Should I upgrade to Vista Ultimate on the older VGN-SZ160P laptop?

Here are the specs

Manufacturer Sony
Manufacturer Part # VGNSZ160P/C
Processor Type Intel Premium Core Duo L2300
Data Bus Speed 1.83 GHz
Cache Memory Type L2 cache
Installed Size 2 MB
RAM Installed Size 2 GB (max) Technology DDR2 SDRAM, PC2-5300
Memory Speed 533 MHz
System Type Notebook
Storage Hard Drive 100 GB
Optical Storage Type DVD-+RW (+R DL)
Display Type 13.3" TFT active matrix

Graphics Processor / Vendor NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400
Video Memory 128 MB
Max. Resolution 1280 x 800
Audio Type Sound Card
Networking Wireless Intel PRO / Wireless 3945ABG

 

Sure, what the hell, go for it. All the cool kids are doing it.

 

cute but useless.. am neither a kid, nor have the cash sitting around just to go for it.. The XP on my computer has crashed really badly and I have to pay 60 bucks from a third party vendor to buy the recovery disks, as Sony considers my laptop old (after two years) and has stopped the support for the laptop.

So, my question is if I go with the stupid Vista, does it run smoothly on my system with that specs?

 

I run Vista Ultimate on my SZ110/B with the 1.8ghz processor, 2gig of ram, and the original 5400rpm hard drive. I bought it with XP preinstalled about 2.5 years ago so it's a pretty old machine.

I think the performance with Vista is fine. When I first installed Vista I only had 1gig of ram it it was NOT fine then, but with 2gig, things are good. It's been so long since I ran XP that I cannot really remember whether it was much faster back then (and anyway I only had 1gig of ram then).

I never use the "speed" mode so I don't have any information on how stable that is under Vista.

Let me know if you have specific questions.

 

If you decide to go that route get the Sony Vista companion dvd. It costs $10 and will integrate all your existing drivers and Sony software. The system you describe will run Vista with SP1 very nicely but you will have to use the Nvidia GPU to run Aero.

 

Aero works reasonably well with the integrated gpu in my opinion.

 

If you're keeping the machine for a while, you might also want to consider upgrading the processor to a Core 2 Duo, as Vista on a Core Duo is a bit sluggish IMO. It's really easy, not that expensive (<$300), but along with Vista you'll probably take a battery hit as well.

Good luck!

 

Thanks everyone for sharing your opinion..

True, but don't I need to flash the BIOS when I upgrade to Core 2 Duo?

 

If you upgrade to Vista, I would recommend updating the BIOS regardless. The most current one is R0112N0; refer to this thread for further instructions: How to Enable Intel VT and AHCI on a VAIO SZ.

 

I agree it will work but it will be sluggish with the integrated graphics. Fortunately, this notebook has the Nvidia 7400Go which won't have any trouble with Aero.

Quoted from Intel's website:

"The hardware limitations of 915/GMA900 graphics center around not having a large enough memory table to support Vista Aero, a key feature that is part of WDDM driver support. This, along with hardware restrictions on surface placement and graphics memory alignment, results in graphics memory usage that is not optimized for Aero performance. Additionally, the lack of native hardware support in the 915 Express chipset family for Vista’s dynamic memory management would result in slower graphics performance and a sub-optimal user experience with Windows Vista Aero." Read more....