Last weekend found me in the position where I had to buy a new computer. Not a situation where I *wanted* to buy one, but my long-standing development machine finally gave up the ghost.

I had considered building a new box myself and sticking with Windows XP Professional, but I didn't have the luxury of time to wait for all the parts to arrive.

CompUSA had a pretty good deal going on the Gateway GT5408 with Vista Home Premium installed along with the usual host of software, 1Gb of RAM, a 320Gb HD, 15:1 Media Reader, DVD/CD recorder with Lightscribe, and 7.1 Audio built in for $599 after rebate. This was about $1000 less than what I was going to spend on the home-built and I could drive away with it right away.

I run dual monitors so I needed to pick up a CompUSA Radeon X300 256Mb PCI Express video card with dual-monitor support. I'm not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination so I didn't need anything stronger than the X300.

I wanted to add another gig of RAM, but the prices at CompUSA weren't too great, so I had to pass.

The Good:
Out of the box, the Gateway looks very good. This package included speakers, keyboard and mouse, none of which I'll end up using because I already own a Microsoft Wireless Desktop.

After unpacking the tower the first order of business was adding in the video card.

The case comes apart with two thumbscrews and a gentle "tap" to dislodge the side panel. Inside, everything looks pretty well laid out. When I get around to installing another gig, it will be pretty easy to get at the RAM slots.

The video card snapped in without incident and the screwless retainer system works very well, but the first "bad" thing became apparent. The PCI Express configuration takes away use of one of the available PCI slots and the heat sink from the card covers up a second one. With only three slots, this leaves only one available for expansion. The modem that came with the system occupied a PCI slot, so it's been removed in favor of a wireless card which I will discuss a bit later.

Now that the card is in, it's time for the inaugural power up. A bit worried about the new card, but it recognized it with no problem and installed the drivers automatically.

Unfortunately, "bad" thing number two made its presence known at this point, and as of this entry, still hasn't been resolved. Sporadically, the keyboard will not be recognized on boot up and require a restart in order for it to be recognized. I figured there would be updated software at Microsoft to take care of the problem.

This leads me to the first truly ugly encounter - wireless. According to the official Microsoft HCL there are a few wireless adapters with drivers for Vista. Linksys is one brand I've had good results with in the past and fortunately they're usually available at the common stores, including the office supply stores. Unfortunately, I live in a small town - at least 45 minutes away from the electronics stores so I had to hope that the local Staples had a WMP54G available. Linksys has Vista drivers available for this card available for download from their site.

The setup for the Linksys card starts with installing the software from the enclosed CD - which promptly fails because the drivers for Vista aren't available. Trying to manually browse and update the drivers didn't take either the first four or five times I tried it, so I got on the phone with Linksys for a little help. We downloaded another copy of the drivers and tried installing them again with no luck. On the third attempt (and I lost track of the steps needed) it finally recognized the drivers and actually started seeing a nearby wireless network.

Author: When I first started this, I didn't realize it was going to grow quite this long. I still have quite a bit more detail to go into about my Vista experience so far, but will need to save those for a new post or two in the future.