XP to Vista

[Ken Davison South Wales]

I am going to purchase a new eMachines E4264 + 20" LG widescreen tfr monitor which has MS Vista onboard, will I be able to take info from my current hard drives which run on XP?

[Leon Roskilly]

Yes

 

I've copied all my data from my XP machine onto my Vista laptop so that I can access it there as well.

 

Microsoft Office is usually backward compatable, so that files created on earlier versions can be read using later versions.

 

And there's the opportunity to write documents etc from the newer version so that they can be read by older versions (though if you don't use this facility, there may be problems in sharing documents with people using older versions).

 

Just a tip, if you are going to be running Vista, choose a machine with at least 2 gb of internal memory, or upgrade to 2 gb, otherwise performance might not be so great.

[Ken Davison South Wales]

Yes

 

I've copied all my data from my XP machine onto my Vista laptop so that I can access it there as well.

 

Microsoft Office is usually backward compatable, so that files created on earlier versions can be read using later versions.

 

And there's the opportunity to write documents etc from the newer version so that they can be read by older versions (though if you don't use this facility, there may be problems in sharing documents with people using older versions).

 

Just a tip, if you are going to be running Vista, choose a machine with at least 2 gb of internal memory, or upgrade to 2 gb, otherwise performance might not be so great.

 

Thanks for that Leon, yes the new machine will have 2gb of memory, was going to build one but they are so cheap now it is not worth the effort, some of the current packages make you wonder how much they were making five years back per unit.

[Leon Roskilly]

some of the current packages make you wonder how much they were making five years back per unit.

 

 

And you'll still be wondering that five years hence!

[chesters1]

Yes

 

I've copied all my data from my XP machine onto my Vista laptop so that I can access it there as well.

 

Microsoft Office is usually backward compatable, so that files created on earlier versions can be read using later versions.

 

And there's the opportunity to write documents etc from the newer version so that they can be read by older versions (though if you don't use this facility, there may be problems in sharing documents with people using older versions).

 

Just a tip, if you are going to be running Vista, choose a machine with at least 2 gb of internal memory, or upgrade to 2 gb, otherwise performance might not be so great.

 

but not forwards compatable ,there is a freebie microsoft prog that lets older office read new office files ,you also need a patch if you want to use the " transfer settings" files from XP to vista ,it gets round the 32 to 64 bit problem

[Ken Davison South Wales]

but not forwards compatable ,there is a freebie microsoft prog that lets older office read new office files ,you also need a patch if you want to use the " transfer settings" files from XP to vista ,it gets round the 32 to 64 bit problem

 

That was what made me ask 32 to 64 bit problem.

 

It must be a BUG Leon this collapsing harddrive thing mine started playing up but in noticed it was only in certain parts of windows, carried chckdisk on c: and found two bad clusters and it autofixed the problem. have backed up again and will keep an eye on it.

[ColinW]

You have all the stupid Microsoft networking problems to look forward to For some reason XP and Vista don't seem to like talking to each other, so the computers, shared folders etc. don't show up where they should do. Make sure all your stuff (workgroup, computers, printers, folders) have nice short names so you can enter their full addresses and bypass Microsoft!

[Ken Davison South Wales]

You have all the stupid Microsoft networking problems to look forward to For some reason XP and Vista don't seem to like talking to each other, so the computers, shared folders etc. don't show up where they should do. Make sure all your stuff (workgroup, computers, printers, folders) have nice short names so you can enter their full addresses and bypass Microsoft!

 

This is another worry, I might just go for a package either bare bones no software installed as I have a full ver. of XP

[ColinW]

This is another worry, I might just go for a package either bare bones no software installed as I have a full ver. of XP

 

To be honest it probably won't cause you a serious problem because Vista sees the shared bits on the XP computer, which is the way you will want it. It's my XP laptop that claims it can't see the shared stuff on my Vista desktop, which of course includes the printer! It's not a big problem once you resign yourself to not fixing it and just work around it, because it actually CAN communicate perfectly well!

[chesters1]

just ordered a new mobo and cpu but will keep XP its flawed but i hear vista is far more resource hungry than XP and for vista to run seamlessly 2gig of memory is best (no problem being corrected) i'd rather have the enemy you know than one where you have to switch off huge bits of it to use

once software starts being vista only then the vista flaws should have been ironed out as with XP in its early days

Edited December 17, 2007 by chesters1