I spent the Thanksgiving weekend installing the Vista RTM bits to replace my XP install on my Thinkpad T60p.

I wasn’t sure how rocky it was going to be and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised.

I installed the base OS and right off the bat without loading any drivers my laptop was 95% functional.  I am used to loading 8–9 IBM drivers just to get the Wireless, Volume Buttons, Video, Brightness, Touchpad, etc. all working.  With Vista all of that worked with no drivers!  The only hardward not 100% functional at this point is the fingerprint reader (which I don’t use) and the Hard Drive active shock protection.  The latter I suspect at some point IBM will release a utility for.

Next it was off to the application stack that I run my life with. Not a short list:

InstallPad
Daemon Tools 4.x
SyncbackSE
TrueImage 10
BeyondCompare 2.x
BlogJet
CodeSmith 4.0
CodeRush
Refactor
Easy CD-DA Extractor 10
FeedDemon
FolderShare
Garmin Training Center
MacroMedia Fireworks 8
Microsoft .NET Framework SDK 1.1, 2.0, 3.0
Age of Empires III
Office 2007
Visio 2007
Onenote 2007
Project 2007
Enterprise Library
SQL Server 2005
Visual Studio 2005
NDoc 1.3
Nero 7.5.x
NetTiers 2.0
NUnit
Quickbooks Pro 2007
Quicktime
Skype
TestDriven.NET
ThumbsPlus 7
WinZip
WS_Ping ProPack
XENU LinkSleuth
.NET Memory Profiler
Fiddler
Money 2006
Streets & Trips 2005
NCover
TextPad
Windows Defender
Windows Live Messenger
Windows OneCare Live
SmartFTP
J2SE
uTorrent
FinePrint
Foxit Reader
Web Service Software Factory
Composite Application Block
CopySourceAsHtml
FireFox

All of the preceding applications installed fine and most I have run so far appear to be working.  There were a handful however where I wasn’t so lucky.

• Plaxo – The installer tries, fails and then tells me to try again.  Sent email to support with no response.
  ActiveSync – This one I didn’t install.  I have been waiting for the WMDC to ship but it doesn’t appear to be available in final form yet.
• PerfectDisk 8 – They have a beta out which purports to work with Vista but I must admit running a beta of Software that re-arranges all of the data on my disk makes me more than a little nervous.  Contacted support and was told they would have a version out when Vista was publicly available.  After several go arounds convincing them it is now they punted and said that Microsoft changed the certification rules at the last minute and that they were working dilligently to get certified.
• Windows PowerShell – No Vista version available yet even though both have RTMed.  Disappointing.
  Google Desktop – This one is sketchy.  It installs fine.  Appears to have issues with Outlook 2007 even under XP.  Once installed on Vista I started getting two “Assert in LSP” assertions each time I started IE7.  Decided to uninstall this one and give it a few more weeks.  I can live without it, but just barely since search in Outlook 2007 still hasn’t gotten a lot better.
• Camtasia Studio, SnagIt – They claim the capture tools work under Vista but the editing tools do not.  Contacted support and was told: “I do not have a date on when Camtasia will be compatible, but I would say sometime around when Vista is released to the general public, not just the business professionals. As for SnagIt, we are getting ready to release an update in the next couple of weeks that will be Vista compatible.” My bad for being a “Business Professional”.
• Carbonite – January is the latest date for Vista support.
• Cingular Communication Manager – This is installed but each time I boot up I get a message about an incompatibility. 
• Ethereal – Not brave enough to try this one!
  

Overall I was pretty surprised by how well everything worked!

Tuesday, November 28, 2006 4:04:25 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [3]