I had mentioned before that part of my network's transformation will include installing Windows Vista on my Windows computer. It will become my media hub, and eventually I'll have a media center extender in the living room. Today I went to Future Shop and picked up Vista Home Premium Upgrade for $179 CDN + tax. It came to $205.

Future Shop threw in a free D-Link 802.11n router to the lucky first bunch who buy Vista. I went in at lunch time to make sure that I got a free router. A few hours later I heard that they were out of them. The 802.11n routers are fairly new. I've read that they just came out this month. The box says that it's 300 mbps, very fast compared to 802.11g's 54 mbps. I thought 54mbps was blazing fast! Even standard 10/100 wired networks are slower than 802.11n. 802.11n also has a much longer range. I think it can go up 90 meters, where 802.11g can only do 30 meters.

The plan : sell the new unopened router on ebay to recoupe some of Windows Vista's cost. The router retails for $140. People who buy them in stores would pay full price plus taxes. I hope that I can get at least $100 for it. They'll save a lot of money buying it from me. I've seen a bunch on ebay today so I'll wait a week for them to all sell before I put mine up for auction.

Now to the "fun" part... After installing Vista I found out that my network card is not supported and neither is my sound card. I can't believe it! I have a Sound Blaster Live, how can that NOT be supported? Maybe supported isn't the right word. The drivers are not bundled with Vista. I had the same problem on my laptop when trying the beta, except the network card did work. I'll have to go searching google to find out what kind of network card I have in this 6 year old Dell. It's built into the motherboard. Hopefully I'll be able to find a driver for it. If not I'll go grab a network card from my large collection of spare parts. Surely one of them will have a driver.

I also noticed the lack of animated features when opening and closing windows. When I had the beta on my laptop it was very animated. My laptop does have 256mb of video memory, but surely the 64mb of video memory in my desktop can handle simple animations like that. I think they purposely made it feel clunky to make me want to go buy a new video card so that I can enjoy the full 3d-ness of Vista. It's working... except I can find good deals on ebay like $38 for a used N-Vida card with 128mb of memory. Before I buy anything, I'll need to make sure there is a Vista driver for it.

This Dell computer is getting old but for what I do with it (no games) it's a powerhouse. It's 1.5 GHz P4, 640 MB memory, 120 GB hard drive, DVD RW, Sound Blaster live, 19" flat panel screen, etc... Over the years parts have died and I've replaced them. Most recently, the $110 proprietary Dell power supply! I've also replaced the hard drive and CPU fan. Now that I'm thinking about buying a new video card I can't help wondering if it would have been cheaper to just buy a new computer. The problem is that this computer is way too good to throw away. Heck, I still use my PII 450 because it was too good to get rid of :) It currently runs this website and my BBS. Unfortunately it's hard drive is very loud and so is the power supply. The websites will be moving on to my Solaris box once it's all ready, and I don't want to get rid of my BBS. I'm starting to think about virtualization. I might run the BBS on a Windows XP virtual computer somewhere. Can I run a virtual Windows XP computer on my Ubuntu Server? I'll have to look into it more.