Per the recently released Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor Beta, our MacBook Pro 1.83 Ghz can run Vista Ultimate Edition in Boot Camp!

It did give us two non-critical warnings though - one for the Airport Card (detected as Atheros AR5006X Wireless Network Adapter), and another for the Bluetooth adapter (detected as Apple Built-In Bluetooth), advising us that "Windows Vista drivers may not exist for the devices" and to "contact the manufacturer".

Other than that, all the other drivers passed without complaint.

Its a different story though under the just released Parallels Desktop release candidate. Upon running the advisor, we got a negative report.

There were two main problem areas - the reported CPU speed and the Parallels Video Driver.

0.00 Hz?! Either Parallels has to tweak its virtualization magic or Microsoft has to change their CPU speed detection logic.

For the video driver, the Upgrade Advisor also displayed the warning below:


Click for bigger image.

This is to be expected since Parallels Video Driver only emulates an SVGA Adapter with 8mb of video memory.

MTC Take:
We're tickled pink here at MTC. We've been mopping around a bit since the release of the MacBook, feeling we overpaid for our MBPs. At least now, we can console ourselves that the extra moolah was worth it since MBPs can run Vista with Aero.

MacBooks, on the other hand, with its integrated graphics and 64mb of shared video memory, can only run Vista without the Aero eye-candy.

Per MS parlance, MBPs are "Premium-ready", while MacBooks will only be "Vista Capable".