Windows 7 Upgrade

Depends on your system specs. What kind of CPU and GPU do you have? How much free hard disk space?

I got a Gateway MX3417 laptop with AMD Turion 64 Mobile Tech. with MK-64. The CPU is x86 Family 15 Model 76 Stepping 2 Authentic AMD 20004 Mhz with a GPU of 256.MB and I have about 1.56 GB of free space, but I'm considering putting it on my Western Digital External Portable Hard Drive, it's a 1 TB model with about 903 GB. So, what's the verdict on this one?

I think people ran away screaming/crying.
You have a bit many zero's on that processor, unless its actually the fastest PC processor in the world.
I would not recommen running an operating system from an external harddrive. And I think your laptop runs alot smoother with Windows XP than it would with win7.
I myself, downgraded my laptop from vista to XP, and can now run alot of games smoothly that I could not before.

I wouldn't recommend running windows 7 on that system.

Your main concern should whether or not there are Windows 7 drivers available for the hardware in that laptop (specifically, but not limited to graphic, network, wireless). If there are no compatible drivers, your laptop becomes useless (until you restore the original OS).

-Wolf sends

If you upgrade to windows 7, you will want to run the W7 media center instead, I think. 32 or 64 bit is ok.

In no way, should you want to run an os on an external usb drive, assuming you could.

You will want at least 4gb of ram.

I suspect you would find it better to replace your laptop with a more modern one that will come with all you need out of the box.

It will cost not much more than upgrading all the current parts.

I recommend you upgrading to Win7. It's actually pretty snappy and IMO, it's less virus prone than XP.

Nothing wrong with keeping the XP on that system, multiple posts on here from people not finding drivers for their systems for Win7

OK, first off in my opionion.. if your pc could run XP, it should run better using Win 7. I have upgraded tons of pcs and laptops to win 7 and users always say its faster and thats 8-12 months after I installed it. Win XP crumbles up.

Win 7 Defrags on the fly so you dont have to defrag anymore. Ive seen people run 2 gigs with win 7 perfect. I played WoW on my laptop with 2 gigs no problem. I host a personal site with 1 gig of ram and works ok with me.

Anyone who tells you Win 7 isn't worth it IMHO they are wrong. Win 7 does everything better; more secure, and quicker. I guess I just haven't ran into real compatibility issues in 2 strong years of using. You may need to optimize the graphic settings to get the most unless you upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM but you are fine.

Thanks for everyone's input. I appreciate it.

I have yet to see 32bitXP drivers not work on 32bit7...