The first two reasons are dumb. If you have an old PC running XP then you don’t need improved HW detection or driver support because your system is already supporting all of the HW you have.
I would be curious though to know what W7 does on the older HW though.
Also, I may be mistaken, but I don’t think you can do a direct upgrade of XP with W7 which would complicate things on an upgrade.
Better to wait till it is time to replace your HW and then get W7.
Excellent observation!
Or a Mac...
You can purchase a pack that installs Windows 7 over your XP OS. It cost about 80$ less then what you would spend on Windows 7 if you did not already have a legit copy of XP. 7 also saves all of your old XP data, all applications that were installed, and it can run them. You can’t put it on single core rigs though, and I wouldn’t put it on an older system whose memory is too slow.
The HW driver finder is also very convienient. It actually works, unlike XP. Whatever device you plug in, 7 just auto downloads and then installs the correct driver, no fuss, no discs.
Yes, I think you are correct. You could upgrade to Vista, though, and then to W7.
That's what I'm doing. I'm *hoping* to buy a new PC (Core i7, ASUS MB), and plan to run 7. I've already checked with the companies that produce the software I use the most to make sure they'll run on 7, and got back affirmative replies, so I should be good.
Now when Diablo III comes out I should be good to go! Old Blue Bessie here will croak if I even attempt to install a program that big.
Yes, you have to off-load your data to another drive of some kind, as it's a "fresh install" process, which will delete all existing data on the drive containing the OS.