NC8430 and Vista

Hello all,

Have any of you who own the NC8430 Notebook tried loading Vista yet? If so, how well is Vista working?

Does Aero work on this machine? Are you getting reasonable performance?

I'm considering purchasing this model, but as far as I know, it still ships with XP. This is ok to me for now, but I want to make sure that the NC8430 can fully support Vista when the time comes for me to upgrade.

Thanks in advance for your responses.


cycloptic

 

I've been running Vista for the last week or two and I'm not really having too many troubles. Aero runs perfectly fine, and my performance hasn't taken a dent either (though I haven't played any games so that's still up in the air).

HP already has all the drivers and programs up for the nc8430 and Vista as well.

I've got a short little Vista blog up and running if you want to read it as well...but any problems I've run into are only software related and easily fixed once bugs are found and fixed.

 

Thanks night_2004! I'm off to check your Vista blog

Vista compatibility is one of my few remaining concerns before ordering the NC8430. I'm glad to hear that Vista is running well on your machine. I'm not in a major hurry for Vista since a lot of the software I use isn't quite ready for it yet, but it's good to know that my machine would be ready to handle it.

cycloptic

 

Very nice and informative blog

 

Even though there isn't a lot of software written specifically for Vista, a lot of it will work anyway. If it does not, make it run under "XP SP2 Compatibility Mode." So far the only thing I have problems with is highlighted in the blog.

I'll be keeping that up to date as problems/solutions arise, so feel free to check in on it occasionally. If you have a specific question, you can PM me as well.

 

My main leisure activity involves creating music, which relies on additional audio hardware tied to the computer. Presently there aren't a lot of Vista drivers out there for these devices, particularly the ones I own. The software that access the drivers seem to work OK under Vista from what I have seen.

It didn't occur to me that the compatibility modes might work with device drivers, but maybe its worth trying it out.

I also have CD burning software and disk defragging utilities that I've read do not work under Vista.

Anyway, once I obtain the new machine, I will probably try out Vista before deciding what my long term configuration is going to be. I'll be sure to keep an eye on your blog and take your XP Compatibility Mode advice if I get stuck with an install.

Thanks again for your input!

cycloptic

 

Been there, tried it, went back to XP.
There is NO benefit from using Vista at this point. And yes it looks nicer (but you can to the same with the vista transformation packs that are available for free) but if you run a 1GB memory system your performance will suffer.
If you have a 2GB system but do lots of memory intensive tasks or use heavy applications at the same time your performance will suffer again.
Perhaps when I get my SSD I will try Vista again (but again only if the SSD is not supported by XP).

 

bump. I'm curious too. I have received the vista upgrade CD couple months ago but I haven't had the time to mess with it due to school work. Now the semster is over I need something to tinker around. I want to hear some feedbacks on people that has done the vista upgrade on nc8430.

If I install the upgrade and not satisfied with the performance of vista is it possible to restore my xp using my ghost backup? I read somewhere that I can't revert back to xp due to my xp key being blacklsted after the upgrade.

 

Hatch,
that's what I did to try out Vista on my nc8430. I first made a Ghost image of the XP installation, and then upgraded to Vista.
Vista asked me to remove Ghost, and two other softwares before allowing the upgrade. Then I installed all the vista drivers and upgraded. It told me to remove the HP Security software, even though this latter was a Vista version.
Finally, I ran the upgrade process and it took 3+ hours to proceed.

I did an upgrade, not a clean install, in order to see which software and/or drivers were working or not. Then I found Vista kind of ugly, so I decided to revert back to my clean XP install.

I booted on my Ghost 9 Cd-ROM and reinstalled it in 20 minutes. I was back to work where I left it before the Vista upgrade trial.

So yes, you can revert back using Ghost... if you boot from the CD.

Steve

 

sjordi I went ahead and installed the vista so far I'm liking it. Everything seems to work fine except for my video capture device that has vista driver under development status. I'm kinda liking the change. I know there is a lot of unnecessary extra BS but I think the NC8430 with t7000 and 2gig of memory can handle vista pretty good. I'll post some feedback after I get to use it more