XP or Vista ?

I have a clean install of Vista Home Premium running beautifully. Upgrading the RAM to 1.5 gigs does help a lot.

 

I too have Vista Premium installed and runs fast and smooth. Yes, it seems to access the HD constantly. This may be due to indexing. I believe disabling the Search/Indexing from the Control Panel will solve the problem. In order to get Aero to work, I had to install the latest Intel 945 driver from Intel's website. I disabled a few programs from the startup menu, disabled Defender and user AVG anti-virus free version (comes with anti-spyware). Boot time is under a minute!

 

True only if you are running some old/legacy apps. The AAO is 100% Vista compatible. Everything works, including the webcam and there are no driver conflicts. After installing Vista do a Windows update and install latest Intel 945 graphics driver from Intel's website in order to run Aero.

Vista boots and runs fast on this machine, even on 1GB RAM. (Although I upgraded RAM to 1.5 GB). Vista performance (experience) base index is 2.7 (for gaming). Not bad at all. Performance index for Aero is 4.2 (wow).

 

I don't have any experience in running Vista on the AAO. In fact, I don't even own a AAO yet. But, I have had bad experiences with Vista on a couple of laptops where I had to install XP over the Vista which came bundled with those laptops. Where Vista was laggy, buggy, XP ran like a dream on those machines.

 

My take on this....

Aspire One IS capable of runnging VISTA. The only thing not going it's way is that the SSD version is too slow in writing, and the 1.5gb RAM limit may not be enough for some users who intend to use RAM intensive applications. Since VISTA in itself will use up 1gb of RAM more or less. As for the hardware drivers, etc etc it's a non issue. AAO uses relatively common components in it's chipset, grafix, wifi, sound, etc etc. So special hardware to present major issues. Most will be easily fixed if ever there are.

The main reason why most(including ACER) implemented Windows XP home SP3, is that it's currently the least resource hungry Windows OS that's on the market. Realizing that the Aspire ONE's hardware is not at all that speed, and with limited RAM expansion compared to mainstream systems. BUT is surprisingly alot more capable than most will expect from a netbook. Reason for all these hoopla on doing all sorts of stuff to it to really push it to the limits hehehe.

So even I myself had the choice to get the HD version of the AAO, I chose the slow 1gb, SSD version for the reason I wanted a netbook I can move around even if it's accessing something... no HD crashes to worry about. I already have a 12in Lenovo Thinkpad X60s for my main laptop, and 2 more high end desktops for my work... So it's just practical to instal XP over VISTA to save resource. But that's just me hehe.

 

I agree that installing Vista on the SSD version of the AAO is not recommended. But installing Vista on the HDD version is a cinch. The 1GB RAM on it seems more than enough to handle Vista, including Aero. Windows update on Vista does a fantastic job of bringing all the drivers up to date (assuming you originally installed the XP drivers from Acer, linked from www.aspireoneuser.com home page).

My main PCs and laptops at home are still running XP Pro and Xandros (Linux), andI too was Vista-shy after seeing the slow performance of it on certain laptops, including the HP 2133 UMPC.

But not so on the AAO! Personally I can see absolutely NO downside to installing Vista SP1 on the AAO. It boots up fast and runs apps fast. The upside is a much richer GUI experience and better system admin/control panel tools and stability, IMHO. From reading these forums I see that others' opinions of Vista on the AAO echo my own.

So if anyone asks me, I'd say yes, Vista SP1 on the AAO is highly recommended.

 

Aero (Basic) or Aero Glass?

 

Aero glass works with the GMA 950

 

I prefer and run mainly TinyXP.

 

Thought I had posted in this thread before. Ah,well

Vista on the AAO works well, I think its better than XP in some respects, and also worse. Vista sits on more memory, but it's better at actually running applications. XP is lighter, but stalls once in a while. Vista apps load a bit slower than XP apps as well (barely noticeable though).

Vista definitely gets a leg up b/c of readyboost. I've got an SD card permanently mounted in the left bay acting as a readyboost drive, and it definitely makes a difference when I"m pushing the system. XP simply doesn't incorporate that feature. It doesn't really matter for typical netbook activities, only when you're doing something that you wouldn't do on a linpus system.

aero works well, I've got it running full bore and I get excellent numbers for a low price machine.

all that having been said, unless you've got a spare vista license just lying around(i just happened to), there's no point in installing it. It doesn't give you much extra functionality, it's just pretty. Vista Ultimate costs over $200 in most cases (w/tax), over half the cost of the base machine itself. You might as well enjoy the copy of XP that comes with the machine that's included in the price and throw on Vista theme overlays, because there's very little other than readyboost that really matters on these machines.

 

How did you get it working? I've installed the newest driver from acer but there's just aero basic available in the options.

Another big point for me: I can't find a working driver for the network adapter (tried the official driver from the acer page) :/

The thing is... i LOVE vista - but it's unusable without *cough* vista aero glass *cough* and without a working network adapter^^

 

Which version of Vista do you have? There's no Aero glass in the Basic one, only premium+...

Also for the lan:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dow ... Down=false

 

Chriz88,
Get the latest Intel 945 graphics driver from here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2301. After installing and reboot, the Aero theme should be available. You may need to go to control panel->performance and re-run the performance score app.

 

woofer00,
I tried readboost using a Panasonic 4GB SDHC card (from my camera). It did not seem to improve performance, even after formatting to NTFS. Startup and shutdown time actually slowed by about 5 seconds each.

What SD card can you recommend? Also, do I need to update the drivers for the flash card reader?
Thanks,
machani

 

I just found a random SD card I had in my drawer. Some SanDisk variety, not that new, with 85% or so set for readyboost. Vista seems to startup/shutdown a bit better on my machine, but I've tweaked the hell out of Vista's startup sequence as well. I would say the big difference is in repeatedly running apps. I say repeatedly b/c the first load of an app is the same or a bit slower while re-loading it is much faster. Or at least, it feels faster. The general usage is snappier as well. I don't know if you can put a gauge a snappiness, but I would say programs are a bit more responsive. It was most noticeable when I started to run more background apps that filled out my 1gb of ram. when I was below the limit, there wasn't much difference.

 

I'm using Home Premium, Aero Glass is working now
Time to play with the network stuff xD

 

woofer00,
Thanks for your explanation. I am not running anything heavy on my AAO, just browing and word processing. Besides, I have 1.5 GB RAM and it may not have started swapping. That may explain why I am not seeing a performance improvement. It's nice that Vista SP1 has a tool to validate if your card is fast enough for readboost.

I did notice that immediately after enabling readyboost and rebooting the AAO, there is initially a lot of CPU and HDD activity which dies down after two or three minutes and this happens in the first boot only. Presumably this was due to a process that was building the cache and swapfile on the SSD with the swapfile data from the HDD.

 

vista running flawless with fan much less noise than before. system index 3.5 wow

 

pic2

 

What is your configuration? Every other One I've seen running Vista has an index of 2.7/2.8. How on earth have you got 3.5?

*edit* just seen that you're not running SP1, which probably why. Your processor score is higher than mine also.