Windows 7 - ATI Mobility Radeon 7500

Good to see you, Carlos!

Actually I'm not sure if SP1 changes anything at all regarding the video card, but what I've noticed by now is remarkable. I didn't check the CPU's behavior while the XP Driver was in use (all I know is that I could work with it) but as for now it varys from 75% to 100% while playing a 540p H.264 Basketball game. Now that seems pretty acceptable to me. And I haven't had not a single Blue Screen since the installation of the Vista drivers.

Graphic accelerator is enabled at maximum and works far better than what I expected, as I said even HD videos can be played (although I have to admit that I didn't tried it out before). The only app still refusing to accept the graphic accelerator is VLC Media Player. Same as before, the video stays black while playing and only its audio track can be heard. But that's OK for me, I simply switched to Media Player Classic Home Cinema and it works like a charm and even more, it seems to go a lot more easier on resources.

Aero Glass doesn't work, as I expected due to the reason that the Radeon 7500 has no DirectX 9 support (which is crucial for Aero according to Microsoft). However, I can get over it since the functionality of the OS isn't very restricted as a result, although I do love Aero's graphical design of course.

As for the Windows Experience Index, I was frankly surprised. Despite its overall score of 1.0 (3D business and gaming graphics performance), the "Desktop performance for Windows Aero" was 1.9, however. Now after updating both graphic components are at 1.0. Don't know what that's supposed to mean, perhaps because the Vista drivers are not certified by Microsoft. But I don't care anyway as long as it works so fluently.

Hope I could help you out somehow, always available for further questions.

If you are using an IBM T-40 with Raedon 7500 Graphics card, simply download the XP drivers, and follow Dano's instruction to the "T". I've had several of these that we upgraded to Windows 7, and it (the beliow instructions) never failed. Granted, I've seen many other instructions here that do not work, and will cause definite BSODs, or system hangs. AGAIN, GOOD INFO DANO!

Actually I also came to the conclusion that the XP Drivers work best. The Vista Drivers cause problems with Windows Media Playback which makes it impossible to watch any video file on my T42.

However, the Vista Drivers also have some advantage compared to the XP Drivers. I never had a single bluescreen, while with the XP Drivers, I've already had several ones. Watching Adobe Flash in Fullscreen is possible, but some other plugins immediately cause the system to crash with BSOD error message "ati3duag.dll", for instance the Veetle Firefox plugin.

So altogether, the XP Drivers are not perfect, but as close to working with Windows 7 as you can get.