Updating my laptop was a little more complicated. I ran the Windows Vista advisor and it said I could run Vista Basic. However, there were some issues with drivers (big surprise). As part of the process I upgraded my hard drive with an Hitachi Travelstar Upgrade Kit which was fantastic because I bumped up from 80 GB to 100 GB (not that much) and from 5400 rpms to 7200 rpms (tremendous) for $109 at the local Air Force BX.
The Acorn software with the kit is great. It uses Linux to image your drive to its drive. I've done this more than once. On my laptop it performed flawlessly but on my friend's laptop it didn't work. I think it was due to issues with her hard drive. Thi
s gave me ease of mind because I knew I could install Vista Basic clean and not worry about whether it worked. I figured if it bombed, I could put the old hard drive back in with XP and continue on as before. Well, the process worked fine. Averatec's gloom and doom about the laptop not being compatible turned out to be wrong. I did have to update the sound driver with Vista driver from Realtek, but that easy.
s gave me ease of mind because I knew I could install Vista Basic clean and not worry about whether it worked. I figured if it bombed, I could put the old hard drive back in with XP and continue on as before. Well, the process worked fine. Averatec's gloom and doom about the laptop not being compatible turned out to be wrong. I did have to update the sound driver with Vista driver from Realtek, but that easy.The big hang-up I faced was my broadband card. I spent hours with tech support from Sprint PCS on the phone. They had work-arounds for Vista, but it only locked up my Averatec 4100 (at the right). So, I contacted customer service and gave them the opportunity to give a Vista-compatible broadband card and they tried to sell me one with a two-year contract to which I declined their offer and cancelled my service with them. For now, I'm without a broadband card. I figure that out later. I rarely used it and I can think of better ways to spend $60 each month.
So, it's up and running. I decided to see what I could do to improve the performance. A simple buy of a Turion MT-37 CPU for $60 helped out quite a bit. It runs very nicely. I don't have the slick Aero environment, but at least I have a more stable platform from which to run my Office 2007 Enterprise from.
Speaking of Office 2007. It is great. If your firm has Microsoft Home Use, you need to utilize it. It is a fantastic suite.
Moral of the story: don't listen to the Microsoft naysayers. Do the upgrade. My understanding is that the entire Air Force will be upgraded to Vista by summer's end. It's selling like hot cakes and it does work.
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