What does Windows 7 run on

[rayfleming]

I've just updated my blog post "What does Windows 7 run on?", which does exactly what it says on the label!

 

Microsoft UK Schools News Blog : What does Windows 7 run on?

 

Rather than a big technical list of specs etc, I wanted to try and capture the general spirit of seeing how older machines coped with it.

 

Thanks to all for the input so far, and feel free to add any more as comments on the blog post, or just email me directly.

 

Ray

 

ps I still haven't found the time to put it on the 8GB SSD of my EeePC 901

[synaesthesia]

It runs very well on basic Atom 1.6ghz netbooks with a gig of ram. Seen it run on half a gig too.

Have run it personally on a cheapo 1gb 2ghz Celeron laptop and it was considerably better at it than XP when laden with the usual apps.

[FN-GM]

Runs well on dual core Dell Optiplex GX 745 & 755. No problems at all really.

[cookie_monster]

Been running it on my NC10 for a few weeks and it's fine with 1Gb and 2Gb RAM better than XP even, it will wake from sleep in 3 seconds so i'm very happy.

[john]

Been running it on my NC10 for a few weeks and it's fine with 1Gb and 2Gb RAM better than XP even, it will wake from sleep in 3 seconds so i'm very happy.

wow thats a good statistic Sounds very nice on the NC10 Tempted but Im enjoyin the XP-ness on the NC10 at present, plus Serco probably isn't Win 7 certified yet and as I'm in that a lot I need it

[cookie_monster]

Have you tried enabling S3 sleep in XP, works very well on my work desktop.

[teky]

I've had W7 running off an RM ONE with 512MB ram, quite slow but at least it ran, and off an Acer Travelate C110 (1.0GHz Centrino CPU and 1.5GB RAM), didn't like the graphics but everything else was fine.

[Spitfire]

After testing it on a variety of laptops and pc's we have been so impressed that all being well we are going to move to it next summer, this summer we are upgrading to Office 2007

[K.C.Leblanc]

I had it on a circa 2002 P4 laptop with 512mb ram, it was usable but not quick.

[cookie_monster]

I had it on a circa 2002 P4 laptop with 512mb ram, it was usable but not quick.

 

That shows an improvement as i'd say that about Vista with 1Gb RAM. I think 1Gb is the realistic minimum but for internet and office that's plenty.

[accura2000]

Runs very well on my Toshiba Tecra M700 tablet. Everything works and the touch screen has better support than in Vista.

[rayfleming]

Thanks for all the continued input. I've updated the table on the blog with the input from this thread, and the PMs that I've received.

 

I've also updated the blog post to credit the EduGeek community for your continued input

 

The emerging consensus is 512MB is possible, but slower than XP. 1GB is okay and "fast enough", and 2GB is 'waste products leaving a digging device'

 

Microsoft UK Schools News Blog : What does Windows 7 run on?

[zeem1]

I'm running it right now on a Toshiba Satellite Pro A10 - Celeron 2.0GHz, 512MB RAM, 30GB HD. It runs perfectly well unless I try and do too many things at once.

[DrPerceptron]

I slapped it on a Viglen Dossier NS (which I could NEVER get to run XP SP2/3 properly) and it works faultlessly... doesn't run Aero, but then I didn't expect it to work at all...

 

Even worked pretty well with a totally dead stick of RAM.

[CHR1S]

Had it running on my Dell Studio 15" (Intel T9400 2.53 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB, 6 MB L2 Cache) 4GB RAM ... and as you guessed it was perfect lol. Also installed it on my GFs Dell Mini 12 (1.6 Atom, 1Gb RAM) and it works great, noticibly faster than the install of Vista that came with it.

 

I will try an install on one of the older laptops here soon and see how it runs.

[enjay]

Running here on an Intel 845G chipset 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM, and is perfectly acceptable on that.

 

The only problem is that the Intel chipset can't run my desired widescreen resolution, but that's not a W7 issue.

[Midiexpert]

Took me weeks, but I finally got Windows 7 running, albeit slowly, on a machine I built back in 2000 or 2001, a PIII 866 MHz, with 512K RAM. Running it on 2nd HDD with dual boot setup (Have XP Pro on C drive, WIN 7 on D Drive. Had no DVD drive, but was able to use a free virtual clone drive program on win 7 forum post to install--although I had to first delete all partitions, reinstall both XP and then reformat and install win7 on D drive. Installation was about an hour. Video card, and older ATI Radeon with 64 MB of old video ram seems not able to handle the finer aspects of the display, but still looks pretty good on a 19 inch flat panel monitor--I am running it at 1024-768 instead of what would be 1280X1040 or something, cause it's just too slow otherwise. I cannot run a screen saver, tells me my video card won't support it, which is surprising to me with the default screen savers included. Sound card, SB live value did not work or even be detected, but finally with help of the win 7 forum I found universal wdm drivers that work, ta da! I'm connecting via wired powerline ethernet bridge and this works seamlessly, not using wireless, no internal wireless card. Not connected as of yet to a printer. This is just a spare machine for experimenting. I think it needs more ram and upgraded video to really be all that useable for anything but emergency internet browsing, etc.

[El_Nombre]

512K RAM.

 

Phwooaaarrrr!.

 

Only messing, good effort. We've not taken the plunge or experimented or even talked about experimenting here with 7. Likely we'll stick with XP for the long haul, or maybe run it out to one of the more capable rooms... Hmmm...

 

...Dammit, got me thinking now...

[gshaw]

Runs fine on my spare Athlon 3500+ PC at home (2GB RAM) and also smooth as on a Pentium D machine we built up in the office to play around with 7 and store all our installers and ISO images on

 

We've got a minimum hardware spec here I've just notched up to 2GB RAM on all machines so should be running 7 nicely when we get there... just need new servers to run 2008 first (SuperMicro driver support grrrr)

 

The one thing that really marks it out is the lack of HDD thrashing that drives me crackers with Vista on my gaming PC at home... what Vista was trying to do in the background I'll never know... but I do know it still hasn't finished it 6 months on

Edited July 24, 2009 by gshaw

[enjay]

just need new servers to run 2008 first

Does it need 2008? Obviously 2008 would support it better, but I thought it could run on 2003...

[gshaw]

It'll run but generally I hear people saying 2008 servers manage Vista \ 7 clients better than 2003 does?

 

7 definitely does work on a 2003 domain as it's running in our office at the mo

[IanT]

Got Windows 7 RC running on my system at home atm

 

Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, 8Gb of RAM DDR2, 500GB SATA HDD, ATi Radeon HD 2600XT, Blu Ray Drive, DVD-RW Drive, Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI, Dual 22" Screens.

 

Runs really well

[enjay]

It'll run but generally I hear people saying 2008 servers manage Vista \ 7 clients better than 2003 does?

 

7 definitely does work on a 2003 domain as it's running in our office at the mo

 

Win7 connects to a Win2K domain too. Is it just that it can connect to pre-2008 domains, but can only be managed by 2008?

[Reaper]

Took me weeks, but I finally got Windows 7 running, albeit slowly, on a machine I built back in 2000 or 2001, a PIII 866 MHz, with 512K RAM. Running it on 2nd HDD with dual boot setup (Have XP Pro on C drive, WIN 7 on D Drive. Had no DVD drive, but was able to use a free virtual clone drive program on win 7 forum post to install--although I had to first delete all partitions, reinstall both XP and then reformat and install win7 on D drive. Installation was about an hour. Video card, and older ATI Radeon with 64 MB of old video ram seems not able to handle the finer aspects of the display, but still looks pretty good on a 19 inch flat panel monitor--I am running it at 1024-768 instead of what would be 1280X1040 or something, cause it's just too slow otherwise. I cannot run a screen saver, tells me my video card won't support it, which is surprising to me with the default screen savers included. Sound card, SB live value did not work or even be detected, but finally with help of the win 7 forum I found universal wdm drivers that work, ta da! I'm connecting via wired powerline ethernet bridge and this works seamlessly, not using wireless, no internal wireless card. Not connected as of yet to a printer. This is just a spare machine for experimenting. I think it needs more ram and upgraded video to really be all that useable for anything but emergency internet browsing, etc.

 

 

 

 

That's nothing, check this out

 

Windows 7 Successfully Installed on a Pentium II - Tom's Hardware

[suzukix]

7's scaleability for older products is much needed. Running on all of my Netbooks with no problems.