upgrade options to vista

[Steven Wabik]

my current laptop has windows XP tablet PC edition on it. i got it with XP
on it since i want to wait a while to upgrade to vista, either that or i
want to do a dual boot between XP and vista. either way, when i purchased my
notebook, there was an option to buy it with vista enterprise edition, and i
was wondering if anyone knows where i can purchase that version of vista,
instead of getting ultimate or business edition.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Windows Vista Enterprise is only available to Volume License customers with
Enterprise Agreement and Software Assurance.

If you need Tablet PC functionality, Windows Vista Business or Ultimate will
do just fine, even the Home Premium edition includes Tablet functionality. I
assume you might connect to a corporate network, thats why I recommended
Vista Business since XP Tablet PC edition is a subset of XP Professional.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Additional information about Windows Vista Enterprise:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/enterprise/default.mspx

Vista Enterprise is also activated differently from the other Vista SKUs:
http://technet.microsoft.com/windowsvista/bb335291.aspx

 

[Steven Wabik]

well, in business and home premium i cannot use the TPM security chip that
is installed in my PC. and i have no idea if ultimate edition supports
virtualization technologies. i think it might though. i think it should
though since that feature was found in the BIOS of my PC. having it enabled
makes my PC run faster if enterprise is only availible in volume licensing
than i think i might go with ultimate edition because of the TPM security
chip. i also want the ultimate extras i guess...

when is vists service pack 1 supposed to come out?

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

TPM 1.2 chip is supported under Windows Vista Business, Enterprise and
Ultimate.
http://www.pctipsbox.com/use-bitlocker-drive-encryption-without-tpm-chip/

Which Tablet PC is this by the way? I am very interested in getting one.

 

[Steven Wabik]

i have a tc4400. it is very good. better than the other tablet that i have
used or seen on the market by so much. here is the product page for the
tc4400.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/321957-321957-64295-304455-306995-1847962.html

if you want any additional info about the product after looking at the
product page, feel free to ask me. i studied the ducumentation inside and
out before buying it and plus i asked HP tons of questions about it before
buying it as well about anythingthing that i did not see in the
documentation or on the general product page.

one of the nice things about this notebook is that it has a PCMCIA card slot
onstead of a ExpessCard slot.

 

[Steven Wabik]

its interesting about how u can use the bitlocker security without the
security chip. by the way business edition does not have full support for
the TPM security chip.

 

[MICHAEL]

Without the TPM chip, Bitlocker can store the encryption key on
a removable USB flash drive. Or, you can enter a very long password
every time you boot up.

Yes, Bitlocker is only included in the Ultimate and Enterprise versions.
I think that's sort of silly, considering most businesses will be using the
Business version, and they are the ones most likely who would want to
use Bitlocker. Oh well.


-Michael

* Steven Wabik:

 

[Steven Wabik]

yea, and i think it is a good feature. but for nor XP is more stable.
vista's extra security features are not worth the trouble of the reliability
issues and stuff.

i beta tested vista and i thought the beta was more reliable than the final
release in many ways for some odd reason. i had a tx1000z with vista
ultimate on it for about a week, but i returned it since vista had so many
issues on it. i beta tested vista on a zd8000.

in my opinion, vista only does good for certian types of computers, like
media center computers that have very good video cards and stuff.

i beta tested vista on a 7 year old laptop and it worked just fine, except
for windows areo missing....of caurse then that pc had a sucky graphics
card, but had a dual hard drive configuration and an external DVD drive when
running vista. i added a 2nd hard drive to the PC so that i could beta test
vista on it. the main hard drive was only 20GB and i wanted to keep windows
XP pro on the computer and plus i knew that i could run the DVD drive
externally.

 

[MICHAEL]

I haven't used BitLocker since the Vista betas. Then, I was using
BitLocker to protect Vista's restore points from XP's volsnap.sys.
In dual-booting Vista and XP, XP would wipe out Vista's restore
points. Since I made the final transition to Vista on three of my
machines, I no longer use BitLocker. I do have one laptop that
still has WinXP Pro. It's my true "mobile" laptop and the one that
I will probably use BitLocker on *if* I convert it to Vista.

I know that I can be a bit harsh on Microsoft and Vista, at times-
but, for the most part, my Vista machines work fine. I admit that
I've been messing around with Vista for about a year and half, and
have an advantage those just encountering Vista do not.
However, none of my Vista machines are brand new. They all had
XP Pro on them prior to converting them to Vista. Two desktops
and a two year old Gateway laptop.
My newish computer is my mobile laptop with XP Pro.


Take care,

Michael

* Steven Wabik:

 

[Charlie Tame]

There almost seems to be a timespan between old and new that is better
than either.

BTW I installed Vista on a VirtualBox last night and that's running on
Ubuntu 64 7.10. Seems to work well but can't connect to anything else
yet due to a missing driver that I have to locate. Amazingly enough it
boots and shuts down far quicker than when installed directly on the
hard drive (Same machine) but there again it can't talk to servers while
doing so Course it doesn't have any added bloat yet either

 

[MICHAEL]

* Charlie Tame:

There almost seems to be a timespan between old and new that is better
than either.

It certainly seems that way to me, too.

BTW I installed Vista on a VirtualBox last night and that's running on
Ubuntu 64 7.10. Seems to work well but can't connect to anything else
yet due to a missing driver that I have to locate. Amazingly enough it
boots and shuts down far quicker than when installed directly on the
hard drive (Same machine) but there again it can't talk to servers while
doing so Course it doesn't have any added bloat yet either

I keep meaning to try VirtualBox. With all my VPC 2007 and VMWare
various VMs, I might as well try that one, too. ;-)
Do you like it?

I also haven't tried Ubuntu 7.10, yet. I have PCLinuxOS installed in
a dual-boot configuration with WinXP Pro on one of my laptops.
As of now, I like that Linux flavor better than Ubuntu... I think I've
preached that before. ;-)


-Michael

 

[Charlie Tame]

I like VirtualBox's setup, it "Just Works" but you need a bootable disk
for OS installs so a bit hard with some of them MSDN compilations that
have several systems and a executable

You can use an ISO but didn't have anything handy.

At this time I get a rating of 1 and no Aero, and until I resolve the
missing driver no updates, but Vista installed without any hitches at
all and for all it's rating of only 1 appears to be running very well
indeed.

VBox website explains the driver but I didn't see a download for the
stuff them mentioned, seems like withotu the Windows add on packages
it's a bit less useful.

 

[MICHAEL]

Thanks for the info, Charlie.

I'll probably play with it soon.


-Michael

* Charlie Tame:

 

[Charlie Tame]

Thanks for the info, Charlie.

I'll probably play with it soon.


-Michael

* Charlie Tame:

When you get Vista up and running click on the devices menu item (right
Ctrl out of Vista window) and the install additions item is there ... if
all else fails RTFM

 

[Michael Jennings]

VBox website explains the driver but I didn't see a download for the stuff
them mentioned, seems like withotu the Windows add on packages it's a bit less
useful.

Open VirtualBox's Help - you want to get topic 4.2.2 accomplished.
If you haven't installed the guest additions yet, I think you do topics
4.2.1.1 and 4.2.1.2 to install additions before you update drivers.

4.2.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions;
4.2.2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions.

There is an easy way - in the "Devices" menu in the virtual machine's menu bar,
VirtualBox has a handy menu item named "Install guest additions", which will
automatically bring up the Additions in your VM window. Help also has the manual
way, which you'll need to follow if you update the drivers.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Open VirtualBox's Help - you want to get topic 4.2.2 accomplished.
If you haven't installed the guest additions yet, I think you do topics
4.2.1.1 and 4.2.1.2 to install additions before you update drivers.

4.2.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions;
4.2.2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions.

There is an easy way - in the "Devices" menu in the virtual machine's menu bar,
VirtualBox has a handy menu item named "Install guest additions", which will
automatically bring up the Additions in your VM window. Help also has the manual
way, which you'll need to follow if you update the drivers.

Thank you, had just found that as I read your post. All installed
faultlessly including the net drivers which is done by mounting the
virtual CD as a separate operation... but hey it all worked first time...

 

[Michael Jennings]

Thank you, had just found that as I read your post. All installed faultlessly
including the net drivers which is done by mounting the virtual CD as a
separate operation... but hey it all worked first time...

Instead of *.vdi files the "hard drives" can be *.vmdk files, which lets them
become virtual machines in either VirtualBox or VMWare. I found that
out in the olpc wiki. Instead of running Windows as guest in a Linux host,
I'm running Linux guests hosted by XP. I think your way is the better one.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Instead of *.vdi files the "hard drives" can be *.vmdk files, which lets them
become virtual machines in either VirtualBox or VMWare. I found that
out in the olpc wiki. Instead of running Windows as guest in a Linux host,
I'm running Linux guests hosted by XP. I think your way is the better one.

Well the Ubuntu is a brand new install, so no excess loads on it, but I
may try also with Debian 64 since that appears to run lighter still,
like hell in fact

VBox appears to be so easy to install it's probably not worth "Not"
installing it

The networking appears to be working flawlessly

 

[MICHAEL]

* Charlie Tame:

When you get Vista up and running click on the devices menu item (right
Ctrl out of Vista window) and the install additions item is there ... if
all else fails RTFM

I really hate reading TFMs.... much prefer the crash and burn,
live and learn approach. ;-)



-Michael