I really wanted to give Vista a try, but after talking with the Dell upgrade folks it looks like Vista won't be out until mid-March as an upgrade.

 

Not being able to wait I just went out and bought Vista Home Premium (~$250 US, ouch:smileysurprised:).

 

I made a CD on my other Dell (Dimension 4550) with all the drivers I thought I might need:

 

 I burned the latest Vista driver for the video card direct from nVidia's web site as well as the latest sound card driver from Creative Lab's Soundblaster site (these both are beta drivers).  I also dowloaded the Vista driver for the motherboard (nForce 590 SLI Intel) from nVidia BUT I DIDN"T USE IT.  I also got the Vista nTune driver from nVidia.

From the Dell site I downloaded the Vista drivers for serial ATA (nVidia Mediashield), the display (Dell 2407 WFP) and the network controller (Broadcom).

 

To install Vista I simply put the DVD that came in the box into the top drive and let it go.  I DIDN"T boot from the Vista disk.

 

It asked about the C: drive and said it would overwrite all the old stuff.  It showed the hidden partition with the factory Dell restore, I left that alone.  20 minutes later and after several restarts it was done.  The display was now in VGA and there was no sound.  I put the driver CD in and loaded the SATA, video card, sound card and network drivers, restarting between each.  Then came the display and nTune drivers.

 

Total time ~ 30 minutes. 

 

There was a new folder labeled windows.old that I deleted.  All that stuff listed above was gone and the computer is running great.

 

The only issues have been minor and that is due to the nVidia video card driver (won't wake up after computer goes to sleep) and the nTunes program (works, but starts quirky).

 

All in all, I love the look of Vista and the completeness of the Home package.  The media software has worked great and I don't have to deal with a bunch of different programs.

 

If you have any questions, please ask

 

Thanks,

 

T

itunes are working on a vista version.