Thinking of making the jump to Windows 7

[cassie]

I have Windows 7. I hate it. The software I like will not run on it. Search around the internet. There may be a way to fix that. Another thing to think about is buying a refurbished computer on eBay with an operating system you like. Some of them come with a warranty.

 

[Rusty Hills Farm]

Quote:
You've got some really good points here that have set me to rethinking things. I have an open slot so I could double my RAM for $45 from Crucial.com (which is where I got the first 1 GB chip) Two gigs is the maximum this computer can run. And I could easily invest in an external hard drive. Between the two I would have a better computing experience for less than the cost of the new program I would have to buy if I upgraded to Windows 7. Sounds way more economical to me!

Thanks for the ideas!

Rusty

 

[quercus21]

I recently play with a Win7 box. The only problem we had with the install of Office2000 was with Outlook. It seems there was a problem with wab.dll I didn't go into depth with the problem, it could have been a installation problem. As far as Word & Excel, they "seem" to be working fine. Publisher and Access was not installed at this time. The office assistant was having hiccups and was removed.

Have you thought about using Open Office? http://www.openoffice.org/

I have been using it for a couple of years now. It takes a bit to get use to it, but.......

 

[Rusty Hills Farm]

Quote:
I would love to try it BUT I am locked into Word 2000 by my job. I cannot use anything that causes them the slightest hiccup with their own system. Since they refuse to upgrade, I am pretty much stuck with Word. I have, on occasion (as in when I was not on my own computer), used Debbie's system of saving a Word 2007 doc as though it were 2000, and that does work, too. But I have never made the investment in Word 2007, since I only use Word for work.

I am ordering the new chip today and I have been looking at external hard drives. This seems like the most economical way to go, at this moment. I'm retired military and since Congress seems to be playing games with the finances, I'm thinking conservative is the best bet right now. I can always get my laptop during the holiday sales. sigh.


Rusty

 

[Stacykins]

Quote:
Actually I think my problem is the 8 years of updates that are on here. I have MAYBE one gig of my own stuff. The rest is updates to XP and the handful of programs I actually have. This thing is 78% full! I have 1 gig of RAM and 50 gigs on the hard drive. And since I have no idea what I can safely throw away, the whole system gets bogged down from the sheer amount of stuff hiding on that poor hard drive. That and the AVG that insists on updating every time I turn this on! I even changed the settings on it and it STILL updates every time, which slows the system down so much that I cannot work on anything until it is done.

Plus this is a desktop and I really, really want a laptop. I just cannot afford to go out and buy all new software AND a new laptop. So I am trying to pinch some pennies.

Rusty

You REALLY need to defrag your computer if you haven't in a long time. That will open up some free space by organizing files and getting rid of fragmented files. But before you do that, you should download and run CCleaner. Free, and will do your 'puter a world of good. After running CCleaner, defrag and I bet things will be running so much better.

And by the way, you can save Open Office word files as .doc which is readable in 2000. You just have to choose the option when you save as

 

[Heathero617]

Love windows 7.. I waited until the release date for it to buy my laptop because I would not even entertain trying to mess with Vista as Vista was nearly as much a mistake as Windows ME. I would definately go with a 64bit system. Word will take some tweaking but it's nothing major. Good luck and enjoy.

 

[Rusty Hills Farm]

Quote:
Actually I think my problem is the 8 years of updates that are on here. I have MAYBE one gig of my own stuff. The rest is updates to XP and the handful of programs I actually have. This thing is 78% full! I have 1 gig of RAM and 50 gigs on the hard drive. And since I have no idea what I can safely throw away, the whole system gets bogged down from the sheer amount of stuff hiding on that poor hard drive. That and the AVG that insists on updating every time I turn this on! I even changed the settings on it and it STILL updates every time, which slows the system down so much that I cannot work on anything until it is done.

Plus this is a desktop and I really, really want a laptop. I just cannot afford to go out and buy all new software AND a new laptop. So I am trying to pinch some pennies.

Rusty

You REALLY need to defrag your computer if you haven't in a long time. That will open up some free space by organizing files and getting rid of fragmented files. But before you do that, you should download and run CCleaner. Free, and will do your 'puter a world of good. After running CCleaner, defrag and I bet things will be running so much better.

And by the way, you can save Open Office word files as .doc which is readable in 2000. You just have to choose the option when you save as

Thanks but I defrag regularly. Open Office files open for my boss, but they don't look exactly like her Word files and that is not an acceptable difference to her. I could maybe finesse the documents until I get them looking right but, frankly, I don't get paid enough to make that option worth my while. No. I'm thinking Chickerdoodle's suggestions are the right way to go for right now. Windows 7 is gonna have to wait a bit longer, I'm afraid. Heck, I'm probably not getting next month's check, so I am already scrambling. My PT job is not gonna pay the bills, I'm afraid, so things have suddenly become very tentative around here.

Thanks, everybody for all the great suggestions and help. I really appreciate it because I am pretty clueless technically. I am resigning myself to the notion that a new laptop just is not in the cards right now. Maybe by the holidays? At least that is what I am telling myself.

Thanks again!

Rusty

 

[darkmatter]

Quote:
Hey, welcome to the club, I had an 8 year old laptop running XP and just recently upgraded to a new one with Windows 7. It works alright, but I don't much care for windows 7. So I downloaded the free office suite "Open Office" which I had on my old laptop. It works quite well for word processing and you can save your work in a variety of formats. I didn't like the installed video players on Windows 7, so I downloaded the free Blaze player. My Son had a computer with Vista on it which is why I waited to upgrade. I can't say on a public forum what I really think of Vista. For some reason windows 7 had to change the basic Paint program----I use that a lot for my basic picture manipulation such as labels, resize, crop, rotate & etc. Now I have to learn all over where in the **** did they put the icon for doing this, that, and the other thing, and why does it have to look different in a different location if it does the same task? I also prefer Mozilla for the browser vs the "chicken fertilizer" that came with Windows.