Yesm U uunderstood the fragmentation and the search slowing because of this - I just thought that if you were to partition c drive that you were just duplicating everything, and therefore I thought that this would slow everything down because you were taking up all that extra room.

It is much clearer now thank you to all of the above. Zante.

Mike, about the caddy, thanks for showing me. I was not sure what you meant. I did see set ups like yours before and was considering something like it but procrastinated(something I'm good at). Now I am considering an external one that connects by usb or esata. The ones that sit on the desk and you plug a drive in like a cassette. I wonder if you can use an external drive to put an os on?

>>>Traditionally, it has not been possible to run the OS from an external drive


I was recently wondering about this too and did a bit of googling ..... I came across this;

http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

Too much heavy reading for me .. I lost interest half way down the page lol

Seems rather complicated. I guess I'll install another internal.

I love the new widows 7 i am trying it with all my forums and dites and i find it works quicker than vista, which i have still installed.
I like the new messager that goes with it as well.

What are the main differences between Vista and W7 - what will we notice most when using it?

and what will be the most important thing about it that may not be so noticable to users that are not all that savvy about its workings?

Zante.

I have Windows 7 installed in an old PC that obviously doesn't do it justice, but comments generally seem to have been that it is like a "Service Pack" for Vista, to sort out a lot of the mess in Vista. It does seem to be much less "bloated" than Vista, runs faster and should be capable of being used in lower spec hardware. With Netbooks being the fastest growing sector of the home computer market, Vista's inability to run in them has been a real disaster for Microsoft with all of the bottom end Netbooks running Linux. I believe there will be a basic version of Windows 7 that can run in Netbook hardware.

Windows 7 is a much less dramatic change in user interface from Vista than Vista was from XP, but with Vista so disliked, and with a phenomenal number of users reverting to XP, it will be interesting to see how Windows 7 is received.

Microsoft seem to have (deliberately?) lost sight of the fact that "Windows" is an operating system, the underlying platform on which applications run and in that capacity it should just be a background process. To run basic applications - web browser, email, Word, Excel etc - it really doesn't matter whether you use Windows 2000, XP, Vista or "7", much of the upgrading is just "eye candy".

much of the upgrading is just "eye candy

I have suspected as much Mike even though i am not all that knowledgable about the inner workings of my PC - I started off with IBM windows 98 (I still have the computer) and if it was compatible with all the stuff I want to use today and if it was still supported with updates etc. and if it would run my games ..... !! there would be no reason really why I couldn't do what I want to with it. In fact if I only wanted to look at emails and do basic online stuff it would still be fine!

But I am seduced by all the new and shiny things that the technology world has to offer (and I am fairly old!)

I actually don't dislike Vista - I am used to it although I confess that I have the fancy stuff disabled and have it on classic view etc. In fact, when I think of it the basics are not much different in windows 98 and Vista! I suppose they are really if you know bout these things but to me as a user I don't see much difference.

Thanks for the answer, Cheers, Zante.

Zante you might find this interesting:

http://activewin.com/reviews/previews/windows7/

I just answered this and it disappeared! So if it appears twice I apologise.

I've been there and I did find it interesting Anne. I've booikmarked it for more in depth read later.

I guess I will be lining up with the first lot of buyers if I can afford it because I cannot bear to be left out of anything new! I will probably even leave all the fancy stuff and the seethrough things turned on as well!

I wonder if you download it from online if you will be allowed to download onto laptop as well - like Norton360 allows you to use your issue of that on three computers and I wonder what the procedure will be in the future if you have major computer problems and have to reinstall.

When you install 7 does it clean your harddirve of all Vista stuff ? I suppose it would be a clean install.

So many questions, so much to do, so little time! Cheers, Zante.