Can I install Vista Basic in old laptop with Mobility Radeon 7500 (not DirectX 9)

I have an older IBM A31 laptop that used to belong to my employer. Basically my company got bought out and the new owners rolled out their own machines. They had no use for the old machines so we could keep them. The hard drive is only 30GB and on its last leg. This thing is built like a tank and has an excellent SXGA+ 1400x1050 resolution screen so I'd love to keep it going. The problem is that I cannot format a new HDD and reinstall XP because the recovery disk and license went out the door with the old ownership. I have 2 Vista machines in the house already so I'd prefer Vista over XP just so it plays nice with those other PCs.

The Vista Upgrade advisor sees no issues with the hardware, CPU is 1.8GHz P4, 1GB RAM, etc except for one problem - there are no Vista drivers for the old ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 video card which I think is DirectX 7 or 8, but not DirectX 9. I don't have any illusions of running Aero on this machine, Vista Home Basic, as stripped down as it is, is plenty good enough. Does anyone have any ideas on what will happen if I try to install Vista on this old laptop? Like I said I don't care about Aero but I don't want to only get VGA output or something on this SXGA+ screen. If I could at least get it to run at 1400x1050 I would be very happy.

 

If you're not running aero, than that gpu is more than enough for the 2D desktop. I suggest at least getting more ram and then Vista Basic will run just fine.

 

You can install Vista without Aero, but I don’t recommend it on such an old machine, because it will be unbearably slow.

Linux is a good alternative if you don’t want to spend any money. However, If you really want to run Windows, then IMO you are better off buying an XP Home edition license than buying more RAM and installing Vista. Besides, you might also run in to trouble finding all the drivers for Vista.