Moving to Windows 7

So I have slowly been getting my PC ready for the arrival of Windows 7.

I have had my existing machine for about four years now and it is beginning to show its age with it being slow to start and, at times, sluggish in operation. The underlying architecture of the machine is still fine (P4 3.4 GHz & 2GB Ram) and particularly when considering how my computing requirements have changed over the last four years. All of this has led me to believe a fresh install of Windows is going to give the machine a new lease of life and that now is the time to move up from Windows XP.

As I said my computing requirements have changed over the last four years and I now spend the majority of my time using a web browser – hardly the most intensive activity. There are probably only two other applications that I use on a regular basis and these are iTunes and Microsoft Office. I have a separate machine for any development I might do which helps separate the load.

Taking into account all of the above I believe that my existing machine will still be able to cope with my requirements for a few years to come. It has required one hardware upgrade though and that is the addition of a new hard drive. I am increasing my hard drive usage at an alarming rate with more and more of my media going digital. So far this year I have added 25gb of mainly music and pictures – this is 10% of my total existing hard drive space and a full 10gb more than I added in the whole of last year. So I have added a second 500gb hard drive to complement the existing 250gb drive. I intend to put the OS and any installed programs on the smaller drive and all my media on the larger drive which is backed up both locally and online via Carbonite.

Only one thing remains and that is to see if the list of software I intend to reinstall on the rebuilt machine (see below) is all Windows 7 compatible. Carbonite is going to be interesting as they haven’t yet declared Win7 compatibility and when they do the location of my files will have changed. I am hoping that I don’t have to re-upload it again.

Does anyone have any experience of moving to Windows 7? Anything I should look out for? Leave me a comment and let me know.

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