discuss your overall experiences upgrading to Vista on the TC1100

[WNewquay]

quote:Originally posted by bloom

Can both of you discuss your overall experiences upgrading to Vista? From what I can tell, a fully maxed out TC1100 will marginally meet the requirements for upgrading and I'm trying to decide if it's worth it.
Thanks

Really short answer: I liked it so much that when I had a chance to pick up another TC1100 for considerably less than an UMPC, I grabbed it so I could preserve my investment in the first one which is now happily running Vista. I already had extra batteries, docking station, pens cases - so I would have been stuck if the first TC1100 had died.

General impressions:
Works as well or better than XP.

Tablet related enhancements - although seemingly minor - make a huge difference for me.

Would I do it again?
I did!



Specs: both identical machines - original TC1100

Clock speed:
1 ghz clock

Hard Drive:
One has the original 40 gig drive, the other a newer 60 gig 7200 rpm drive. It makes a noticeable difference.

Memory:
One is running 1 gig memory the other 1.5 gig

Unless I'm really pushing hard with a lot of windows, I don't see much difference. But understand, these are not my main multitasking machines. Just general productivity and note-taking.

Video:
No Aero Glass. It would be nice, and I enjoy it on some of my other machines, but I don't mind not having it. It's not a deal breaker for me.

Functionality:
Basically - everything works, buttons, bluetooth, wireless, rotation, sound (minor glitch - inserting headphones does not mute the speakers... I think there is a fix for that, but I haven't gotten around to it).

Installation:
Clean install - probably about an hour for bare operating system.

ReadyBoost:
Works

[crp]

quote:Originally posted by WNewquay

Tablet related enhancements - although seemingly minor - make a huge difference for me.

WNewquay:

Could you briefly discuss what the major differences were? Personally, I've been leaning toward not upgrading my TC1100. But if you find substantial advances in the tablet functions, I might look harder at an upgrade.

[TCLawrence]

WN,

What Video drivers did you use? I've got Vista Ultimate running nicely but can't get the rotation to work as I can't install the TabletButtons app (looks for WinXP). Any pointers?

I agree with you about the enhancments to the TIP and overall table functionality (checkboxes next to file names, etc)

Thanks!

[ikinal]

Well, I would say that my Vista experience is so-so. Performance seems to have gone down a bit overall, and there are some annoying problems here and there. But on the other hand, some annoying problems from XP are fixed, and the tablet enhancements in Vista make it worthwhile for me.

My system has 768 MB of RAM, and I'm using the standard 40 GB hard drive.

I did an upgrade, and it took really long - about 4 or 5 hours, but it worked without any problems.

Here are some details of problems that I have encountered:
- I can't get wireless to work from the Q menu, but I figured out that I can turn it on from the BIOS.
- Screen rotation works, but it does not work automatically when I attach/remove the keyboard.
- ReadyBoost works, but sometimes it "disappears" after the computer comes back from sleep. Then I have to reformat my USB stick and reconfigure it.
- I have had a lot of issues with the stylus - maybe a driver issue? Highlighting text is almost impossible, I usually have to tap three times to get a double-click to register, dragging icons works on and off.
- IE 7 also seems to have some performance bugs - some pages will not accept further input (scrolling, clicking a link) until all of the images have loaded. Also, while using the stylus, sometimes the address bar is unresponsive for about 10-20 seconds. However, this might be related to the above point. Also, some MS sites refused to load in Vista, but that seems to have now been fixed.
- Not something that the average user deals with, but I have two input languages installed. Sometimes the TIP is not in sync with the system language, and other times the keyboard shown in the TIP is not the one for the language shown in the TIP!

These are annoyances for sure, but I can endure waiting for new drivers and SP1, which will hopefully fix them.

I. Kinal

[ikinal]

To address the additional questions here:

My absolute favorite new tablet feature is that the TIP no longer shows what keys you press when you are typing your password (works everywhere except in Remote Desktop Sessions). Also, handwriting recognition seems significantly better - mistakes in the character pad are now very rare for me. I also no longer have to click insert when using the character pad for web addresses in IE - the characters are recognized, inserted automatically, and then IE fills in the rest from the recent address list. The new sleep mode is nice and works more quickly than Hibernate did in XP. Hibernate is still available, but is deprecated. I use it when I'm travelling and not using the tablet. It is slower than Hibernate was in XP, and is a bit scary at first, because there is no progress screen as the computer is hibernating - it just goes black. Finally, I know a lot of people hate UAC, but I love it. I always ran Windows with a normal user account, but for certain things I would have to switch into the Administrator account in XP. With UAC in Vista I no longer have to. I have not interactively logged on to the Administrator account in Vista yet!

I did not upgrade any drivers - just using what Vista installed, and that gives me screen rotation as I described in the above post.

[WNewquay]

There is an article about Installing Windows Vista™ on the HP TC1100 at TabletWiki.com

[Steve S]

Has anyone managed to get the RTM version of Vista to run AERO on a TC1100 (however poorly that might be)?

[after5]

I recently installed VISTA on a TC1100.
The comments from here and the WIKI site were helpful
Setup:
Clean Install (Thailand Version) Vista Ultimate
TC1100 Celeron with 1.2 G RAM

Post install:
Moved everything to the Windows.OLD folder which was nice as I had to chace down a few hidden files that did not make a backup.
Ran a few updates including the Wacom update
Installed Onenote 2007
Turned off using the “power button” on the start menu
CRASH- won’t get past a diskcrc.sys driver load, no Safe Boot, nothing!
Booted off the DVD and had to invoke the Restore GUI manually , restored back to before all Updates
Booted normally, reloaded Office, Onenote 2007, Onecare, ran several Updates
Reloaded Q menu under compatibility mode
Reboot
Reloaded Tablet Buttons
Reboot
Rotate button does not work, Windows Mobile rotate does not work
Standard VGA driver is loaded
Tried to run Nvidia Vista drivers and Beta Vista for GeForce and neither would load
Video driver update is not showing up on Windows Update
- Not sure what to do about the Video Driver for now.
Bluetooth- Cannot connect to my phone, services not showing up
May try to load the HP Bluetooth update
Performance- About the same, a few things are a bit sluggish.

[twr7cx]

Any more developments with Vista on the TC1100 guys?
I'm keen to give it a go, but I need the screen rotation, wireless and pen functioning properly for Uni.

[WNewquay]

It's all documented here.

http://mobilepcwiki.com/mpc/index.ph...allation_Notes

"the screen rotation, wireless and pen functioning"
All work fine!