Getting Ready for MS Vista

If you're thinking of upgrading your current machine to Vista, the first thing you're going to want to do is check out your current machine to see if it's up to speed. The basic requirements call for a recent CPU, a gigabyte of RAM, and 15 gigabytes of free space on your hard drive. You're also going to want a fast graphics processor, especially if you're going to use the 3D graphics interface, Aero. But there are countless other ways that your system might not be ready for the demands of Vista.

The easiest way to find out if you've got the stuff you need to upgrade is to use the free, downloadable Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft's web site. When it works correctly, the Advisor goes through all of your system components, telling you what will work and what you'll have trouble with. Of course, I found out that the Advisor is not without its share of problems.

To begin with, it's equal parts sales opportunity and download advisor. As you're waiting for the software to do its scan you get lots of info-ads about Vista in all its different flavors, and you're comparison shopping before you've even done the scan. It's also a big program—a 6MB download.

I ran the Windows Upgrade Advisor on a fairly recent Dell Inspiron. It generated a list of about 15 things that needed my attention. They were broken out into three categories: system, devices, and programs.

Some of the things it pointed out were minor, like the fact that I needed updated drivers for the notebook's touchpad. Others were more critical, like the fact that I didn't have enough free disk space to do a Vista install. The scan was not happy with my VGA adapter either, which is sort of a tough one to fix since it's a notebook PC. And about half of the things it pointed out were things it reported as not having any information about in its database. Just as I was viewing the report (there's no print function), the Advisor crashed, taking my IE with it, and I had to reboot my PC. Not a great confidence builder.

I tried the Advisor on a second machine, a Dell Latitude. This time I was informed that I first needed to install a new 1.5MB version of the XML parser. The report generated told me that this machine would work best with Windows Vista Business (of course, I wanted the Home Premium). The reason it recommends the business version is because I'm running XP Professional now, and it turns out that certain upgrade paths are not available to every machine depending on the old version of Windows you're running. ExtremeTech has a nice chart showing you which upgrade paths will work and which ones won't.

In addition to recommending Windows Vista Business Edition, the report indicated that while my CPU and hard disk were fine, the Advisor had no information about the compatibility of my graphics system (Intel 82852) or my Sigma Tel Audio, to name a few. It found five programs that needed minor updates, including MS Explorer and Java. The advice was to head to Windows Update and start getting my devices and programs more up to date.

So far, I can't say I'm enamored with the Windows Upgrade Advisor. Both machines need some work to get them in shape for the big day, and I'm more and more serious about just buying a new Vista machine and starting life fresh on January 30^th.