Sweet Carrie, The difference between windows 8 and windows 7 is they are different operating systems. Your computer needs a operating system in order to run all your programs, sorta like a desk or table to do all your work on. Microsoft windows in the most popular operating system that a majority of PCs use. Windows 8 has not come out yet so you cannot yet it, but I'm betting they will charge you if you want to upgrade.
Since you are not an advanced computer user (no offense intended) I would stick with windows 7 and just make sure to shut down and restart your computer when it asks you to do so for security updates that Microsoft will put out occasionally. Also make sure that you have a antivirus software on your computer like Trendmicro or McAfee to protect your computer from viruses (most of them just slow your computer down to a crawl, not something you want on a new computer).
Lastly just to help so you can get some clarification on your computer terms. There are really 3 main factors to your computer that affect its speed. From your previous posts, you are mixing these factors up, which is causing quite a bit of confusion!
First is the CPU speed. I don't think you have that listed here anywhere, but it is usually going to be something like 2.5ghz (gigahertz) and will either be a dual core or quad core. Pretty much the only CPUs out there are made by intel or AMD. Most likely yours is made by Intel with something like Core i5 2.5ghz and then a model number. This number is probably the most important as it is what determines the speed of your computer i.e. how fast will my TV show/movies and internet browser run or other programs.
Second is the amount of RAM. You are referring to this number as memory, which is fine, but I would refer to it as RAM so people know exactly what you are talking about. For new laptops you will usually have somewhere between 2GB to 8GB of RAM. In your case you have 6GB, which is plenty for what you need it to do. This is probably the second most important feature for speed. Think of it as how much table space you have on your desk. When you open a program it takes up some space, if you dont have enough space you have to move something else out of the way first which slows everything down.
Last is your hard drive space or storage. I believe you have 540GBs of storage. When you are transferring info from your old machine to your new one, it is transferring to the 540GB hard drive, not the 6GB of RAM. Hopefully that is not too confusing. The hard drive is similar to how much desk storage space you have.
Finally to answer your question about your old machine. If you are still going to use it, and it is still usable I would not wipe the memory otherwise you will lose all your files, so make sure to back them all up on your new computer first before doing that. Second make sure you have the disks that came with the computer so you can reinstall an operating system, (remember the desk analogy?) otherwise once you finish wiping it it will just be a blank computer. I would only advise wiping your old computer clean and reinstalling everything if the computer is running super slow compared to when you first got it and you have 4-5 hours to spare to get it all done.
Sorry for the long post, but hopefully you got some good info out of that. Also if you ever need any computer parts or another computer I would advise newegg.com. They are like the amazon.com (much cheaper usually than box stores like best buy) of all things computer related. If you have any other questions feel free to PM, I just did a ton of research for my new computer and have all the research data still. Have fun with your new computer!
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