This may/may not be of much help: I purchased a new HP computer (Windows XP) last September. It came with a free Vista upgrade certificate. I eventually ordered the upgrade DVD and in a couple of months it arrived. It lay in my software shelf for about 4-5 months and I finally decided to try it as I was about to do a reformat and reinstall anyway. I made my pre-install file saves, unplugged all my external equipment etc. I put the DVD in and it pretty much walked me thru the whole process. It offered me the option of doing a clean install, which I did. In a couple of hours and with only a minimum of restarts it completed. It picked up all of my internal hardware and my Linksys wireless router without a hitch. I plugged in my printer, scanner, joystick, Wacom tablet etc, one at a time and it picked all of them up, again with no problems. I did have drivers preselected for them and the only one I have used is for the scanner. The printer and graphics tablet drivers built in to Vista have functioned at least as well as they did with the drivers I had used on Windows XP Pro. I have also not had any problems with any of the software/games that I was using with XP Pro except for my System Suite 7. It installed and was partially functional. Avanquest has a Vista fix on site for about $10. Since the fix/patch is for the same version that I already have I think it should have been no charge. I am currently testing Kaspersky and am pretty sure that it is the one I will go with. I tested Microsoft One Care also. In short...I would insert the DVD and see if it works. It should notifiy you if it is designed exclusively for the laptop. My impression of the DVD that HP sent me is that it is an OEM copy of Vista Home Premium and likely would have worked on any of my machines. By the way I did wait about a week before I activated it, just in case
P.S. I can provide a complete list of software/hardware if desired.
