Windows 8 or 10?

[Grant Lamontagne]

Since the laptop fairies and my wallet can't seem to see eye to eye on things, I have been wondering what I might do to help make this tiny little half netbook, half laptop thing I'm using more functional.  It is currently running Windows 8, and not 8.1 or 8.2, or whichever version was made slightly tolerable.  Since it is technically running two OS's (between "normal" Windows and that stupid tile thing) I was wondering if Win 10 might be better option?

It has a 60GB SSD and a whopping 2 gigs of RAM, and the case isn't something I think I can get into all that easily.  The RAM is already at maximum anyway.

My question is this- would Windows 10 be more or less resource hungry as this early and unable to upgrade version of 8?

Or is there anything else I can do (besides switching to Linux or getting a Mac, haw haw haw  ) that I can do to make this machine more useful?  I have cleaned off all the bloatware and any programs I don't use, I have turned off all the background programs and only run DropBox when I need it.  Is there anything else I can do?

Def

[zr0dfx]

Definitely windows 10 

As far as resources they both use about the same but windows 10 is a lot more useful imo.

There is a big update for windows 10 due out this week so you might want to hold off until sometime next week if you are thinking of upgrading

[dks]

XP

[Mechanickal]

XP or 7.

Atleast if it needs to run special programming software/ access control servers, CCTV software etc.
You're smurfed if you use 10 for those things...

[Grant Lamontagne]

That's what I figured.  The machine is usable for now, but not great. I'd hoped to maybe give it a bit of an extra boost.

Def

Def

[jzmtl]

My cheap Lenovo tablet has 2 GB of RAM too (and 1.33 GHz processor), and it runs okay on windows 10. It came with 8.1 but I thought I'd try 10 during the last days of free upgrade. So far I'm happy with performance of 10 on it and won't go back to 8. It can't handle multiple applications running at the same time but that's expected.

[zr0dfx]

You can still claim your free windows 10 upgrade if you use accessibility features 

[kaput]

XP

[Whoey]

Given that you're contemplating changing OSes, have you factory reset it? that might help, but you'll likely need to renuke the bloatware and obviously reinstall whatever else you need.

I'm fine with 10 on our laptop that came with 8. But it has a lot more grunt than your current setup. There do seem to be some specific tablet features that worked better in 8 that are a bit of a PITA on 10 now. Keep that in mind with your hybrid thing.

[dks]

The problem with 10 is not so much the power it needs as the fact that because it is new some software/component will not work with it upgrading from 8 to 10 in one of my computers meant that the drivers of the card no longer supported the screen I was using.

[Grant Lamontagne]

You can still claim your free windows 10 upgrade if you use accessibility features 

I tried to upgrade this little machine when I upgraded my main laptop.  Something in this little machine refused to upgrade to a better version of 8, so there was no way to upgrade it to 10.

If I want to try and go to 10 then I think I have to wipe the drive completely and start fresh.

Given that you're contemplating changing OSes, have you factory reset it? that might help, but you'll likely need to renuke the bloatware and obviously reinstall whatever else you need.

I'm fine with 10 on our laptop that came with 8. But it has a lot more grunt than your current setup. There do seem to be some specific tablet features that worked better in 8 that are a bit of a PITA on 10 now. Keep that in mind with your hybrid thing.

If I nuke this one I'd really rather not install the same thing, so a factory reset is kind of pointless.  I have it running (currently) as well as it can run in it's current form so I see no real reason to restart it with 8 and then work on getting it back to where I have it now.

Def

[zr0dfx]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade if you need it.

Edit - if you upgrade first that will give you a licence for windows 10, then you can reinstall with a hard drive format and you keep your windows 10 licence

What GPU you have? I will try to check if it's compatible with windows 10.

If it's not I would recommend windows 7.

[Grant Lamontagne]

It's just a generic GPU so I doubt there would be any compatibility issues.  Since you seem rather knowledgeable about these things, I am using an old HP Envy Split.  If you Google it you will see all kinds of positive reviews for the second generation HP Split and, if you find any reference to the first generation version, it will probably be in the form of warnings about going anywhere near one, let alone paying actual money for it.

That's the one I have.   

Def

[Whoey]

thats a strange amount of video memory to have, wonder if you can change that in the bios, it kinda looks like it's using system memory (don't most integrated cards do that)

[zr0dfx]

Hmmm that's not looking to great for windows 10, you would probably have to try it again and see. Did you try and update the graphics drivers the first time you tried it?