Mythruna

I want to update my Vista desktop to Windows 7 Ultimate (I have the package), and I have updated my laptop with it. The thing is with my desktop I don't want to screw anything up. I looked into the dell listing for computers that can update to win7, and my Inspiron 530 was not listed within it, but my friend said he updated an old 2001 Gateway computer to 7. I also have many microsoft office programs that I would rather like to keep, and a review said that it legitimately takes 20 hours to update from vista, and it is better off to do a clean install..

Should I update? If so, should I do an upgrade, or a clean install?

I would like some help here please :)

From my perspective, you are probably in for a ton of work no matter which path you take... but I have no specific opinion.  I'm still running XP on many of my systems and want to carve out Windows 7's file explorer with a rusty spoon.  I may not be the best source of advice. ;)

I would want to downgrade to windows xp, but I don't like the graphics much, microsoft should make a "Windows XP Revisioned". I would so love that, and so many other people would too :)

Thanks for the reply though.

<shrug> I set my XP to windows classic since I don't like any of the new cartoon-styled window styles... so I may not be the best one to offer sympathy. ;)

I used windows classic on my laptop for a bit.. may set it like that again (I heard it uses less ram).
My computers need to be beefed up. I need a new computer.

You can always replace parts with new beefy one instead of buying a new case, unless it's too old to fit some parts.

Install a Linux OS?

Not really an option lol. You don't know how bad I want to though :)

Don't gotz no money, plus I think that it would just be too much work to find newer parts that work with this old machine.

I'm sure you're right but can you elaborate?  It opens up a whole new world of joy and pain but would be immensely educational... and you could always install windows in whatever VM you want, though it won't run quite as well as it would natively re: 3D graphics and stuff.

I think I might just go ahead and put linux on my laptop and see how I like it :)

Nevermind, too scared of the non click-and-go stuff :)

speaking from experience,formatting the hard drive and reinstalling all drivers and games etc, is the easiest way .you might need to download new drivers but its much easier then upgrading ,due to drivers and softwAre compatibility issues, plus you dont have the annoying windows old file taking up unnecessary space .just back up all your drivers and files before hand,and you'll be fine(sorry if I used bad grammar not my strong suit)

o_0... which distro did you try?

If you are looking for "as easy as possible".  Mint is pretty good. http://www.linuxmint.com/
...and tries to be user friendly.

You can try it out in a virtual machine first if you are worried about it. But just to let you know, the first time I installed Ubuntu in 2010 I don't think I ever had to use the terminal.

Yeah, I forgot to mention I was going to go for Ubuntu.
I have updated my desktop to win7ultimate, and I am working on setting everything up lol. (updates for hours on end).

I really cannot do that, for the reason I don't have enough RAM in either of my computers to support it. Telling me to get more RAM, I have to say my grandmother says she is dead broke. I do plan on asking for 8GB of RAM for her desktop on my birthday (if her desktop can handle it). :)

Ubuntu only requires 512mb of RAM and some modern distributions can function with 128mb's of RAM. Excuses... tsk

:P On christmas I am going to ask for some IDE(PATA)/SATA Adapters so I can put my old laptop HDD's in my desktop, then I will probably put ubuntu onto some of those hard drives, maybe.

Once you get windows up and running you can put on VirtualBox or some other VM host and then allocate whatever space you want to whatever OSes you want in virtual machines.

Correct, but I've been updating my computers for 9 hours, so I might do that next week :/