Posted On
Monday, February 12, 2007 12:30 PM
Posted In
Technical
I am behind, I’ll admit that. I briefly played with Vista Beta 2, for about 4 days. When the final release was made to MSDN I downloaded it the same day. Since we moved to Musgrave the 4MB ADSL line has come in very handy.
When I initially played with Vista I didn’t have the hardware to support it, however I have since upgraded, first by getting myself the Acer TravelMate 5620 (Dual Core 2.0Ghz, 1024MB RAM, 120GB Drive, NVIDIA GeForce Go 256MB) which I am quite proud of. When I installed it in November I had no luck with getting the right drivers. I emailed Acer support who insisted that the relevant drivers are available through Windows Update. This was not the case. As I need to use the launch keys to use Wireless and Bluetooth, and often use the Webcam, I decided to uninstall and wait until the official release.
When I joined Bytes I was provided with a company notebook, a HP NX-9420 (Dual Core 1.8Ghz, 1024MB RAM, 80GB Drive, ATI X1600 256MB). After visiting the HP Support Site I loaded the required BIOS updates, downloaded the drivers and decided to give a Dual Boot Vista a shot on the HP. The installation went perfectly, all the drivers detected and after a reboot it worked like a charm. Didn’t even needed to load the downloaded drivers.
I then turned back to the Acer and decided to give it another try. Loaded Vista and was pleasantly surprised when there was only 2 missing drivers listed in Device Manager: Camera and Card Reader. The previous drivers I had for the card reader loaded perfectly. At which point the wheels came off.
Firstly there is no Acer Orbicam drivers that actually work with Vista. To locate drivers look at the last changed dates on the Acer Support FTP site and then check what drivers and OS’s are listed. Not the ideal way to find drivers, and after downloading 4 different drivers I eventually got the camera loaded, however the Camera Software didn’t work and on every second reboot the settings go missing. Back to the drawing board on this one.
While I was looking for the Camera drivers I found 5 versions of the Launch Manager needed to run the launch keys for my Wireless and Bluetooth. Only one worked with Vista and after installation the Widcomm Drivers I had, Bluetooth also worked. So my only challenge was the Camera. I eventually downloaded drivers from Acer Thailand that works with the Acer. 3 Days later, after no response from support, and in the meantime the various driver installations caused havoc with my machine, and I ended up re-installing 4 times
Vista is now running. With all the drivers. However I am very disappointed in having bought a very expensive notebook and receiving none existent support from Acer. However spending some time on Google I have come to the conclusion that a lot of users are going to suffer with driver problems on Vista. Which will probably mean the downfall of the OS before it even gets a chance to prove itself.
Out of interest I am booked to go on Vista and Office 2007 training on Thursday, and completed the online assessment for Windows Vista, with a 66% final score. Not to sure that’s so good after all the re-installs. But at least the struggling paid off.
