got the same netbook as you and when I tried windows 7 it was just too slow for my liking. Usable, but a bit frustrating. Vista will run like an absolute dog on it. Do you have the install disks for XP? A re-install might make things a bit better.

After that I’m afraid I’d recommend ubuntu netbook edition too. That’s what we’ve got on both out netbooks and it’s pretty good. Depends what you want to do with it obviously though.

win 7. running this on an atom now. have run it on an atom with 2Gb of ram – fine. will be installing it on my samsung n110 shortly, 2Gb of ram.

The beauty of Ubuntu is in its simplicity if wanted and geekness if desired.

Ah, and we were doing so well, we lasted nearly two hours before someone answered a Windows question with “Linux.”

Well the question was about ‘upgrading’ xp on a netbook…linux is the only option which could actually be considered an upgrade, since newer windows releases are notably slower (yes…including 7…), defeating the purpose of the exercise, whereas ubuntu will feel way more responsive on low-spec hardware, and it won’t cost you anything (apart from your time) do give it a go. So if you don’t like it, your no worse off (assuming you have a way of reinstalling XP!)

newer windows releases are notably slower (yes…including 7…)
…
whereas ubuntu will feel way more responsive on low-spec hardware

This isn’t true. Windows 7 has better support for multi-threading applications, so these typically run faster on Win 7 than XP. Applications that do not support multi-threading generally run about the same speed, if there is a difference, it is marginal. In general terms, there is no significant difference on the overall performance (synthetic and real life benchmarks) between the two. The major issue with Win 7 over XP in that the battery life will be compromised slightly.

Regarding linux, although generally hard disk access is quicker, due to differences in the file system etc, synthetic benchmarks suggest that windows 7 for x86 outperforms unbuntu. (obvious caveat being that synthetic benchmarks don’t always translate into real world performance)

Sell all your stuff on eBay and buy a mac 😀