Vista Upgrade on Laptop - GOTCHA!

[kep55]

I bought a Gateway MX-7120 laptop in May of 2006. It has the AMD Athlon 64 3400+, 1.5 GB RAM, 100 GB HD, DVD-RW DL, and all those goodies. The one thing it doesn't have is a compatible video card. The video is an ATI Radeon X300 (or X200, depending on your source). According to the Vista Upgrade wizard, that is the only thing that keeps me from being to upgrade. So, I either have to junk my laptop, stick with WinXP Pro (which is just as secure and stable as Vista considering I have the full McAfee protection suite, CCleaner, AdAware, Zone Alarm and iI forget what else), or switch to Linux. I tried that twice and it still isn't ready for prime time. I have to admit that Microsoft does have the install process mighty simple that even an old geezer like me can run it without too many problems.
So, anyone have any other suggestions? My one big piece of advice is run the Vista Advisor before doing any sort of upgrade.

 

[Nonymous]

There's no reason Vista shouldn't be able to use the Radeon. It might not have a specific driver for it, but the generic driver should work just fine.

Just don't expect to be able to run Aero on it - not only because of lack of driver, but also because of limitations of that particular Radeon which is a low powered / low horsepowered graphics solution.

If you do some googling, you'll easily find other people using Vista with an X300. Google "vista radeon x300", and a top hit is a CNET article from last spring where they previewed an early build of Vista. Here's two...

http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-6051736.html
http://philoking.com/2006/12/03/why-i-am-afraid-of-windows-vista/

 

[danny9894]

Yea it should run Vista fine but probably no Aero but then again my friend can run Aero on a ATi Raden 9700

 

[desolationw]

I can run Aero on a 9500pro modded to a 9700 and a fx5200 so it could work. otherwise you can just run vista without aero.

 

[Zoron]

Radeon 9500 series or better is required for Aero. I would think that the X300 being later than the 9500 would run Aero... depending on the amount of RAM it has.