Upgrading a laptop running Windows Vista. Don't laugh

[WTFIsAGleepglorp]

Oh mighty Mumsnet!

I throw myself on your omnipotence and all knowing hive mind!

I have a laptop.

It's an HP and runs on Windows Vista.

It was in a cupboard during house renovations and two house moves.

I've been dealing with my online life using my phone and the local library for a couple of years.

I have finally gone online with my laptop and found Vista is no longer supported.

Microsoft is charging £119.99 for a Windows 10 upgrade which I can't work out if the laptop can cope with.

It won't let me download Windows 7 or 8

My HP G7000 PC Notebook is running Windows Vista Home Premium

Service Pack 2

Has an Intel Pentium Dual CPU T2310 @ 1.46GHz 1.47 GHz

Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB

and has a 32-bit Operating System

There aren't any files or folders on the laptop which haven't been backed up/can't be downloaded/can't be reinstalled.

Is there a way of upgrading the laptop and installing the software without buying yet another laptop?

If I took it to a repair shop, would I get change out of, say, £300?

What do I ask for?

What do I look out for?

WWMND?

It looks like it will in theory run windows 10 but I would worry about it not letting you install windows 7 or 8.

If it won’t run windows 10 I certainly wouldn’t waste my money on ‘repairing’ it. Your £300 could buy you a new laptop with better spec.

For £300 you may as well by a new one

Seriously?

Why not upgrade the thing?

Purely because the economies of scale a manufacturer has in making a batch of a few thousand laptops mean that your money will go a lot further with a brand new one.

you could try installing Ubuntu, its free and will do pretty well anything a windows (or apple) PC can do.

I wouldn't install windows 10 on that machine. I think it would be really slow.

The windows 10 upgrade still downloads for free. Whether or not your laptop will cope is another matter, but you could try?

You can download Win10 for free but it won't install without a product code.

There is still a way of upgrading to it for free from Win8 or 8.1 but I doubt that will work from Windows Vista. Worth a try maybe... sent link

I really suspect that your laptop will struggle with Win10. Microsoft doesn't publish minimum criteria but this website makes it sound like you have the bare minimum...

www.quora.com/Can-I-run-Windows-10-on-2GB-RAM-a-Core-2-Duo-E8600-3-33Ghz-and-6Mb-cache

I just wouldn't waste £120 on the operating system. See if you can upgrade for free using the zdnet instructions first (I've used them in Oct from a Win8 machine with no problems)

If you're anywhere near South West London I'd be happy to take a look.

I have doubts about my computer's capacity too.

Thank you for your kind offer, RNBrie, but I'm nowhere near you.

OK Mumsnet, what would be your recommendations for a new laptop, then?

What do I do with the old one? 😪

Amazon have a Windows 10 assistant that will help you narrow down what you need. And don't forget Black Friday is coming up soon...

us-st.smartassistant.com/microsoft/productfinder-microsoft-uk.html

For £300 get a new laptop or tablet.

Your old one is essentially landfill material at this point. Nobody else will be interested in buying it because they'd face exactly the same problem as you. If you can find a charity or recycling station that's better than the trash, but those are your best options.

With regards to "What do I buy to replace it?" that really depends on what you want it for. Video streaming? Emails? Word Processing? Games? Are you going to routinely take it out of the house, or is it going to sit in a study/office the next 5 years? Etc etc etc.

Some companies take old laptops and phones and you might get some money back for it.

Torn between two laptops.

This Dell and [[
www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-14-intel-core-i5-laptop-128-gb-ssd-silver-10180959-pdt.html this HP]]

I've seen them in the shop and the Dell seems to not only have a better spec, but also an intergral disk drive.

The one thing putting me off is the lack of reviews for the Dell.

Help me, oh mighty Mumsnet!

Why shouldn't I pick the Dell which is £50 cheaper and apparently better than the HP?

FFS.

Can't link for toffee.

This HP

Sorry to be a pain

This Dell has a better spec than this HP but has next to no reviews.

What's wrong with it?

I'd like to buy a laptop today.....

Hi, probably too late now but although the specifications are similar with respect to the core processor (i5), I think you might find the storage capacity to be an issue unless you regularly move files to an external hard drive or to the cloud. Take the HP for example - yes the SSD solid-state drive will be fast but at only 128gb - much of which will needed to host the operating system, there really isn't as much space left for photos, videos and other large file types as you might think. Also, if you are planning to do anything that requires good graphics ability e.g. playing some of the latest games or video editing, I would recommend a laptop with a dedicated graphics card rather than the less powerful built-in graphics capability of the two you have listed. Unless start-up speed is a real strong point for you, I'd replace the SSD with a larger internal hard drive and maybe get one with Optane built in (uses the disk rather like SSD) - overall speed is similar . Looking at PC World, I think you would need to spend a little more but I think it would be worth it for the storage space (or buy an external hard drive and put up with the slower transfer speeds). There are two Acers that should do the job although I'm not sure about the build quality compared to the HP. The first is actually an upgrade on your spec in that it uses n i7 processor. The second uses a non-intel processor that is probably faster and well respected. Similar pricing to yours.

www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/acer-aspire-6-15-6-intel-core-i7-laptop-1-tb-hdd-black-10181104-pdt.html

Or

www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/acer-aspire-3-15-6-amd-ryzen-5-laptop-1-tb-hdd-black-10180944-pdt.html

Sorry... meant to reiterate what others have said - it is very unlikely that your Vista-based laptop will upgrade successfully to Windows 10. The drivers (the software needs to "drive" the older hardware (screen, sound, WiFi etc. ) will probably not exist or work with Windows 10. Windows 10 is designed to work with much higher specification PCs / laptops than Vista, which is really Windows XP with a slightly funkier look and feel. It was replaced by Windows 7 for very good reasons.

I got the Dell.

256GB SSD.

I already have a 1TB external hard drive.

Finally got McAfee and Office installed at about 01:00 this morning.