[Elecraft] OT- experience porting XP->WIN7

[Jim Brown]

On Wed,11/19/2014 8:10 AM, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
> I have both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 systems with Classic Shell and
> I would not bother with Windows 7 on a new system - nor would I even
> consider upgrading hardware that will not support Windows 8 given the
> sub-$500 price point of quality new i5 based systems. 

I've been using T4x Thinkpads running XP for years, and they have done 
everything I needed, both in the shack and for some very demanding 
engineering applications. The newest of them, a dual core T61 that's 
about six years old, is very happily running N1MM+. To make it work 
reliably, I give it real hardware serial ports, a decent USB sound card, 
and use WinKey to send CW. One serial port comes from a docking station, 
two more from a PCMCIA card.

This summer, with XP support ended, I bought a Win7 machine for my 
desktop that does engineering work and email, and a Win 8.1 for the XYL 
who does only email and A/V playback. I found the "mind of its own" of 
Win 8.1 to be maddening, but I very much like Win 7 once I found and 
read an excellent third party manual.

I have a hard and fast rule to NEVER upgrade a machine to a new OS, but 
rather to buy a new machine with the OS I want installed. Because power 
is unreliable where I live, I use laptops almost exclusively. I've found 
that it is always a good move to buy the docking station -- for older 
machines, it comes with at least one real serial port, several good USB 
ports, and a VGA port. Bought on EBay, they're pretty inexpensive.

73, Jim K9YC