Adventures in New Laptops
A 3d Rotating Desktop on a Aero Glass Desktop
The installation of Windows Vista and Office2007 on the Dell XPS M1210 has been completed.
Gotcha’s
To Date there is no official Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 Vista Video Drivers. You can use the latest XP Drivers to get video support, but no Aero Glass.
To get Aero Glass working you have to install a modified driver that someone tweaked to get the Glass to work. But it does work and looks very pretty.
Windows Vista Perf (Performance)
Boy this needs to get better. I have installed Vista on a:-
3ghz, 1gb Ram - ATI Radeon 128mb 9800 Pro
Core Duo 2.0Ghz, 1gb Ram Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 256mb
Both these machines are pretty powerful, but lumber under Windows Vista Beta 2.
I know its Beta and Microsoft will work on the Perf near the end of development, but my tip is if your getting a PC between now and when Vista ships or plan to use Vista in the coming years (2007-2010), get a really powerful one.
Start by getting a PC that is “Vista Capable”.
This also means you may have issues if you want to take your Pentium 4 2.0ghz , 512mb class machines and upgrade them to this platform. Even if the perf gets 1/3 better its not going to be pretty.
So I have the laptop of tomorrow (Vista/Office2007) It looks the part.
Now I have 180 days head start on the next generation of technology.
Why is it important to get in now for people like me? Well come June 2007 and a client wants to refresh those 5 year old XP Pro Machines, I will know exactly what I am getting myself and the client into.
Link: N/A
Office2007 User Interface
July 19th, 2006 at 1:13 am
I’ve been trying to get Vista to run on my M1210 but havn’t had much success. My specs seem to be similar to yours. I keep encountering a BSOD (BAD_POOL_CALLER) while it says Windows is loading (silver loader bar).
What drivers did you install/update? What other modifications did you make in order to get Vista working?
July 19th, 2006 at 9:21 am
Hi this link has lots of people with the same message but on XP, its likely to be the same in Vista.
Have a read.
http://kindel.com/blogs/charlie/archive/2004/05/26/282.aspx
Colin
July 20th, 2006 at 2:29 am
how were you able to enable aero glass with 3d desktop? can you point me to the exact driver install/*.inf tweak you used to allow this to happen on the m1210? mine behaves a bit funny whenever the protected app pop-up window occurs - the screen goes b&w and gets horizontal scanlines for the first 4/5ths of the screen from the left, with a black bar on the rightside - seemingly due to it attempting to do a 3d effect (my assumption). thx for any help you can provide -
joe
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:48 am
Hi Joe.
The Link is
http://www.wolvorine4424.com/Vista_NvidiaFW_88.61.rar
If the link is dead in the future I have a copy of the drivers.
Regards
Colin
September 29th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Hi,
I just received my M1210 yesterday, and tried installing Vista… runs very well so far, but being able to use a higher res than the 1024×768 defaut would be cool, as would be trying Aero!
The file indeed doesn’t exist anymore, so I’d be interested in your copy!
Does it work with the 64-bit version too (I installed it as I have a Core 2 duo inside)?
Regards,
Kilrah
October 1st, 2006 at 9:00 am
Hi
That sounds driver related.
You really want to be using Windows Vista RC1 onwards as this ships with a Aero enabled 7400 driver out of the box.
Going 64-bit is also brave from a driver support point of view.
If you get stuck check out.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/
I would love to find out if you get the 64-bit working.
Colin