VISTA questions

[11Blade]

I have a significant investment in 5 different windows XP systems and office XP. I need to purchase another laptop and bequeath my trusty XP laptop to my wife.

Every new laptop I look at has vista home premium or basic.

For people with experience with Vista I have several questions.

1. I use two different VPN's to connect to client sites
Cisco VPN 4.6 and Contivity VPN (Nortel) - does anyone know if these will work under vista?

2. I am happy enough with windows XP and office XP, can I use my legit copy of Office XP on Vista(obviously i will delete from another less used box). (Does it run on Vista or not?)

3. Will Vista automatically have all the network connectivity needed to use my home wireless/wired network. My systems all run windows XP pro.

Thanks for reading, thanks for posting

11Blade

 

[DeviousTrap]

1) Cisco will work using version 4.8 IIRC, never used Nortel so I can't comment on that.

2) Yes.

3) Yes.

 

[Jeff7181]

#3 is a bit cloudy in my opinion. Windows wireless networking is inferior to what Intel offers for it's wireless adapters. In XP I tried XP's built in one, but found Intel's own always worked better. I hoped it would be better in Vista since Intel doesn't have their program working for Vista yet... I was disappointed. The one in Vista seems to have the same trouble as the one in XP. The problem is it seems to have trouble restoring the wireless connection when resuming from Standby or Hibernation. I can't find a way to reproduce it, but it seems like every 5th or 6th resume from Standby or Hibernation, the wireless can't connect to a network and I have to disable, then enable the wireless adapter and then it works. It's a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.

 

[11Blade]

 

[11Blade]

Thank you for the responses. I saw a pretty decent HP laptop with an AMD Turion X2 with only 512Mb of RAM, will I have a headache with the vista license if I upgrade myself to 2Gb?

The sales droid at Circuit City said that Vista home basic does not have everything I need to share my IP printer, Network Storage and Fileshare, but if I pay xx$ I can get Home Premium.
Anyone confirm that, sound stupid to sell a wireless laptop with a disabled OS.

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

I can't really comment on Vista Basic not being able to share what you mentioned, but it's probably better in the long run to get Home Premium anyway. You might even regret later getting the Home Basic. Here's a site that provides are more detailed comparison:

Vista Editions Comparison

The site mentions that "Improved file and folder sharing = Yes" for all Vista editions. It would rather seem ridiculous otherwise. If you can live without the missing features between the two, then choose Basic. Just remember about Aero and Remote Desktop (I mean accessing another computer from this laptop) aren't supported in Basic.

Here's my take: Home Basic DOESN'T support Aero regardless of your graphics card. You *might* get the Basic or Standard Themes and let's just say the Basic Theme is pretty unpleasant (my laptop can't use Aero or Standard Themes). Standard Theme is actually nice on my desktop. Ask if you can use a demo of Vista Basic and Vista Premium and then compare the two and switch between the different themes.

Caution: If you want Aero, you'll need a video card capable of DX9. Anything that has that has Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 should work. Anything less then 945 for Intel will not. Basically, make sure it CAN run Aero when you do want to use it including those ATI and NVIDIA integrated graphics. For a better experience, you might want to upgrade to 1GB RAM now or latter.

 

[Jeff7181]

I wouldn't even attempt to run Vista with less than 1 GB of RAM. Either upgrade the RAM as soon as you buy it, or don't buy it.

RAM upgrades shouldn't (I say shouldn't rather than a definite don't because I'm sure there has been or will be a case where someone swaps RAM and it triggers the activation thing) cause Vista to require reactivation... as far as I know, the only thing that requires reactivation is changing the motherboard... or possibly changing your processor, video card, and sound card all at once would change the hash enough that it would require reactivation.

*EDIT* By the way... the person at Circuit City lied to you. Home Basic has everything you need for a home network. It includes file and printer sharing, as well as ICS. The only networking type things you can't do with Home Basic is join a domain, use IIS, or use Remote Desktop. (Remote Assistance is included in Home Basic)