hello again. so 2 days ago i decided i would do an experiment. install Windows 7 Home Premium on my Dell Dimension 3000. this computer has the following specs

-512MB of RAM
-2.66Ghz Intel Celeron D Processor
-150GB HardDrive (windows says 149GB. i thought it was 160GB. i really don't know.)
-Intel GMA865 Graphics

This computer originally came with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition. i believe either SP1 or SP2. whatever was out in 2005 it came with. Anyway, i figured this would be a chance to see how Windows 7 performs on lower spec computers. So I installed Windows 7, the install went fine without any issues, well i can't really say that because i had to install Windows XP first since it for some reason had a problem when i booted into the disk (before i installed WIndows 7 on it, it was running Ubuntu 9.10? I think. i dunno). ANYWAY, the install went fine. Then i was faced with my first challenge. finding a graphics card driver. It was simple actually because I have installed Windows 7 on here before and i used DriverMAX i think it was called to get the driver. which worked just fine. I have no aero of course. Then I was faced with another challenge. My sound driver. This was also easy to retrieve. I went into Windows Update and BAM. There was a driver update. so I installed it then sound was working. So getting drivers for this wasn't to hard, although DriverMAX is a pain to use, it worked. After that i installed Chromium, my previous browser of choice untill i discovered that it had major issues and started crashing A LOT (this started happening on my main computer to, using nightly builds isn't always the best idea). So i installed Firefox. of course Firefox does run slow but it gets the job done. I also applied some tweaks that someone in the #chris chatroom provided me with. Without them Windows 7 probably wouldn't be running as fast as it does. There was also another challenge. For some reason thet default cool Windows 7 boot screen wouldn't show up. It gave me the Windows Vista boot screen. This wasn't to hard to fix. i did some simple googling and adjusted some settings in the BIOS and i had the boot screen back. After that i installed CPU-Z, avast! Free Antivirus, and X-Chat 2. For a computer with a couple years of age and some low specs, it was running great!. Today i also installed the Dell Dock (google it if you want it, it only works on dell computer though), Microsoft Office 2007 Home & Student, and PC Wizard 2010. I also got myself a nice Dell wallpaper. So i was also curious to see how Media Center would run. To my surprise it ran great. It wasn't the fastest thing in the world. But it actually worked pretty smoothly. I also ran the sample HD video that comes with Windows 7. Also to my surprise it ran with no lag at all, although for some reason it had some weird discoloring at the bottom. Everything so far is going good.
So if you're wondering weather Windows 7 would run good on an older/low spec computer, chances are it should run with exceptional speed.
Although Windows 7 runs great on here, i won't be keeping it on here since my product key won't work on it cause i already used it so i'm just testing it for 30 days. After the 30 days are up i'll probably be going back to Windows XP on this computer.
If you want pictures, leave it in the comments.



Thanks for reading.

P.S. i don't know why, but if you want me to test any performance of certain applications, also leave that in the comments. only free applications though, i ain't paying for Photoshop =P.