Windows Vista: How to Upgrade

[Mike88]

I turned on an old Toshiba laptop this evening only to find Windows Vista Home Premium with SP2 is no longer supported meaning Google Chrome, Microsoft Security Essentials and Vista cannot update and the various messages tell me that the computer is vulnerable to infection from all sorts of nasties.

The annoying thing is that the laptop is perfectly decent and I was hoping my grandchildren could use it for e mailing, browsing, You Tube and social media etc. From what I have been able to gather Windows 7 will work but is there an easy and free/cheap way to upgrade that is easy for computer illiterates such as myself?

Thanks.

[poundcoin]

I think mine is the same version and Chrome more or less stopped working on my laptop .

I downloaded a copy of Mozilla Firefox for the browser and the free AVG for security and (touch wood) it's been fine for the last year or so .

[flint]

I was reluctant to upgrade to Windows 10 having read all sorts of horror stories, however I bit the bullet due to the impending lack of support for Vista.
I had Chrome installed at the same time. I had a local computer "expert" make the changes as not losing the files on Vista was essential. I think I paid him £100.