A basic Win 10 or a strong Win 7?

Tony Vella · 29 Apr 2018

I am searching for opinions and advice: I have two laptops, one is a 15 year old Lenovo with an ADM processor with Windows 10 (came originally with Win 7 and later converted to Win 10) which I am using and which does everything I ask it to. I also have an HP with an i5 processor with Windows 7 which, I am told, is a many times more powerful machine. I should appreciate advice and opinions as to which one I should use as my daily "for everything" machine.

I mostly use Office components (documents and spreadsheets), pictures for viewing, editing and printing (Corel products), the web for reading the daily news from 5 or 6 different locations (Chrome) and watch accompanying videos, and occasionally download music which I eventually burn to disc (CDburnerXP) using my built-in CD-Rom drive. I also conduct all my on-line financials (Quicken). I do not game.

The reason I am mentioning my uses is because I am 74 years old and not familiar with what is relevant and what is not to form the desired opinion. Let me add that over all these years this Lenovo Win 10 convert has never given me any problems; never!

I have discovered in the past that there are many experts on this forum and I hope some will be kind enough to humour this old dinosaur with advice about the advisability and/or the necessity of changing over from one laptop to the other simply for the sake of the extra processing power. For any contributions to my computer-education I thank one and all in advance.

Regards from Ottawa, Canada.

pyramid10 · 29 Apr 2018

I mostly use Office components (documents and spreadsheets), pictures for viewing, editing and printing (Corel products), the web for reading the daily news from 5 or 6 different locations (Chrome) and watch accompanying videos, and occasionally download music which I eventually burn to disc (CDburnerXP) using my built-in CD-Rom drive. I also conduct all my on-line financials (Quicken).

For a 74-year-old, you are busy!

If I were a busy 74, I would have two 'workstations'. One for the (newer Intel i5) CPU-intensive tasks, and one for the (older Lenovo) reading/browsing. Adjust the furniture and mood as needed. Network the two, and one station can download and the other can burn.

margrave55 · 29 Apr 2018

A 15-year-old Lenovo? I don't think Lenovo has been making computers for that long!

In any case ... if it really is that old I'd junk it.

I don't know how old that i5 CPU is (you did not specify which i5) but it's surely not 15 years old.

The choice is easy. Use the newer one.

Bree · 29 Apr 2018

margrave55 said:

A 15-year-old Lenovo? I don't think Lenovo has been making computers for that long!

Lenovo has been around a lot longer than that, but if we're talking about the IBM range of PCs then 14 years is possible.

Lenovo acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo

In any case ... if it really is that old I'd junk it.

If it has worked reliably that long I'd keep it, if it still does the job why not? Regularly back up your user files though, it can't last forever :)

I would however update the i5 to Windows 10, then you'd have a spare for the day the Lenovo dies or ceases to be sufficient for the tasks. And if you find you like the i5 better, you can take your time and migrate your work to it gradually. If they're networked migrating files would be easy.

alphanumeric · 29 Apr 2018

For what its worth I have three systems here with AMD CPU's, all of them are running Windows 10 with no issues. That may change tomorrow, but as of today no issues.
My laptop is running an AMD A10-4600M 2.3 GHZ Quad Core AMD Trinity, AMD A70M chip-set.
My main desktop an AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
And my backup desktop an AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6GHz
Both desktops are running NVIDIA nForce 630a / GeForce 7025 chip-sets.
I can't see ever going back to Windows 7, as much as I liked it. Worst case scenario is I would just run and older build of Windows 10.. just my 2 cents.