Hi - I have a simplish question I was hoping someone could help me with. Basically I'm about to buy a budget laptop (say £500 / $1000) for simple home use (writing, DivX film watching etc)... just the usual stuff. My problem is that I'm encountering contrasting advice about the compability of Vista for such a machine, i.e. whether or not I'd be able to upgrade from XP to Vista at a later date.

On the one hand 'What Laptop' says that a 128Mb *dedicated* graphics card is an ABSOLUTE minimum requirement for premium Vista functionality; while on the other hand PC World's website is telling me that almost all of its budget laptops will have the capability to upgrade to 'Vista Home Premium', even though they only have *shared* 128mb graphics cards (& generally low specs besides that). Some examples...

ACER 5633WLMI Laptop and cheap ACER Laptops.. Buy the ACER 5633WLMI laptop at PC World.

PACKARD BELL MV45-008 Laptop and cheap PACKARD BELL Laptops.. Buy the PACKARD BELL MV45-008 laptop at PC World.

(Conversley, Dell's website is taking the opposite approach & telling me I need to spend at least £1000 / $2000 to get a premium Vista-compatible machine).

If someone could possibly clarify the likelihood of me being able to upgrade to Vista on my budget machine that'd be really helpful! I'm not even sure I'll ever need to upgrade - I'm only expecting to have the laptop for 2/3 years, and I certainly won't need to display HD video on it or anything like that - but I want to make sure I don't buy a machine with the expectation of being able to upgrade, only to be disappointed further down the road.

I hope my question is clear - I'm a total novice to this so apologies if I'm not making any sense!

Cheers,

--Martin

PS If anyone knows of some suitable online literature relating to my question please point me in its direction!