The nice folks at AMD recently provided an Acer Ferrari 5000 with 2 gigs of RAM and swapped out the hard drive for a faster 7200 RPM upgrade from the stock configuration. With the latest ATI (AMD) video driver for the Mobility Radeon x1600, I’m convinced I have the coolest and fastest laptop on the planet. I thought the Ferrari 4000 was to die for, but the 5000 is even better.
The 5000 provided to me had an included Atheros a/g wireless radio. While that works fine with all my a/g routers and access points, I have some draft N equipment as well. With the Ferrari, I felt the need for speed. Vista does not have any 64 bit Draft N Atheros drivers at this point (altho there are drivers for Atheros 802.11 a/g). I don’t know what those folks are doing. However, there ARE in box drivers for Broadcom based draft N for x64 so that is what I’m using.
12/28/06: The Ferrari 5000 was provided by AMD and not part of the Microsoft/AMD program. Through the MS/AMD program, I received a Velocity Micro MCE Vista desktop and disclosed it as such.