Last year, I bought a Dell Vostro 1700 with an Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT 2560MB graphic card with a respectable rating of 4.5 for Aero and 5.1 for gaming.

Of course, one of the first thing I did was to download the latest drivers from the Nvidia Website.  To my surprise, Setup refused to install the drivers.  After a little digging, I found that these drivers, altought good for all Nvidia graphic cards (desktop + mobile), don't install on laptops.  Looks like Nvidia leaves that to the laptop manufacturers.

Looks like I was behind using ForceWare 156.69...

...so I went looking for upates on Dell's Website and I only found this:

Funny, Dell's latest drivers are dated June 2007 and version 101.43.  Hummm, not good but I decided to give them a try anyway.  Well, after the install, the Nvidia control panel reported that I was using ForceWare 101.43.  Doh!

Worse, the Vista Aero rating went down from 4.5 to 4.4!

Since that was stepping back, I did a little research and found the LaptopVideo2Go Website.  It's run by a bunch of enthousiasts that modify the INF file coming with the Nvidia setup so that the drivers are installable on laptops.  Interesting!

WARNING: This might void your warranty, cripple your laptop forever, bring deadly plagues to the earth, render your dog blind, get your hair on fire, etc.  Don't do this unless you backup your laptop, send flowers to your mother, give to United Way and learn to dance the salsa.  You've been warned!

So I downloaded the latest drivers from the LaptopVideo2Go Website along with the modified INF file and I installed them.  After the installation, the Nvidia control panel reported that I had ForceWare 169.09.  Cool!

Now what about that Vista rating?  Aero went back up to 4.5 and the gaming one went from 5.1 to 5.2.  Yeah!