Holidays are great.  You get lots of time to do all the work you don’t normally have time for.  Yesterday I finally got around to upgrading my notebook to Vista from XP.  Here are a few things I did that made the job easier.

1. Upgraded the RAM to 1 Gig.  Previously I only had 256 + 128.  How I have 1024 + 128.  This cost $279 from Global PC.  The tech in the local shop fitted it for me.  I’m sure I could have found something cheaper on the Interweb but given the usual no return policy on RAM it’s sensible to let someone else take the risk. 
2. Used the Vista Upgrade Advisor.  This told me that I would have some compatibility issues with Visual Studio 2005, SQL 2005 and a few other items but that I could install anyway.  It also told me that Aero wouldn’t work with my Graphics card which surprised me a little.
3. Downloaded Vista from MSDN.  Thanks to Telecom’s Go Large / Go Slow plan this took 10 days for 2.5 GB.  Thankfully though, the MSDN downloaded ensured that I had a clean uncorrupted download.  Burnt this image to DVD.
4. Installed Business edition using the upgrade option rather than a full install.  I figured I could always do a clean install later if I wasn’t happy with the performance or setup.

The upgrade took about 2½ hours.  Once finished I uninstalled a bunch of stuff including Visual Studio Team Suite, SQL 2000, SQL 2005.  For the small development work I do on my notebook I find that Visual Web Developer Express and the new Expressions tools work just fine – in fact, Web Dev Express is much easier and faster to use than the full VS 05.  I also configured the standard windows components – removing IIS and installing Games – what’s the point of a home computer without Spider Solitaire??? 

At first, the hard drive was grinding for a long time and the whole install seemed very slow.  However, I used a 1GB memory stick to provide some Readyboost and over night the search indexes completed building.  Now the machine works very well.  Outlook even manages to seem speedy!  I’m very happy and not having Aero does not seem such a bad thing.