Upgarding Window Vista

Hey, I was wondering would it be practical to upgrade from vista home basic to home premium on my laptop? basicall I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 1525 with its most basic specs. No upgrades, no add-ons, $499. It comes with Visat home basic but I so want the Aero and 3D glass flip effect. (I don't have Vista on my desktop) Is it safe to upgrade or would that action render my computer useless/too slow?

Also I plan on uninstalling a few programs once I get the laptop, most notably Norton ATV, AOL and a few more. I am reading the forums and taking notes.

 

One more thing: My brother has a Dell latitude that he brought second hand, (Don't know the mosel) it came with Windows ME and I know that he can't directly upgrade from ME to Vista. So should he just install XP, then Vista?

 

From my personal experience, I downgraded then upgraded from Basic -> XP Pro -> Ultimate, and I must say I love it! Vista runs just as fast as XP is not faster, the Superfetch feature makes it all worth it. Anyways, if you upgrade from basic to home premium you are also getting the Media Center program which allows you to watch TV on your laptop if you have a TV tuner. If you just want the Aero and flip 3D effect, imo, not worth it, especially if you have to purchase the premium edition yourself.

For your brother, he can just do a clean install of Vista, no need to go through XP, unless he only have the upgrade disk, then in that case, google the trick to clean install Vista even with the upgrade disk. I did it myself, and it works.