Digression: the name "MacBook" is terrible! Why kill the PowerBook brand? The only laptop brand with comparable strength is the ThinkPad, and Lenovo just paid a gazillion dollars to buy that name from IBM. Meanwhile Apple tosses "PowerBook" in the trash. Duh.It's generally accepted that it will be possible to install Vista and other x86 OS's on MacBooks, though driver support will be a question. I'm sure the mac-o-verse will find a way to make them work eventually.
My question: assuming drivers can be found, does the MacBook's hardware
support Aero Glass? The MacBook has an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. (The slower MacBook has 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM; the faster one has 256mb.)
ATI's provisional "Vista-ready" list of chipsets says "Mobility™ Radeon® X300 Series or higher" supports LDDM. But the x1600 is not listed in the full list. Is x1600 "higher" than x300?
And if it is, would that support Aero Glass, or just Aero? Generally people say that no existing mobile chipsets would support Aero Glass.
While I'm on the topic - here's the link to Microsoft's hardware guidance for Vista.
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The x1600 is miles ahead of the x300, which has only four pipes. The x1600 additionally supports ATI's Avivo technology. I think that the Macbook Pro will support Aero Glass, but no guarantees. Hurry up, Microsoft!! I agree about the PowerBook name...I still can't believe Apple axed it.
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