basic questions on AA/CEP/Vista

[harmolodic]

Forgive the rudimentary nature of these questions...

I use an ancient (10 year old!) version of CEP on an equally ancient computer to record my trio's rehearsals. I just record live, two channels, and use CEP to master the sessions. I typically use nothing more than noise reduction, EQ, some compression, some reverb, and normalization. I'm in control of these basics and don't really need anything else, and I get decent sound for what we need it for. (I frequented the old Syntrillium boards back in the day for much good advice.)

But I realize that my old computer is on its last legs, only has 1.2 GB hard drive (!) and is slow as hell. So I picked up a new Dell laptop w/ 2 GB RAM, huge hard drive, w/ Vista as its OS.

So--I'm in the position of needing a fairly basic version of AA (or CEP) but on that can run on Vista. I use AA 1.5 occasionally on a friend's computer and like it just fine. But will it run on Vista?

Also, when Googling AA 1.5, you get tons of sites that offer it as a download only either for free or around $40 US...these aren't legit, are they? I don't want to get it illegally.

Advice appreciated.