roaeja said: I own an HP TouchSmart 506 and I like it. Not much there to touch and still a point and click Vista OS. Had to replace the DVD drive. HP sent a new one and easy as 1,2,3. Fast service. I loaded Windows 7 and was disappointed to find out that my HP 506 scored low on graphics, a ONE! Need at least a 5-7 for Windows 7 graphics. So, if you plan on using Windows 7 on an HP Touchsmart, WAIT until they upgrade their graphic chips. All in all a laptop would have been cheaper and ungradeable. Under Vista I scored a 5.9 for graphics. Don't understand the difference.

Did you download Win7 drivers for Nvidia?  Because I am running Win7 on a 506 and it's awesome. I ran a score and the only low score was the hard drive transfer but that because the OS isn't reading it correctlly but it has no problems reading the hard drive. It is a beta program so it isn't going to be perfect. You need to download the Win7 patch and drivers for wifi and video card. You also have to install the updates through your device manager as apposed to running the exe. You will also have to get winrar on your Win7 partition to open the files, I am assuming you partitioned your drive for 7 and didn't do the upgrade. Here is a link explaining these things http://www.windows7review.com/installing-windows-7-on-hp-touchsmart-iq506/

Also here is a link to nextwindows driver that gives you multitouch in Win7. http://www.nextwindow.com/windriver/

I love Win7. It doesn't let me install any games yet so I couldn't test out GTA4 in it but like I said it is a beta so drivers will become available in time. It isn't even being released until Fall or later. It is very operational as it is right now. But like I said, you have to install new drivers for pretty much everything.I have no problem with Vista but the multitouch in Win7 blows Vista away on a Touchsmart. 

I did an upgrade to windows 7 on both my 506t's therefore not losing any of my HP touchsmart software. Runs great. I also installed the multi-touch driver, but could not find many useful programs for free to test it out on. The air hockey works pretty good.

should i do a clean install or an upgrade and then install the TouchSmart Software on after it?

Xtreme Technologies

I partitioned 50 GB on my HD for Win7. One trick to installing HP updates from their website is that you need to extract the exe setup installers using winrar and go to the folder called src and run the msi to install. This is how I did it. The original backup discs are probably for Vista.

I downloaded all the drivers from HP's website and copied all other program files, like the HP TouchSmart, bluetooth, ambient lite, etc. I've extracted them using winrar. I am going to do like you and partition my HD. Thanks for all the advice. As you know the HDD is 750GB and i want to partition 250GB for Windows 7. I have over 500GB free, i know there is minimum requirements for what i'm running now. How is the 50GB running for you.

Xtreme Technologies

Jerry, This is my third TouchSmart, the first one was an IQ506 and it had a red pixel on the screen that wouldn't go away, sent that one back. The next was another IQ506, had problems with HP Update and blue screens alot, so I moved up to the IQ816. Have had a blue screen or two accasionally, I'm not knocking the product, cause I bought it immediately upon its release. The support from HP and AMAZON (were i purchased) was excellent, the 2nd TouchSmart was past the 30 day return period, (31rst) day but since I had tried to resolve the problems through HP, they gave me a refund, with a small restocking fee. So props to Amazon and HP, don't think I'll shop anywhere else. I know Wal-Mart would have ever done anything like that. TouchSmart rating ****, AMAZON rating *****+

Xtreme Technologies

WHen i installed Win7 on my IQ512 i just popped the win7 CD in and booted. It chucked all the XP stuff into a folder called WIndows.Old, compressed it, then proceeded to install in the root of C

I made sure to leave the 10Gb recovery partition intact, then that way i can use my Pre-Made backup set to restore.

Once i'd played a little, and to see if it would work, i used "Ultimate boot CD" deleted all the stuff in the root of C (Except the backup folder) copied everything from the backup folder back to the root, deleted the back up folder.

Then booted the system with a vista CD, got the command console and did a fix MBR etc..

When i rebooted, my TS was back to where it started before i instaled win7.

Then i went and killed it all by installing Ubuntu. (Again making sure to keep the recovery partiton.) then i got bored of Ubuntu and installed Fedora 10, now i'm bored with fedora 10, so i'm going to install Open-Solaris :-)

In all cases i had little to no probs with drivers, WIn7 needed tweaking, as everyone else's did, and the only probs i really had under any of the 2 linuxes where with sound.

Cheers

Shawty