What windows for low end laptop?

[Macko939]

Hello.

 

So I have bought a laptop a while ago to work while travelling, since I spend almost 3h every day travelling to and from my university. 

 

It has windows 8.1 on it but I totally hate it. I'd rather go for either windows 7 or 10 (currently using it on my desktop and I like it). 

 

It is HP stream 11''. It is really weak but I think it was totally worth it's price (about $150 for a brand new from a shop). 

 

The problem with this laptop is that I can't upgrade anything on it (apparently all the components are integrated into the motherboard) and my storage space is ridiculously limited. 

 

The drive is 32GB so I am very short on space. 

 

What windows would you recommend in my situation?

 

The install size is a major factor but I would also like a decent-ish performance. 

 

I have to use windows because my work is heavily relying on Microsoft office and Visual Studio. 

 

What's the best thing in this situation?

[Amazingasian]

Hello.

 

So I have bought a laptop a while ago to work while travelling, since I spend almost 3h every day travelling to and from my university. 

 

It has windows 8.1 on it but I totally hate it. I'd rather go for either windows 7 or 10 (currently using it on my desktop and I like it). 

 

It is HP stream 11''. 

 

The problem with this laptop is that I can't upgrade anything on it (apparently all the components are integrated into the motherboard) and my storage space is ridiculously limited. 

 

The drive is 32GB so I am very short on space. 

 

What windows would you recommend in my situation?

 

The install size is a major factor but I would also like a decent-ish performance. 

 

I have to use windows because my work is heavily relying on Microsoft office and Visual Studio. 

 

What's the best thing in this situation?

Windows 7 because less bloatware.

[manikyath]

Windows 7 because less bloatware.

or turn off the bloatware and LITERALLY cut your resource usage in half with windows 10 compared to windows 7

 

windows 7 is NOT a great experience, certainly on low end hardware.

[shanmu54321]

Hello.

 

So I have bought a laptop a while ago to work while travelling, since I spend almost 3h every day travelling to and from my university. 

 

It has windows 8.1 on it but I totally hate it. I'd rather go for either windows 7 or 10 (currently using it on my desktop and I like it). 

 

It is HP stream 11''. It is really weak but I think it was totally worth it's price (about $150 for a brand new from a shop). 

 

The problem with this laptop is that I can't upgrade anything on it (apparently all the components are integrated into the motherboard) and my storage space is ridiculously limited. 

 

The drive is 32GB so I am very short on space. 

 

What windows would you recommend in my situation?

 

The install size is a major factor but I would also like a decent-ish performance. 

 

I have to use windows because my work is heavily relying on Microsoft office and Visual Studio. 

 

What's the best thing in this situation?

Even though XP is outdated, it would perform very well for basic tasks.

[manikyath]

Even though XP is outdated, it would perform very well for basic tasks.

i really recommend against this for the horrid driver experience that is windows XP.

 

remember that windows XP was made back when WEP was all the wireless security you'd ever need, and most schools have moved past basic WPA2 at this moment.

[Amazingasian]

or turn off the bloatware and LITERALLY cut your resource usage in half with windows 10 compared to windows 7

 

windows 7 is NOT a great experience, certainly on low end hardware.

I have a bad experience with Windows 10 on low end hardware.  My laptop completely shit itself when I installed 10 and it has a 3rd gen i5.  I clean installed and everything and nothing worked.  It's currently running Ubuntu which is why I would recommend Linux but since OP needs Windows, I'm inclined to suggest 7.

[manikyath]

I have a bad experience with Windows 10 on low end hardware.  My laptop completely shit itself when I installed 10 and it has a 3rd gen i5.  I clean installed and everything and nothing worked.  It's currently running Ubuntu which is why I would recommend Linux but since OP needs Windows, I'm inclined to suggest 7.

i have a 3rd gen i7 with two boxes of spinning rust at the whopping speed of 5400rpm, 8GB ram and a GT710m.

the ram usage is below the gigabyte mark when idle, which i havent seen since the windows vista days, the cpu usage is low as expected, and it does better on the sluggish drives than W8.1 ever did.

 

also, i've seen W10 take a dump on plenty of laptops, not just low end ones. its whats to be expected if you tinker with them.

[Josephdalepi]

windows 7 32 bit

lower usage and size

[Macko939]

I've decided to risk it and install windows 10 first, I got 21GB of free space after the install, works quite well. 

It was a massive pain to install it though. 

[mstef]

or turn off the bloatware and LITERALLY cut your resource usage in half with windows 10 compared to windows 7

Seriously? Are you ready to bet €5000 on your words? I'll provide an low end laptop + 2 ssd- on one you'll install and optimize Win 10 Pro, on another I'll install and optimize Win 7 Ultimate (yes, Ultimate on low end laptop). If you manage to cut in half  resource usage I'll give you €5 000... But lets make it interesting with 5:1 bet- if you win I'll pay you €25 000... 

Next week I'll be in Austria and it's not problem to visit Belgium for a day- just give me an address and you'll have a chance to get nice amount of money for literally 3 hours... 

[manikyath]

Seriously? Are you ready to bet €5000 on your words? I'll provide an low end laptop + 2 ssd- on one you'll install and optimize Win 10 Pro, on another I'll install and optimize Win 7 Ultimate (yes, Ultimate on low end laptop). If you manage to cut in half  resource usage I'll give you €5 000... But lets make it interesting with 5:1 bet- if you win I'll pay you €25 000... 

Next week I'll be in Austria and it's not problem to visit Belgium for a day- just give me an address and you'll have a chance to get nice amount of money for literally 3 hours... 

i've never had a clean windows 7 install use less than 2 gigs ram. (except in extreme scenarios, where said 2 gigs werent available) the moment i loaded up W10 i was presented with a memory usage listed in megabytes rather than gigabytes.

 

you're also NOT gonna tell me that W7 is light on the gpu side of things.

 

EDIT: should add, a 38 year old male with that picture straight up asking for an address isnt creepy at all, regardless of my own (hidden) age.

[Macko939]

There's no need to argue guys 

 

I didn't install windows 7 because my laptop uses eMMC storage. The installer didn't see the drive and I couldn't figure out which drivers should I use to make it work. 

 

So I made a windows 10 media tool on my desktop PC (on a memory stick) and it worked just fine. 

If I knew how to get windows 7 installer working I'd try both and tell you the results so you don't have to argue about it.

 

Have a nice day!