Hello Teo,
In comparison to what operating system, may I ask? Pulling the specs up for your system, I see:
Sony VAIO VGN-AR750E/B 17" Digital Studio Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium
This may or may not be accurate, so you need to confirm this information.
If these are the proper stats, there are several considerations:
Is your current operating system (presumed to be Windows Vista) the 64-bit version? If it is not, you would have to do a clean install.
Some 32-bit systems with 4GB of memory can only use up to 3.2GB or 3.5GB of memory with 32-bit Windows. You should check and see how much memory you have installed and how much is available. If you have 4GB of memory available, upgrading to Windows 7 64-bit may not be much help to you, especially if you already have the 32-bit version of Vista installed.
Windows 7 64-bit works best with computers that have more than 4GB of RAM. While your processor is likely capable of handling 64-bit instructions, you will be unlikely to notice any benefit unless you are also running 64-bit applications. Currently, there are not many 64-bit applications available, but this will change in the future.
If the mere prospect of upgrading to Windows 7 seems like a good idea to you, then you need to do some fact checking. You need to determine the type of operating system you have now, and whether or not it is 32-bit or 64-bit. You should run the
Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. This will help you formulate an upgrade path to Windows 7.
In general, Windows 7 performs better than Windows Vista in many areas, but if there is a specific problem you are trying to solve, you may want to examine that first. With laptops, it is important that you consider the issues you may have by installing a 64-bit operating system if the computer was designed to house 32-bit Windows. You may have issues in areas of driver support, which can sometimes be lacking on laptops.
Also, the ability to directly upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is determined by whether or not you are running the 32-bit or 64-bit version and which upgrade you plan to buy. This means you can retain all of your programs, your user accounts, and most other data on your computer, but only if you stay with the same version. So memory and what version you currently have will be an important part in this upgrade.