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Can't decide on OS


jholt5638

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I'm using a HP Probook 6550b specs are Intel Core i5-460m 6GB DDR3 120GB SSD and a 320GB HDD. I believe it's a ICH5 chipset. I con't decide on what OS I want to run. From HP it has a full set of Drivers for XP, Vista, and Windows 7. It will also run XP 64 bit because the XP drivers had both 32 and 64 bit in the same package.  The computer came with Windows 7 Pro, I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. I have a XP, XP 64bit licenses that I haven't used. Which OS will give me flexibility to legacy programs and won't over work the hardware? 

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1 hour ago, jholt5638 said:

I'm using a HP Probook 6550b specs are Intel Core i5-460m 6GB DDR3 120GB SSD and a 320GB HDD. I believe it's a ICH5 chipset. I con't decide on what OS I want to run. From HP it has a full set of Drivers for XP, Vista, and Windows 7. It will also run XP 64 bit because the XP drivers had both 32 and 64 bit in the same package.  The computer came with Windows 7 Pro, I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. I have a XP, XP 64bit licenses that I haven't used. Which OS will give me flexibility to legacy programs and won't over work the hardware? 

It surely XP 64bit but you need to grab dosbox for old 16bit stufs .

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XP64 will give you an OS with a lighter footprint than 7 or 10, but with simple access to your entire 6 GiB of RAM. My only caveat would be about driver availability, but you mentioned that wasn't a problem with your hardware.

I'd consider XP32 best for compatibility with pre-XP software, though.. especially 16-bit era software.

Is dual-booting an option for you? If so, it might be worth your time to install both XP and a more modern OS. Windows 7 is really all you need for modern browsers at this time, and can be customized from instructions on this forum to reduce the number of running background services and graphical effects. Both should reduce CPU/GPU usage and help battery life.

I wouldn't want to run 8 or 10 on that hardware unless I had specific software that I wanted to run that needs a more recent OS on bare metal.

Edited by comp_ed82
Adding additional note on SW compatibility
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