Selling an old laptop, should I install Win7 or Win10?

[drumn_bass]

I'm planning on selling my old Alienware m14x (from 2011). It's old, but still a very reliable little machine with many upgrades (SSD, 8 gigs of ram, newer battery with only 8% wear, new oem keyboard, fresh thermal paste on CPU and GPU). It's in a very good shape with only a couple of minor issues that I'm aware of... but that's all not the point. I ordered a Dell G5 to finally replace it with something a little bit newer. There was a good deal on Google Express.

 

I'm planning on selling my Alienware on either Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist or eBay. I have a good idea of what a fair price in US is, my questions is this... since I'll be wiping it and reinstalling Windows, should I install the original Windows 7 with all drivers and updates, or Windows 10? I've used Win10 on it for a while and it was fine, but I had some drivers issues (like HDMI output didn't work, guessing Nvidia/Intel/Optimus issue) and eventually went back to Win7, which works fine, but of course it's at the end of it's life by now. This laptop has a Win10 licence attached to its hardware, so no serial number is needed for it to activate, even with a fresh install. Personally I don't care which one it is, I can install either and technically both come with it and the new owner can switch if desired, but what is more attractive in your opinion to potential buyers? Original Windows 7 with full driver support but almost at the end of life, or Windows 10 that can be a little bit challenging, but is the current OS? I'm thinking Windows 10 should make sense, but I know many people, especially enthusiasts, you know, those that are most likely to look at an 8 year old Alienware, still prefer Windows 7.

[emosun]

Nobody is buying an 8 year old alienware as their daily driver , install it's original os and drivers on it so it will work as it did when it was new.

[SenKa]

How much are you selling it for, out of curiosity?

[drumn_bass]

@emosun

 

Thank you for you suggestion. It sounds reasonable. Overall it does work best with Win7, and you know, it won't handle any recent games, but as far as general computing, it's still pretty quick and smooth. For example I can run YouTube and have several Chrome tabs open just fine, as well as some office windows. It is time to retire it for me though as I'm doing some business analysis work, we use Alteryx and some models are just taking too long.

 

@SenpaiKaplan

 

I'm planning on listing it for $300, willing to go down to $250 if I have to. I based my price on recently sold eBay listings, where the same model can go from $150 for broken units with missing parts, to $450 for clean examples in full working order. Mine is very clean, but does have a couple of small problem. One of the speakers recently started making vibrating noise, it doesn't sounds blown, and in some cases the vibration is impossible to hear, but it's there. I usually have external speakers hooked up so I'm not sure when it started, I just discovered it recently. Then another one is really minor, but I always go with full disclosure. There is a stripped screw on the CPU fan. I had a very hard time with it the last time I took apart, and ended up just leaving the fan attached on the one screw and I was able to clean the old thermal paste and apply some fresh stuff by carefully lifting and moving the fan and heat syncs to the side. And finally the charger cable has a crack in it, still works just fine though. That's pretty much it, everything else is great. Many of these AW laptops had palm rests fading, not mine. Many have missing keys, I did, hence the new OEM keyboard. And I have all original packaging and accessories, disks, cases, original battery, original 4 GB RAM stick... it all comes with it.

[drumn_bass]

I guess for those that are curious, here are the specs:

 

Alienware m14x R1 Red

Core i7-2630QM

8 GB Timetec Hynix DDR3 RAM 1600 MHz (upgraded from original 4 GB)

128 GB Kingston SSD (from original 500 GB HDD)

Nvidia GeForce GT 555M 3 GB (there was also a 1.5 GB model when it came out)

CD/DVD Drive (some people removed it to replace with another HDD or SSD) 

1600x900 screen resolution (there was also a 1366x768 option at launch)

[cretsiah]

Damn thats more powerful than my desktop PMSL, i have bigger ssd and hdd but thats it

[homeap5]

Install win 10. It shows that laptop is modern and can handle new os.

[drumn_bass]

Just to see how it would do, I installed the latest Windows 10 (1903), and it works great. The noise from the speaker(s) is gone, it must have been a driver issue on W7 (or something). I'm starting to get second thoughts about selling it after all, it's been such a fine, reliable little machine, I might just keep it as a back up. 

 

I wanted to post a quick update however to let you guys know... while it boots much faster with Windows 10, and estimates almost double the battery life (4 hours instead of 2.5 on W7), there is a slight lag sometimes or choppiness that I feel. It's been like this before, and that's why I went back to W7. It's not bad at all and I've seen new laptops that did worse, but Windows 7 was always very smooth and quick.

[homeap5]

You can at least try to configure your system to improve performance before you switch back to win7. It's not that win7 is so much different, win10 just have more stuff to configure (and disable if you want to have system similar to win7).