Upgrading dad's Vista Dell to Win10

[Velti]

Hello, ladies and gents!

So, my dad has a Dell 'Studio XPS 435MT' desktop running Vista. A look under the hood with Speccy revealed:

cpu: i7 2.67GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR3 (6 slots)
Graphics: X203H (listed twice) and ATI Radeon HD 4800 graphics card
HDD: Not sure what's going on here, looks like about a TB combined, with all the partitions and a pair of drives
MOBO: model #0R849J ver.A01, chipset X58

We'd like to upgrade the OS to Win10. I've got a few questions...

1: So, is the OS okay now? I've heard rocky things about it in the past. This computer will be used primarily by my dad, who just turned 70, for some financial stuff and browsing the web.

2: Do the specs sound acceptable for comfortably running 10? The min reqs I found say yes, but I'm considering upgrading to 8GB of RAM and maybe replacing the graphics card with my old Radeon HD 6850. Overkill? He originally got the computer so he could run some architecture software, but he doesn't use it for that anymore.

3: It's my understanding that the plan is to buy an OEM copy of Win10 either on a cd or USB, and during the process of installation delete all the partitions- wiping things clean- giving me a fresh install of the OS with nothing else.

Of course, before doing that we'll take an inventory of the software he'll want to reinstall and backup important files like photos and tax information.

Does that sound right? I want zero traces of the old system and its bloatware. This old thing has good bones, but needs some freshening up.

Thanks in advance!

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, full wipe and install.
Actually, that is your only choice. There is no direct Upgrade from Vista to 10.

 

[why_wolf]

yes, your plan sounds good. A SSD would put some pep into it but is not required.

 

[smorizio]

one word of warning if he has accounting or tax files check on how to go from the program rev he has now to a windows 10 version. he may have to buy one or two newer software to go from vista tax software or accounting to windows 10. some of the newer software wont inport older version of itself if it to far back. if he cant lose any of the old files then i would use a new hard drive and use hard drive to usb cable kit to copy his old files onto a new hard drive and keep the old drives safe.