Experiences with Vista and my Sager 9860

I promised a while ago to write up my vista/Sager 9860 experience so here it is:

I first installed Vista Beta 2 on the Sager, I was warned by the compatibility check that the sound card would not work. Vista installed fine, and after a small fight with the video card drivers I had a nicely functioning machine (though with no sound). Trying to watch video would fail as it said there was no sound device.

I lived with Beta 2 for a while - I quite like VISTA! Lots of really nicely thought out features (and a few usability rough edges).

I then wiped the machine and installed the RTM. No compatibility warnings this time, but in the end still no sound.

I then begun digging into the net for drivers. I did finally find the Realtek drivers and after multiple installs of them and finding old versions and trying that I finally found a release note from Realtek stating that it would only work with version "c" of my motherboard and later. I have version "a". They were clear that no work would be done to get versions older than revision "c" to work with Vista.

Disheartened and wanting sound I decided to try Windows Media Center Edition. Not as slick as Vista but I don't have a media center machine and the sager has a built in tv tuner and remote. Install went flawless, and soon I had sound!

However, getting into Media Center it couldn't see my tv tuner. So I dug into the net again and soon found out that my tv tuner was not compatible with Media Center (until a later version of the 9860....) . I'm staying here OS wise for now - I can use the tv tuner software to record video, and Media center to play it back, I just can't use Media Center to watch TV or record TV.

Moral of the story: the Sager 9860 I bought I never intended to use as a media center, and Vista wasn't out. Its a few years old now so I can't be that upset that I'm not able to repurpose it the way I intended. And buying the first revision of a motherboard (which I knew I was doing at the time) is a risky proposition.

Oh well. Time to install Vista on my desktop :)