Un-official Unsolicited Vista and Windows 7 Advice Thread

[Andy]

Originally Posted by Pupator

Wow. I have officially been demoted as the resident MS zealot. I thought it was impressive that I received 7 copies of Windows 7 (and have most of them installed already).

I've got nothing on you guys.

I've renamed this thread title, btw. Hope that's okay with you!

[cmason]

Having now two Macs and two PCs, I suppose I am firmly in the Agnostic camp, so I suppose I can celebrate releases from both vendors. Anyway, I have installed 7 on one very old Thinkpad T41, with 1GB RAM, and it is running perfectly. There is not a driver for the video card it seems, and it is using the generic one, but I am going to grab the backlevel Vista version as soon as I get a chance. It runs much better than XP did on this machine, but that could come mostly from a nice fresh install. I will upgrade the newer laptop that was 'built for Vista' later this weekend, but expect some improvements.

[Allen]

None of the Smug wiki pages will load in either FF3.5.4 or IE8.
Vista64
Any ideas?

EDit: FF finally page popped up after many F5's and Cntl-F5's

[CynthiaM]

Over the weekend, I installed the Windows 7 upgrade onto a 64 bit Vista system. I was shocked. It went pretty much without incident and the only known fatalities, so to speak are that I have lost some functionality with respect to the multifunction use of my Brother Laser MFC 8220 (no big deal) and it found Roxio 2009 to be incompatible forcing an upgrade.

However, I can no longer see raw thumbnails in explorer. Before I was only able to see the thumbnails if I used the 32 bit explorer, but once they were viewed in 32 bit, they then appeared in 64 bit explorer. But now, I don't see them at all. Any ideas? I don't think Windows 7 even has a 32 bit expolorer, if it does, I can't find it.

[Pupator]

Originally Posted by CynthiaM

However, I can no longer see raw thumbnails in explorer. Before I was only able to see the thumbnails if I used the 32 bit explorer, but once they were viewed in 32 bit, they then appeared in 64 bit explorer. But now, I don't see them at all. Any ideas? I don't think Windows 7 even has a 32 bit expolorer, if it does, I can't find it.

Have you solved this yet? If not, which camera brand?

[cmason]

Originally Posted by Pupator

Have you solved this yet? If not, which camera brand?

Well, at least for Vista, this required the Canon codec plugin. but it was never done (by Canon) for x64. Assume similar for Win 7.

[CynthiaM]

Originally Posted by Pupator

Have you solved this yet? If not, which camera brand?

Yes and no.
The "mystery" is solved, I think. It appears that Canon has not written 64bit codecs for windows, be it vista or windows 7. And windows 7 just does not seem to have a 32 bit explorer, I think it was dropped, if not it is buried and I have yet to find it.

Hopefully now that Apple has a 64 bit OS, we will see 64 bit codecs. Don't you just love being a second class citizen?

[cmason]

Originally Posted by CynthiaM

Yes and no.
The "mystery" is solved, I think. It appears that Canon has not written 64bit codecs for windows, be it vista or windows 7. And windows 7 just does not seem to have a 32 bit explorer, I think it was dropped, if not it is buried and I have yet to find it.

Hopefully now that Apple has a 64 bit OS, we will see 64 bit codecs. Don't you just love being a second class citizen?

Well some bad news for you on that front. I have Macs, and at least with Snow Leopard, Canon CR2s show perfectly in Finder, without any code from Canon, or any plug-in from Canon, since they show on a Macbook without any photo software at all.

[CynthiaM]

Originally Posted by cmason

Well some bad news for you on that front. I have Macs, and at least with Snow Leopard, Canon CR2s show perfectly in Finder, without any code from Canon, or any plug-in from Canon, since they show on a Macbook without any photo software at all.

I'm still hopeful that now that the Apple OS is 64 bit that the 64 bit codecs will start to appear for us windows users. It's starting to happen with the 64 bit plugins. A couple years ago, they were unheard of; now you are slowly starting to see them and they really did not start to appear all that much until apple went 64 bit. But right now, even on a pc, I can't really run CS4 as a 64 bit app as I use it mostly to run plugins and most of them are 32 bit so it forces me to use the 32 bit version of CS4. I'm curious, on the mac, does CS4 install as both a 32 bit and 64 bit app like on the pc?

[cmason]

Originally Posted by CynthiaM

I'm curious, on the mac, does CS4 install as both a 32 bit and 64 bit app like on the pc?

No CS4 is 32bit only on Macs, as Apple ended support for its older 64bit code, and moved to a new one. Snow Leopard is first release of Apple using this new 64bit code for its own embedded apps, btw. Adobe has said future versions of Photoshop will be rewritten and be fully 64bit. For what it is worth, Lightroom 2.x runs 64bit on Mac.

Remember, there is not 64bit vs 32bit 'versions' of OSX...it is all one thing. Leopard was both 32bit and 64 bit, but most of its services were 32bit native. Snow Leopard simply made many services 64 bit native, but it still has 32 bit support. Most Macs will boot in 32bit mode by default, to ensure compatibility, but you can easily force 64 bit mode. In any case, unlike Windows, Macs can handle more than 4GB memory, with the limit being the motherboard chip support: some, mostly older Intel Macs, support only 3-4GB limits. This is a hardware limit, not OS. If you buy a Mac Pro (the big tower) these hardware limits do not exist.

In other words, 64bit on a Mac does not necessarily mean more memory for CS4, like it does for Windows.

[CynthiaM]

Thank you!

[Seamus]

I installed xp on my mbp with bootcamp today (I want to play counterstrike ). I had trouble installing service pack 3 and this was the solution. I'm probably the only one left using xp but this might save someone else having to search google.

[CyberSteak]

<---still uses xp.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Seamus

I installed xp on my mbp with bootcamp today (I want to play counterstrike ). I had trouble installing service pack 3 and this was the solution. I'm probably the only one left using xp but this might save someone else having to search google.

If you want to stick with Bootcamp, you're probably better off running XP. Apple doesn't support 7 and does not seem to be in any hurry to do so. I can't imagine that Vista would be improved by virtualization. OTOH, Parallels 5, VMware Fusion and Sun's free VirtualBox all fully support 7.

[Art Scott]

Originally Posted by Seamus

I installed xp on my mbp with bootcamp today (I want to play counterstrike ). I had trouble installing service pack 3 and this was the solution. I'm probably the only one left using xp but this might save someone else having to search google.

My PC is still running XP......

[Ric Grupe]

Originally Posted by Art Scott

My PC is still running XP......

I still have one of those!

...and two Win 7 machines.

[Art Scott]

Originally Posted by Ric Grupe

I still have one of those!

...and two Win 7 machines.

Hoping my Win7 Ultimate arrives by Friday....so I can be ready to have a mobile workstation........Dell Studio 17 my 1st laptop...................but I really like how XP has run for me .....I went straight from Win98 to XP and that was only because I had bought a couple of pieces of software that were supposed to run on '98 but really bogged it down so I bit the bullet for XP......and I knew from all the probs I had heard about with vista I was not buying into that................

[Ric Grupe]

Originally Posted by Art Scott

Hoping my Win7 Ultimate arrives by Friday....so I can be ready to have a mobile workstation........Dell Studio 17 my 1st laptop...................but I really like how XP has run for me .....I went straight from Win98 to XP and that was only because I had bought a couple of pieces of software that were supposed to run on '98 but really bogged it down so I bit the bullet for XP......and I knew from all the probs I had heard about with vista I was not buying into that................

I think you'll like W7. Seems like anything you want to do is a right-click away.

I had W98 second edition and strongly resisted XP.....once I finally switched, frankly, I felt a little foolish.