Vista on an a21m?

[Luda]

I have an a21m [800mhz], i was wondering if any one has tried installing vista beta 2 on this or a related machine. i am planning on doing this this weekend and i was wondering if anyone had any ideas, tips, tricks, etc.

[jdhurst]

I think it might take several hours to boot. 0.8Ghz will not run XP satisfactorily, and all the reports I have read suggest that Vista is a pig that will bring a 2.5Ghz machine to its knees.

[M38A1]

Interesting your negative comment on running XP on the A21m. I am using XP Pro sp2 on an A21p to post this reply. I do have 512 megs of memory and a 40 Gb 5400 RPM drive. I do NOT run the silly Micro$oft eye candy theme or their other"value-addded" junk. I use my A21p through a D-Link wireless network to surf the net on a daily basis.

I agree that Vista would probably be DOA on my machine but if you load XP without all the default M$ garbage and shovelware, it works quite well.

[draco2527]

="jdhurst. 0.8Ghz will not run XP satisfactorily

Even on a PII (600E 400MHZ) with the ram maxed out (288MB) it ran pretty good! I did not see a problem with it, if you go to MS site; the minimum requirements are even lower...ok, here are the min. from MS site.....

Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Professional
• PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended

• 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)

• 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*

• Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor

• CD-ROM or DVD drive

• Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

[Luda]

i know XP will run fine, im posted that last post from my a21m which has XP sp2. i posted it from my friends car doing about 75MPH on the highway. gotta love DUN on your phone. but yea, i was thinking vista would be a bit much for something with only 800MHZ, but i have a copy of Vista Beta 2 and i want to install it on something and i cant install it on my server, cuz well its my production server and that would be bad, and my gaming rig, well i could, but im not sure of the stability with some of the hardware i have, since it a few years old, plus my gaming rig is also my main computer and if vista messes it up, well that would be bad.

any other ideas on vista? does anyone know the min specs for it?

[Kyocera]

It will probably install and run, it will run slow however, the worst part is no video driver, this makes web browsing painful. It does have some of the classic interface features to help on slower machines. Trust me it is not all that stupendously different, from what i can tell the only huge difference is when they get it fixed right and when you install it on a machine capable of running the advanced interface. It is laid out a little different as far as configuring things and takes some time to find everything, some ibm drivers work but not many.

[jdhurst]

I once had an X22 that was 850MHz and 768Mb of ram. It came with XP Pro. I turned off all the eye candy, and tweaked all the performance settings. There weren't 7200 rpm laptop hard drives back then. By the standards then, XP ran OK, but it was still slow (in my opinion).

It wasn't until I got past 1 GHz that XP perked up. That was my experience, and if it is running great for you in the 800-1000 MHz range, that's great. I do agree with all of you about tweaking XP for performance - I continue to do that today even on fast machines. You will know from all my posts that I think XP Pro is a good OS.
... JD Hurst

[schen]

Interesting your negative comment on running XP on the A21m. I am using XP Pro sp2 on an A21p to post this reply. I do have 512 megs of memory and a 40 Gb 5400 RPM drive. I do NOT run the silly Micro$oft eye candy theme or their other"value-addded" junk. I use my A21p through a D-Link wireless network to surf the net on a daily basis.

I agree that Vista would probably be DOA on my machine but if you load XP without all the default M$ garbage and shovelware, it works quite well.

I don't know about Vista, but have my interests peaked by this. Isn't XP without "eye candy and value added junk" pretty much just Windows 2000?

[M38A1]

That's right schen - Windows XP IS Windows 2000, with the goofy themes and other junk added to make M$ some more money. My main gripe is that they took a really good product and loaded it up with so much extra stuff that is almost impossible to get rid of.

In my limited experience, when XP is installed clean it is as fast or faster than Windows 2000 and it has many more system drivers for the older computers I like to play with. I think it is probably the best OS for older PII and up computers. My wife uses a 600E (also with XP) on the same wireless network.

[jdhurst]

<snip>
I don't know about Vista, but have my interests peaked by this. Isn't XP without "eye candy and value added junk" pretty much just Windows 2000?

Overall networking in XP is a bit easier; clear type is not available on Windows 2000; much-needed security improvements are now aimed more at XP than 2000; it is newer in an evolutionary sense. ... JD Hurst

[schen]

Yeah... a little tongue in cheek on this. I went to the Chicago launch of the W2K some years back (even have the T-Shirt). I really love it for the stabilty and no-nonsense paired-down (almost non-M$) aspect of it. But all my current machines run XP for exactly the reason you guys have said. The ease of use with drivers and networking.

[Luda]

yea XP was a nice evolutionary step. from what ive seen Vista is alot more graphical evolution then actual the workings of the system. im still working on getting a machine to run it on a day to day basis.