Vista on Radeon Mobility 9000? Hahahha

Hi

I have an Inspiron 600m, which comes with a 32 Mb Radeon 9000 graphics chipset. I am thinking of upgrading to Vista (the university offers cheap versions of Ultimate). I have 2gb RAM a 1.5 GHz Pentium M and a 100 Gb 7200 rpm HDD so, apart from the gfx card it's pretty zippy.

Clearly, the Aero UI won't work. But just how slow is running Vista in the basic interface?

I will be buying a new laptop in the next 6 months anyway, but I thought I'd set up a partition with Vista to try out all the apps and only buy the new laptop once the I know the programmes I use definitely work.

Thanks,

Wigster

 

You should be able to run the system itself quite nicely. 2GB of ram works well and the Pentium M is still a powerful processor.

Too bad MS couldn't code Aero properly.

 

Aero requires certain hardware accelerated abilities in order to function in a timely manner. It's quicker, takes less power, and results in snappier performance when compared to a software based substitute that would be noticeably slower.

 

The Vista Basic GUI is cpu drawn the same as XP, so expect similar performance in that respect.

However, insofar as ram is concerned, Vista uses more. Some laptop mfgrs are recommending 2GB for Ultimate, 1GB for Home Premium & Business. I would tend to agree on that as a baseline.

 

Used Beryl? It supports more features, and is prettier, AND it runs perfectly fine on a Mobility Radeon 7500 32MB.

Plus, it's still pre-release software.

 

Beryl? Isn't that Linux? Also, big question: does it render in 2D or 3D???

I'm not defending Aero, but MS made those choices for a reason. The probably thought the increases requirements were worth the benefits offered.

 

In full, glorious 3D, all thanks to our friends at OpenGL.

And, I'm not bashing Aero completely, it's nice. But it could have been so much nicer.