Ding! Ding! Ding!  We have a winner!

If 8 is slow, and you have no key for 7, I guess it's a no brainer.   

If 8 is slower than 7 it's likely just a driver/HW comptibility issue. In theory 8 'should' be quicker.

If you don't have 7 and don't 'like' 8 then the answer is Vista.  Its 'support' [ending] isn't an immediate issue - to anyone...

* Windows 7  DUH

But.....U should run Vista until U can afford a new machine or an upgrade or until Win9 comes out and see what deals MS makes for upgrades.

Wizard1956 wisely unsubscribes to this post. *and marks it down as  a negative when I have to cut more costs.

win XP would have been the correct response....but since that's not available, Vista seems to be the way to go for that box.

Not to put too fine a point on it Kona but you should still have the copy of 7 I sent you. Otherwise follow the advice of those saying Vista is the way to go.

As has been stated by RND it appears you have your answer, what more is there?.....

I mean if your question to us was what version of Windows would we personally run?  Get ready for differing answers which likely won't help in your situation. 

If the question was which version would we recommend you run in your situation.......well again the answers likely won't be as 'helpful' or specific to your situation as your own answer above; seeing as you have already drawn comparisons keeping your own personal situation/limitations in mind.  I doubt any one of us could give you better 'info' for making a decision than you already have done for yourself.

I'm sure you don't really need your hand held on this one kona, but just in case you do..........I concur with your assessment of your situation in the OP!   

Win 9

WebTv

WebGizmos

reply 8

WebTv

He he

Give that man a beer!  My sister was running Win 8 on a dual core AMD @ 2.1 with just 2Gb of RAM and a 8600GTX.  Initially it was as slow as a wet week, but once all the drivers were updated and some unnecesary processes were stopped it ran quite well/infinitely better than Vista on the same machine.

I have run Windows 8.1 on several different PCs and laptops that were originally XP rigs with single core CPUs at 166 MHz and 2 GB DDR ram.

A few P4 single cores that were hyperthread capable (thinks it's a dual core).

In all instances, 8 ran better, faster than XP did on them and 8 found 98% of the drivers needed on it's own.

That said, I stand by my original assessment.

Starkers, as I have told you, 8 runs incredibly slow on this setup, even after all updates and proper drivers are installed, and upgraded to windows 8.1. It hiccups along and programs slow down and almost freeze. 7 did the same, just not as bad.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record.   It certainly seems like you had the answer to your question even before you posted the OP kona. 

Hmmm, it seems like you're the only person on the planet who can't run Win 8 reasonably well on older hardware.  My sister isn't the only person I know who ran/runs Win 8 on older hardware... then there's the redneck who's run it on various machines better than XP did... and if he/they can do it then anyone can/should be able to.  {BTW, that remark is in reference to the hardware NOT the user}

In my opinion, if I were you , I would definitely stick with Vista. Despite the fact that it was not well received during it's era , my experience with it was very pleasurable. I never had any major problems and it worked like a charm for me. I also liked the quality of the graphics in Vista. Although I now use Windows 7 exclusively, I still have my original Vista Ultimate install disk and consider it one of my favorites in my software library.             -- Ace --