Windows 10 breathes new life into a old PC

[Mockingbird]

We had an HP TouchSmart PC for a while now. It has Optical Touch with support for 2 touch points. We didn't find the multi-touch screen all that useful until recently.

 

The PC originally came with Windows 7. The OS has only rudimentary support for touch. As a result, HP ships the PC with its own "TouchSmart" software that provides (apps like) touch optimized interface for the browser, weather, Facebook, Hulu, Netflix, calendar etc. Unfortunately, the touch interface proved to be too clunky and sluggish to be useful for everyday use and would periodically crash.

 

Anyhow, I recently upgraded the PC to Windows 10 (again) and it proved to be much more useful than it ever was. Gone is the clunky touch interface, replaced with Modern apps. Navigating around the OS is a breeze thanks to Windows 10's touch optimized UI. As a bonus, the PC is faster than before because of the optimizations that Microsoft has made to the OS since.

Edited August 21, 2016 by illegaloperation

[PGHammer]

Not touch-optimized. but seriously touch-friendly - rather amusingly, NOT at the expense of keyboards, pointing devices, touchpads, OR trackpads.

  From new hardware to old (as in dog-years ancient - even former XP hardware), Windows 10 (including Redstone) can breathe new life into existing PCs (from desktops to notebooks); the biggest expense (for the notebooks) will be upgrading memory and/or storage space - and surprisingly, the bigger issue will be memory - not storage space.

The why has to do with current pricing for DDR SODIMMs - the memory type commonplace in the oldest of XP-era notebooks and laptops.

Why is storage NOT the issue?

Simply explained - despite that modern SSDs have far faster interfaces than notebooks of that era support, they are still physically capable of connecting Socket A with Plug B - in other words, you can STILL connect a 250GB - or even 500GB - 2.5"" SSD to a rebuilt XP-era notebook; it will simply be bottlenecked at the speed supported by the interface of the older notebook.

 

Example (based on real-world data): Mom has an old (in fact ancient) Gateway Solo 600 that is sitting on her bedroom shelf with Windows XP Service Pack 3; at one point, I had considered refurbishing it with a Crucial MX100 SSD (then of the 250GB size) back when such SSDs were $1.50/GB.  Segue to today: Crucial has their MX300 with three times the capacity - an astounding 750GB; however, the SSD itself is physically the same size (which means it can use the same brackets, screws, etc. of the drive it would replace.  Boggle factor - it costs less than the drive I was originally considering - all of $178.80 with free shipping - https://smile.amazon.com/Crucial-MX300-750GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B01DUNLMUU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471755822&sr=8-1&keywords=Crucial+MX300+750GB+SSD

 

The SSD would be bottlenecked admittedly - this is, in fact, a certainty.  The graphics are in serious content-consumption turf - there are NOT updated drivers for the graphics of a notebook this old.  (In other words, it will be relying on Ye Olde Microsoft Basic Display Adapter.)  However, the BDA of Windows 10 is NOT VGA - it's better than that.  Depending on the capabilities of the display hardware it CAN drive up to 1920x1080 (1080p) - I've seen such - with my own eyeballs.  (It drives Big Pavilion's base display @1440x900 - the same resolution it had in Vista or 7 (the last two versions of Windows that had graphics driver support for it)).  If both of THOSE notebooks are solid candidates for the refurbishment treatment (and since we're talking content consumption, both are) then such would certainly be the case with any notebook or laptop (or desktop, for that matter) of that age or newer.  The notebook DOES have 1 GB of RAM inside - which is, surprisingly, enough to run 10 sans issues (it's just not x64). That's basically the only quibble.

[Mockingbird]

16 hours ago, PGHammer said:

Not touch-optimized. but seriously touch-friendly - rather amusingly, NOT at the expense of keyboards, pointing devices, touchpads, OR trackpads.

  From new hardware to old (as in dog-years ancient - even former XP hardware), Windows 10 (including Redstone) can breathe new life into existing PCs (from desktops to notebooks); the biggest expense (for the notebooks) will be upgrading memory and/or storage space - and surprisingly, the bigger issue will be memory - not storage space.

Windows 10 is a great upgrade for any computer running Windows Vista or later (with a few rare exceptions).

 

For computers running Windows XP, the upgrade may not be worth it especially if it requires hardware upgrades (ie. more memory) or has hardware compatibility issues.

[PGHammer]

19 minutes ago, illegaloperation said:

Windows 10 is a great upgrade for any computer running Windows Vista or later (with a few rare exceptions).

 

For computers running Windows XP, the upgrade may not be worth it especially if it requires hardware upgrades (ie. more memory) or has hardware compatibility issues.

The memory and hardware-compatibility issues OTHER than storage space will be the issues; however, that applies to ANY portable from that era - just as the same issues apply to XP-era desktops.  Barring said issues, XP-era portables with 1 GB or more of system memory could certainly be recharged via an OS swap - the only former XP portable in my Insider pool is a former enterprise AMD-driven notebook.  While it doesn't support Hyper-V, it DOES support Windows Hello (thanks to the built-in fingerprint-reader); this feature used to be common in enterprise-targeting laptops and notebooks, especially from HP and Dell.  So I can't exactly dismiss even retreading XP-era portables or desktops, either - though it WILL depend on the individual portable.  It's been why I've spoke of the utter width of the Windows 10 range-gate - even - if not especially - compared to other versions of Windows - let alone any other OS.