I was wondering that if I purchase a laptop from wherever, and it has say Windows Vista on it. Can I replace the OS with Windows7 or Linux?
I'm pretty sure that it's possible, but my friend says that the computer runs slower because it's optimized to run on Vista.

Most, if not all, Vista drivers work fine on Windows 7, so you probably shouldn't have any issues there. If you intend to put Windows 7 on it, if the laptop isn't something you need immediately you may want to wait and see if they will have any free upgrade offer for when Windows 7 is available, like they did with Vista before its release.

Hmm, some sources say you would have to wait until after July 1st if you want to qualify for the free upgrade offer. I also see mention of that possibly only Vista Home Premium and up will qualify. There is also some information here that I found just now: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=609

Basically if you wait until around the end of June or beginning of July, look around to see if they are saying that you can get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it is available.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on May 30 2009, 1:55 pm by ShadowFlare.

I'm not sure if any of the Linux distros can use multiple processors properly like Windows 7 and Vista, however, you should be safe upgrading to Windows 7, with the same performance abilities. My guess is that if you were to use a Linux OS you wouldn't see quite as good performance as you see on the later Windows operating systems.

Although most people don't convert to linux for performance reasons.

Your friend is retarded.

Yeah, I mean, at best, you could say that the OS is optimized to run on that computer, which also isn't very true, it just comes down to how it handles multiple cores and memory.