Boost my notebook, or invest in a desktop?

With the coming of Windows Vista in another few weeks, I'm sort of wondering. If I were to be an "early adopter" of Vista Premium, as it were, would you think that I should boost my notebook, or try to grab a desktop? I believe that the specs of my notebook are as follows:

Pentium-M 750 1.86 GHz
ATI Mobility X300 128 MB
80 GB 5400 RPM HDD
1 GB DDR2 RAM
8x DVD +/- RW
Win XP MCE 2005/Red Hat Fedora Core 6

Thinking of either boosting my hard drive and RAM to:

2 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM
120 - 160 GB 5400 HDD

Or going for a desktop tower with a 64-bit dual core processor (preferably Core 2 Duo and/or AMD 64 x2) with 2 GB RAM and maybe a 250 - 320 GB HDD, and a 256 MB nVidia card.

Which would be the recommended way to go to support the next generation of Microsoft's OS?

Just get a Mac :-p

Are you telling me that's not good enough to run Vista? o_O

Isn't 1GB minimum for Vista?

If you really want to beta test Vista for the rest of us, get a desktop. If you don't intend to ever use your laptop ever again on battery power, go right ahead.

Define: Run Vista. Is it good enough to boot into Vista, and stare at the Desktop, then the answer is yes.

Yeah, it may be enough to RUN Vista at the start, but for DX 10 games on the notebook, well, I may have run into a dead end with this notebook, in that regard.

Well, upon running Dell's Readiness Wizard, it seems like I'm clear all across the board. One thing puzzles me, tho. Even tho the graphics card can support the Aero interface (albeit just barely, I'm quite sure), I sort of wonder how DX 10 gaming will be an issue. I mean, unlike a desktop, notebook graphics cards are "dead end" upgrades, am I not correct?

I did boost the RAM from the 1 GB to 1 1/2 GB just today, also, I just ordered a 160 GB HDD, since I'm planning a dual-boot notebook with Vista, and if Microsoft lets me keep XP installed, then I'll be grateful to that. Otherwise, I'll have Red Hat Fedora Core as my second OS after Vista Premium.

Results from that Readiness Wizard are as follows:

	Hardware Components 	Your Computer 	Recommended Upgrades
  			
	Operating System Version 	Windows XP SP2 	 
	Processor Speed (CPU) 	1.9 GHz 	 
	Total Memory (RAM)
  &nbspMemory Slot 0
  &nbspMemory Slot 1 	1.536 GB
512 MB, 533 MHz
1.024 GB, 533 MHz 	The Assessment Tool indicates this computer currently has enough memory to provide both a Basic and a premium Windows Aero experience. 
	Hard Disk Size 	76.308 GB, 66.044 GB Free 	 
	CD or DVD Drive 	DVD 	 
	Graphics Experience 	ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300

Even tho the hard drive space says 76 GB total, I'm looking at getting that as a partition on a 160 GB HDD, as opposed to just an 80 GB HDD that I have now. At least that'll leave plenty of room for that second OS, whether it be XP MCE 2005 that I have now, or Red Hat. Might as well see what Microsoft says about doing this.

not TOTALLY dead end... there's some upgrade paths on the newer cards. Like my 6800ultra in my XPS gen2 can be upgraded to a 7800... But it also requires a hacked bios and doing it yourself. And that's not something I'm prepared to do.

Personally, with that x300 as your biggest bottleneck, I'd look at a desktop machine.

As for dual booting... my desktop is dual booting between vista ultimate and xp and has for the last couple weeks. Works fine.

Yeah, plus Dells have to be the toughest notebooks to upgrade with graphics cards as well, especially an Inspiron 6000, like I got. It's even lucky that they even let me upgrade the RAM, and upgrade the HDD like I'm doing.

Okay, here's the 160 GB monster that I'm looking at from Newegg, it's a Hitachi, which was the best price I could find for the capacity size, I believe that ATA-6 is the connection that Dell notebooks seem to use, IIRC... Seems like the ratings are fairly decent for it, tho.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822146200