Nice(er) than Vista
I have had Windows 7 installed on an older laptop of mine for a short while now. I decided that I would put it on my newest laptop and see how its driver support was. Turns out, it worked flawlessly, and I couldn’t be happier.
This laptop shipped with XP SP2 on it from the factory but more than “Vista Capable”. I knew Vista would run fine on it but I feel like going through the pain I did with my other Vista systems. I decided I would install Windows 7 on it since I just got it back from some repairs. Windows 7 installed rather quickly – I believe about the same as, if not faster than a fresh install of XP SP3. I decided to try everything, even things that wouldn’t work right in XP – things like my embedded smart card reader and fingerprint reader.
I wrestled with all of the security features of this laptop under XP SP2 and SP3. If I tried to use the enhanced security it would always blue screen and become unstable, not to mention failure to recognize my prints. I thought I might get myself into trouble with Win7 but everything is working fine – and better than XP. I can now use all of the embedded security features that wouldn’t work correctly before. I researched the issue with XP for some time and everyone running XP on this device had similar issues – it just didn’t work.
I have now successfully revived my laptop using Vista drivers on Windows 7. Something I never thought would be possible. Anyone else have an amazing Win7 story to share?