Windows 10 vs 7

[ManosMax13]

Hi I have a very old laptop with a 10 year old pentium  the T440.It has windows 7 now but should i upgrade it to windows 10?Will it run worse.It has 2gb ram and an hdd.However i plan to get 4gb of ram and an ssd,too.

[Sauron]

What do you want to use it for? You're probably much better off with a Linux distribution

[ManosMax13]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

What do you want to use it for? You're probably much better off with a Linux distribution

I use it to surf the net and do school projects with office.Should I try installing a lite distribution of linux.This is for a friend who is bad af with computers and i dont know if he is willing to learn how a new operating system works.

[The_Trail_Runner]

If you upgrade to an ssd Windows 10 will work just fine for easy office projects

[duncannah]

20 minutes ago, ManosMax13 said:

school projects with office

If using something else than MS Office is not an option then you should stay in windows

[Pasi123]

For Win10 you will definitely need an SSD and 4GB RAM

[yolosnail]

Even without an SSD, you'll probably find that after a fresh install of Windows 10 it'll feel like a brand new PC, but I would definitely recommend going with the SSD, and especially upgrading the RAM. 

Plus, in case you didn't know, you can just key in your Windows 7 OEM key to activate WIndows 10 to the equivalent version your laptop came with (ie. 7 Starter/Home Basic/Home Premium to 10 Home or 7 Pro/Ultimate to 10 Pro)

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, ManosMax13 said:

I use it to surf the net and do school projects with office.Should I try installing a lite distribution of linux.This is for a friend who is bad af with computers and i dont know if he is willing to learn how a new operating system works.

If all he needs is office and a web browser it makes basically no difference what operating system he's running. Besides, if he's bad with Windows too it's not like he wouldn't need help with small problems anyway.

 

I can recommend Ubuntu MATE as a lightweight and easy to use distro. Get 18.04 LTS instead of the newest release as the LTS version is more stable and supported for longer.

[Princess Luna]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I can recommend Ubuntu MATE as a lightweight and easy to use distro. Get 18.04 LTS instead of the newest release as the LTS version is more stable and supported for longer.

I'll have to agree here, Windows 10 on a 2c/2t 45nm processor clocked at 2ghz from a decade ago is going to be pretty awful at even web browsing and MS Office, the Ubuntu Mate however would give just enough headroom to the CPU to make the experience bearable.

[Juniiii]

Completely disregard what the others said about upgrading to a ssd and you being fine, not the case. The CPU is really old and will cause a tremendous amount of lag, an ssd would only help with booting programs and the OS, nothing too much. You should go with a lite distro of Linux, this is the only thing you can do to make the computer a bit usable. As stated above, LTS and Ubuntu mate are both really good distros of Linux and I would highly recommend to use them.

[Jon Jon]

Honestly, how does it run Windows 7?

 

I just recently upgraded an old HP with 4GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo from the same generation:

 

HP Pavillion DV4-1465DX to be specific

 

Just replaced a dead 320GB HDD with a 240GB ADATA SSD and installed Windows 10 Home 64-bit and it's honestly a pleasant experience for basic web browsing, music, etc.

 

The CPU does rev to 100% a bit for background windows processes, but it is by no means a slide show.

 

I don't see any reason why the OP can't just give it a shot, see how it runs, and if he hates it, then load up a lite linux distro.

Fact is, he should be getting a cheap SSD and upgrading the RAM no matter what he is doing with it.

[Koeshi]

I would really say that for W10 the minimum RAM is 6GB.  Most people use Chrome to browse the web and that combined with W10 will absolutely devour just 4GB of RAM.  A light Linux distro would be a better option for the age of the hardware, but if Windows is a necessity then go for more than 4GB of RAM.