Buy Hardware With XP Now, Get A Free or Discounted Upgrade To Vista Later : Windows Vista on Notebooks: Why and What Hardware?

Buy Hardware With XP Now, Get A Free or Discounted Upgrade To Vista Later

By Guy Thomas and Barry Gerber, published on November 7, 2006
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: windows, vista, on, mobile, computers | Themes: Business Notebooks

Contents

5. More Specific Hardware Requirements
6. Some Recently Reviewed Vista-Ready Laptops and Notebooks
7. Buy Hardware With XP Now, Get A Free or Discounted Upgrade To Vista Later
8. More on this topic

7. Buy Hardware With XP Now, Get A Free or Discounted Upgrade To Vista Later

If you need to buy a new computer but cannot wait for Vista, Microsoft has worked out a deal with computer manufacturers who plan to sell PCs preloaded with Windows XP. The scheme offers an Express Upgrade to Windows Vista free or at a discount. Most manufacturers seem to be offering free upgrades at this writing. Most "free" upgrades require that you pay shipping and handling.

Express Upgrade logo courtesy of Microsoft Corporation

The Express Upgrade program started in October 2006 and runs through March 2007. For specific upgrade deals, check out the likes of HP, Dell, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba and Gateway.

Conclusions Or The Time Is Now!

Microsoft has packed a number of mobile computer friendly features into Windows Vista. These make it very attractive to upgrade your current portable computer or computers to Vista or to buy new hardware that is Vista capable. If Vista is or might be in your future, now is the time to start exploring the hardware issues you'll need to deal with before you can bring up your first mobile Vista computer. If you want good performance and the Aero GUI, go for more powerful hardware. If you can live with modest performance and you don't want the Aero GUI, less powerful mobile computers will work just fine.

The business version of Vista will be here at the end of this month. If you need the features of the business version, you can get going with a solid production copy of the operating system almost immediately.

Microsoft has promised other versions of Windows Vista by early next year. That's a mere two or so months from now. But, if you don't been the business version and you want to get going right now, you can start with Vista Release Candidate 2 on new or existing hardware. Remember that RC2 is not the real deal. Show stopping glitches will need to be fixed by the time Vista is finally released. Also bear in mind that reviews of Vista which criticize device latency and programs hanging are more a damnation of the device used for testing than the Vista operating system itself.

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