TC + SSD on Win XP, 7 or 8 ?

[chrizoo]

Hi folks, I have been using XP, TC and my Pentium M laptop for about a decade now and have always been very satisfied.

I'm starting to feel the age of my 10-year-old laptop now (DELL Inspiron 6000). I need more speed, so I plan to buy a new laptop with more RAM, a faster CPU, a fast SSD, USB 3.0 and SATA instead of IDE.

The www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier forces me to switch from my 32bit XP pro to either XP 64bit or Win7 64bit ...

XP doesn't seem to support TRIM and I haven't found a way to have TRIM executed automatically (as opposed to manually) in order to emulate the way TRIM-savvy OSes like Win7 would behave, therefore I fear that I will have to quit using beloved XP or isn't it ?

Can you please jump in and give me some advice as to what Windows version I should switch to with special regards to the following questions:

1. So far, I haven't encountered a program that wouldn't run on XP SP3 and requires Win7 instead (but this might change more and more quickly going forward at this point in time). On the flip side, over the years I have grown a quite big collection of small but useful tools and programs, some of which are a bit old and might not work on post-XP OSes. My goal is obviously to have a platform (OS) which provides the best possible compatibility to both legacy and forthcoming programs. What is my best strategy here in choosing my OS? Win7's XP-mode should take care of backward compatibility, but reality apparently begs to differ. And Win8 doesn't have an XP-mode.
2. What changes will I face using TC on that OS, what impact is there on TC ?
3. What changes when using TC on a 64bit OS ?
4. I use a lot of TC plugins. Will all of them work on Win 7/8 ? Even in 64 bit? Or is there a risk that older TC plugins just work on XP ? If I would like to keep all my current TC plugins working, do I have to stay on 32bit XP ?
5. Feel free to give me some general advice (unrelated to TC) off the top of your head as to which OS you would choose (mentioning good reasons).

Thanks so much for your thoughts!

[EricB]

Hi Chrizoo,

Like you I've been using XP for many years. Finally I took the jump for Windows 7 (but not before SP1 was out!) a year ago and I have no regrets. Surely, it took some weeks to get used to it, but things work quite well. In your case TRIM surely needs Win 7. To answer some of your questions with my personal experiences:

1) Again like you I use a lot of small tools, and most of those just continue to work fine under Win 7. I never use XP mode or compatibility mode (ever). If in some occasions a tool stopped functioning I was always able to find a good replacement.
2) and 3) Both TC 32 and 64 bit work on both Win 7 x32 and x64 very well. The only concern for 32 bit TC on Win 7 x64 is the SysWow64 thingy, I know there is a sticky in the TC forum on this. It is no big deal.
4) Especially when continuing to use 32 bit TC (8.01) most of plugins continue to work. I can even say that the introduction of the 64 bit TC (which needs 64bit plugin versions) gave a boost also to releasing updated versions of 32 bit plugins In the rare cases that I had to remove a plugin, I've not missed it, or it was replaced by a better plugin.
5) My advice would be Win 7 x64. The Home Premium version is most of times enough, because all the extra's that are in higher versions can also be obtained via freeware or open source solutions. E.g Bitlocker -> TrueCrypt.

Sorry for a long post to give just my two cents

Regards, EricB

[nsp]

[*] What changes will I face using TC on that OS, what impact is there on TC ?

[*] What changes when using TC on a 64bit OS ?

[*] I use a lot of TC plugins. Will all of them work on Win 7/8 ? Even in 64 bit? Or is there a risk that older TC plugins just work on XP ? If I would like to keep all my current TC plugins working, do I have to stay on 32bit XP ?

[*] Feel free to give me some general advice (unrelated to TC) off the top of your head as to which OS you would choose (mentioning good reasons).
[/list]

Thanks so much for your thoughts!

Advise on computer and software need informations on what is your user profile and you plan to do with your laptop !

Switching from XP to Win add this UAC concept that protect some folder or add popup... You will also have those roaming, local, locallow folders under AppData. ....
Switching to 64bit OS will gives you 2 environments for the price of one !
You will have to learn what is where, and understand separation of 32bit and 64bit.
For TC my advise is too keep total commander 32bit on a 64bit OS. If you really want to use 64bit TC, you will lose some plugins and not gain much !
Isnstall it on a dedicated folder (not under program file(X86) !


About SSD on laptop (as single HD) all depends what you do with your computer and when you plan to renew it and how rich you are
This is blazing fast but for now longevity seems to be a key factor. You can read a lot about specific SSD optimization but i suspect some vaporware concepts behind those....