Thinking about upgrading to Vista or getting a new PC?

I have decided a short guide is in order for anybody who is wondering about Upgrading to Vista or purchasing a new PC with Vista. I will do this in a question/answer format to make it easier on my pre-coffee morning mind.

The very first question everybody should be asking themselves is, Do I need to?

If XP is working fine for you and your computer is working fine, don't upgrade. Adopting early on usually means that you will have to deal with the craziness of incompatibilities with some of the older software you may have or some of the older hardware.

Gamers right now shouldnt even think of switching to Vista until the DX10 games really start coming out and nVidia and ATI have solid drivers for Vista, this is one my biggest peeves as is noted on a previous vanity a few weeks back.

The very first thing you want to make sure of is that you beat the minimum recommended specs. Microsoft has an upgrade advisor that you can download that will check your PC for its requirements.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx

If you have software you want to port research the internet well, there are growing lists of software that is supported and software that isnt.

If you have hardware you want to use on Vista make sure you can find proper Vista drivers.If you can't find drivers check and see if XP drivers work if they don't, wait before you upgrade to Vista.No use in waisting your hardware or keeping it locked up until drivers are ready.

This is the bogeyman that all computer libertarians scare you with. THe truth is you are still allowed to rip cd's, watch movies and everything else you were able to do with XP however as long as you are doing it legally. To test this I downloaded about three songs off of limewire and received no notice or inability to play them.

HDCP is for hardware only and only pertains(so far) to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players. The secret is that if you purchase one of those players and you dont have an HDCP enabled monitor and video card then your video will be down sampled, not disabled(in so far as I understand it). On a small PC monitor you won't notice the difference. One of the misinformation that the anti-Vista crowd likes to say is that you cant use Vista w/o the HDCP Monitor and GPU, not true. I am using a non-HDCP card and Monitor as I type on Vista.

OK I decided upgrading is fine, its for the future. But isnt Vista expensive compared to the past OS's from MS?

Yes and no. There are two versions of Vista that most home users should worry about, Home Basic and Premium. If you wish to maintain the basicly same experience as XP Home then Home Basic is all you need. Home Basic provides everything that Xp Home +Pro has and its upgrade and/or OEM disc are the same cost or cheaper as every home offer that Microsoft has ever offered,$99 or &97 dollars OEM. If you have XP MCE then Premium is your best choice as it offers everything or more than MCE does at &159 or &121 OEM.

One thing to note is that if you have XP Pro and you wish to do the upgrade path then you must use at minimum Vista Business which is $199 for the upgrade, however the OEM is $153 dollars. Besides if you are smart you will just buy a cheap part at an online store then it will qualify you for the OEM purchase of Basic or Premium and it won't bother to check your current OS.

The Ultimate version tends to be the highlight of every Vista bashers day, its what they quote for being too expensive. The truth of the matter is nobody unless you are a power user who likes to have the best of everything should get Ultimate, end of the story. It is simply the top model for people who dont mind spending 3000+ on a new PC.But there is something that actually makes it cheaper than the rest of the choices, if you plan on upgrading three computers to Vista then the purchase of the Ultimate Edition Upgrade + Family Pack for $309 is the way to go. Essentially You will be allowed to install Ultimate on one computer and premium on two other computers, doing the math that makes it $103 per computer. Doing further math that comes out to less than 33 cents a day for the first year of use, not bad for the life blood of your computer.

In conclusion I am adding a chart of functions of each version of Vista, the chart contains what is different in each one.

Also, my HP 750 printer from 2002 does not seem compatible with vista. I tried installing it and it says it can't find the correct operating system. Do I need to buy a new printer too?

Welcome to my personal hell. I bought my wife a new entry level laptop a few weeks back (Compaq Presario C501NR). It came with Vista basic. I did some basic research but not as much as I should have.

First of all, I had to get a memory upgrade to bump the system up to 1GB RAM. It came with 512MB and there's no way you can run that OS and have anything left for other programs. No big deal as the memory was cheap and was easy to slap in.

Then I went to install the HP Jet Suite program on the laptop. Jet Suite is the application "control center" for my HP 3150 multifunction printer. I have that printer hooked up to an HP Jet Direct 170x printer sharing box which allows it to sit on the network with an IP address. As long as my systems have that Jet Suite program on it, I can set up the printer. I have 3 other systems in the house, all with XP Pro SP2 and no issues getting the printer to work. However, the software won't install on the Vista system as it's not compatible.

No problem, I think to my self. I can just manually add a printer and direct it to the IP I have on the Jet Direct box and install a universal driver. I go to type in the IP, Vista comes back and says "Hey, that's an HP 3150 I see over there. Would you like to install the driver?" Whew! Finally! I click yes and it comes back and says "HA-HA... Fooled ya! Not gonna happen". Of course I'm paraphrasing here but you get the drift.

I go onto do my research and low and behold... HP won't be developing any drivers for my perfectly fine HP 3150. I called HP and asked if there's any other driver I can use (which I already tried but thought I might be missing something) and they told me that because of the way the Jet Suite software controls the printer, that a straight-up driver won't work.

Ok... so where does that leave me? I have to buy a new printer. And of course I can't get anything simple like an HP 1018 or 1020. Noooo... those aren't networkable (which is a must for my situation). Even if I could squeeze one of those stand-alone toaster-sized printers onto my wife's desk, the affordable (read that as I'm kinda pissed that I have to drop even MORE cash onto this venture and am trying to find a cheap solution) Vista compatible. Of course the marketing material says they're Vista ready, but the technical pages say a driver hasn't been written yet.

I asked HP/Compaq if I could downgrade my system to XP Pro and they said the system was specifically designed for Vista and that I'd be opening a huge can of worms if I tried. I'm not sure I completely buy the first part of that but the second part is more than likely spot-on. Anyway, it's enough for me to keep from trying it. With me, adventures like that always turn out like that muddy slide down the mountain a-la Romancing the Stone

The moral of the story, I think, is that you need to do ALL your compatibility homework before dropping any cash on anything having to do with the Vista OS.

Here are a couple of links that may prove useful. Careful, the first one "requires" a Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to view (figures):

Microsoft Vista Hardware Compatibility List:
http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/

HP Product Support Matrix (for Vista):
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00808536

No worries. The issue I have is that there is no straight forward driver for my particular printer. I need that Jet Suite software to make everything work (I've seen it and HP's multi-function support group confirmed that yesterday). I was reaching by trying to manually install a UPD the other day.

As for lasers not being cheap, they have one that’s $99 that would be perfect for my wife. But as I mentioned in my earlier long-winded post, she has no space for one to attach directly. Plus she sometimes works in the kitchen, living-room, etc. We need one that can be networked. So that’s when the “are not cheap” statement you made holds true. Those start around $300 or so. And I know I could go with deskjet vs. laser jet but for what she does, that wouldn't really fly. Add to that the total cost of ownership and deskjet/officejet products are more expensive over time.

I’m in a pickle, no doubt about it. So she’ll keep using her Dell with XP Pro on it while I figure out what the heck to do with the new laptop. Perhaps in the near future, I’ll find a networkable laser printer that won’t break the bank and actually works with Vista.

Until then... Cheers!

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