I received the Toshiba Vista express upgrade and

[Mr. D.]

I received the Toshiba Vista express upgrade and wonder if I should upgrade my M400 or wait?

Any opinions from those who have performed the upgrade lately?

Thanks!

[wthor]

I upgraded my M4 to Vista and havn't regretted it yet :)

It does run a tad slower than XP did ( I have a 1.73GHz Pentium-M ) but the scheduler in Vista seems to prioritize things a little different than XP did, so I've yet to see any stutter in ink handling in Vista, while XP stuttered once in a while ( esp. when updating the virus scanner ).

So, for what its worth, my upgrade (clean install) went well. I used Toshibas supplied drivers and have no complaints.

Be certain tho that your perhiperals are supported in Vista ( my Canon PowerShot A-40 isn't, and neither is my HP Colour LaserJet 2600n, although I did find a workaound for that.. )

[Mr. D.]

Thanks for the reply!

It's good to know that things went well for you. I'll just need to be certain that any critical hardware and software is compatible.

[wthor]

If other than Toshiba supported software, then you ought to post a list of what you consider critical software :)

The tablet as such and all that is in it is supported ( my M4 predates the M400 and it's fully supported :) )

External hardware is up to each hardware vendor, and they differ as much as theyr'e many. Canon is lousy, HP is (mostly) lousy but they promise to get a grip. Epson is fairly good and others may well differ.

Beware that the driver model has changed since XP so if you "force-feed" a XP driver to Vista, it may choke on it.

[Mr. D.]

I have a program that uses SQL and MS hasn't released a Vista update for that yet, so the program isn't certified. I'll have to wait until it is since that is an essential program for me. Hardware-wise, I've got a DesignJet 110+, a new Samsung Multi-function Color Laser and a 500 gig WD My Book backup drive. But, I can't Vista until the SQL thing is ready. You might be on SP2 by then. ;)

[wthor]

Umm... Microsoft SQL Server is working quite fine on Vista if you ask me :)

I'm running SQL Server 2005 Standard on both my laptop (32-bit Vista, 32-bit SQL Server) and on my desktop (64-bit Vista, 32-bit SQL Server).

There is an update to SQL Server that has to be installed immediately after installing SQL Server (in the SQL Server install phase opt for NOT starting SQL Server):

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=d07219b2-1e23-49c8-8f0c-63fa18f26d3a&displaylang=en)

Then, when the install of SP2 is finished, the updater will try to run a utility to fix the permissions to the database. It will fail since the database isn't running.

To run it manually, start the database from the SQL Server Configuration Manager, and then run:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlprov.exe

Select the privileges you wish to add to the admin user of the computer ( by moving them to the right frame ) and click "OK".

All done :-)

Regarding the DesignJet, there are no DesignJet drivers within Vista, and you'll have to register with HP to even get to see if there are any available there.

I don't know about the Samsung printer, there's a lot of Samsung printers in there, but yours might or might not be there..

The disk will work, being just that - a disk. If it's a device with some built-in encryption that requires specific drivers even for XP then your milage may vary, but a plain disk... will work. :-)

[wallen]

I use the Nortel Contivity VPN client, which apparently has issues under Vista (which I am itching to move to...). Does anyone know of a workaround for it?