Re: Windows VISTA Ultimate

["Jones, John (US)" <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx>]

People will look at you funny, but that's about it.

I've been running Ultimate at home since last May and just got it on my
new laptop.  Both machines are fine, but they were installed brand new.

Comments:
- New hardware is ideal.  Anything new will be fine with Vista.  The
bulk of the driver gripes are people who want to use older hardware with
the newer OS.  That's on the core PC.  You need to check your
peripherals (printers and whatnot) to verify their support.  For
instance, some HP printers have no Vista support; my OfficeJet worked
with native support and no drivers were necessary.
- RAM.  You want a lot.  1GB minimum, 2GB recommended, 4GB ideal.  RAM
is cheap; buy more.  Windows will use it.  Google SuperFetch for how it
can make your machine faster.  (This is, BTW, a rough doubling of the
RAM situation for XP)
- Disk. Vista Ultimate will take 13-15GB disk space.  That's a lot, but
any modern machine probably has 80+GB in it so I don't consider it an
issue.
- CPU.  I urge dual-core or better.  AMD or Intel doesn't matter.
- Vista boots about as fast as XP, although for me it shuts down way
faster.  
- XP would not undock without getting massively unstable; Vista undocks
seamlessly.
- Wireless support seems smoother in Vista.
- Indexed searches in Vista are pretty fast.  Searching documents is way
better than under XP.
- 32 v. 64 bit probably doesn't matter, but check your apps as some
things still are certified for x64.  I'm 64 bit at home & 32 bit on my
laptop.
- iNav drops Aero to the non-enhanced desktop.  But it goes back
automatically when iNav is closed.