New laptop

[secsee1]

Hi everybody, Now that the sales have started I thought that I would treat myself to a new laptop,
after looking around I see that most of them are running Windows 7 but is this operating system
backwards compatible, in other words will the programs that I have on this laptop (Win XP) be able to
be transfered to Win. 7, I ask this because a friend of mine bought a new laptop with Win. 7 last week
now he finds that at least 2 things that were linked to his old laptop, his mobile phone being the most
important one will no longer connect as the software is not recognised, I have come across this problem before with Windows when I upgraded from Win.98se to XP.

[ChuckFickens]

you've answered your own question

not everything that runs on XP will run on windows7, but remember that XP is fairly old now.

There are a couple of options if you do find things don't work though. the first would be goto the software developers website and see if there is a later version of the software for download that will work (bet there is for your friends phone software, and as a general rule anything that says it will work with vista will work with windows7.)

Or if you have a windows XP CD (and license key) you can install XP as a program that will run under windows7 and that in turn can then run any software that needs XP.

[secsee1]

Thanks Chuck, I guess I did kinda answer my own question when I read it back again, I told my friend about
looking on his phone makers web site for a software update and he is doing that later today, but I still for the
life of me cannot understand why Windows seem to insist on bringing out new OS's that are not backwards
compatible especially after the barrage of complaints I remember them receiving after earlier changes from Win.98 to XP

[VHG]

>Windows seem to insist on bringing out new OS's that are not backwards compatible

Well operating systems have to improve and progress, and by changing things you often make older things not work.

To be fair there are LOTS of things in Windows 7 that go back to before even Windows came out.

I can still type comand line DOS commands that I used to use in DOS and they still work.

A lot of things changed "under the covers" between XP and Vista (Vista and Windows 7 are both similar under the covers) and the major of the internals of Windows was rewritten after XP but before Vista.

One of the things that was changed were driver support, and many drivers that worked under XP will not work under Vista or Windows 7. If a piece of hardware came out when Windows XP was out it is possible that no drivers for Vista or Windows 7 will be available.