Re: Please offer an ISO + Vista upgrades
"I have friends with several computers that came with win 7 installed that work if you don't want to do anything that might stress the CPU/memory or even require much disk writing. If you do something like saving a 20 page document you can go and make the coffee and it will still be saving when you get back."
Crap computers are the fault of manufacturers who make them and the consumers who create the demand for them. Like any other software developer Microsoft publish minimum specifications - and from what you've said it sounds like it ran the OS? So Microsoft's minimum specifications are correct then, yes? Word, Acrobat or whatever is being used to open the document is not part of the OS and has it's own set of requirements.
If I went and got the old Pentium 4 out of the garage and complained that a modern Linux distro like Ubuntu 15.04 ran like a one legged dog would that be Canonical's fault just because it meets their minimum specs? Of course not - it's an old piece of junk! And if I got the poverty spec Core Solo Mac Mini out and ran a newer version of OS X on it and complain that it is slow...oh, wait, they dropped support for x86 so you can't.
The experience you described sounds more like a "Vista-ready" PC, and those normally run better when updated to Windows 7. Further to that I find Windows 8 is just as fast, if not faster, than Windows 7. The Mrs has a refurbished Fujitsu laptop (nothing fancy, I think it's a Core 2 Duo era Mobile Pentium with 2GB RAM) that came with Vista (albeit already downgraded to XP). Aside from the odd bit of graphical slowdown caused by the Start screen on some incredibly old low power integrated graphics chip it runs Windows 8 like a gem.
If your friends computers ran 7 badly then I dread to think what your friends actually bought or what crapware was running on them. I also hope your friends are technically literate enough to understand the implications of running XP. If you just put it on there without explaining the potential issues to them just on the basis that it's faster then shame on you.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
