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Windows 7 64 bit experience


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Lightroom certainly is, an email to Adobe should confirm the situation regarding the other software you use.

 

Delving into the Adobe website it seems that it is now possible to change platforms in the UK, although the mechanism looks rather involved. This has been available for many years in the US but I think only recently adopted by Adobe UK. Thanks Steve for bringing this to my attention.

 

Jeff

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All Windows are "flying" when the installation is fresh.

Wait a year and tell me if it is grounded.

I'm a fan of NT4, nothing like in stability...

Just use a register cleaner for that problem.

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With the exception of colour management in Firefox (an annoyance), I don't have any trouble running Vista64 with 8GB of RAM, PS, C1, and all my other applications and printers. I'm assuming that Windows 7 will be at least as compatible.

 

Chris--Windows 7 RC is still only an RC; I wouldn't expect it to be driver complete (typically the last thing written for OS upgrades / versions). So I would expect Scanners and Printers to work pretty well, and Epson might even create new drivers (if its the driver that's the problem); though that 2100 is getting pretty long in the tooth.

 

PS--NT was good, but not great, for stability (but great compared to, say, Windows 95 ;))

 

And it's drivers (or lack thereof) were horrible :)

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From my experience if you keep autoupdate up and running and do an occasional registry cleanup (1x month or so) Windows XP is pretty much bomb proof. There is plenty of freeware out there for that task. I cannot recall having had a serious crash (blue screen of death) for at least 3 years. Very occasionally IE hangs up but that is mainly due to weird things on the side of the provider that can be easily remidied with the task manager.

 

Once I got into the habit performing of this sort of continuous treatment the system picked up speed and is as good as new as far as I can determine.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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I just bought that same Dell workstation... customized. It's a terrific machine.

For the time being....I chose to stay with XP Pro 32 bit... for just the exact reasons you describe.

The power of the machine (I got a dual core.. maxed out processor.. maxed out 4G RAM.. 4G is all 32 bit will recognize anyway) is pretty much enough processing speed. I'm crunching 16 bit Hasselblad HD3II-39 files, as well as Nikon D3 and D700.. mostly RAW.

 

Sure the 64 bit extra speed would be cool... but until Adobe brings out a 64 bit Design Suite (whatever); and Win 7 has a bit more time to stabilize; I'll postpone that nightmare... knowing that I have plenty of expansion room with the machine, anyway.

 

How do you like Win7???

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I gave up on windows and went he Mac route about 8 months ago, and am quite happy with it.

 

Most of the imaging software that I use (Nikon Capture NX2, DXO, Autopano Pro) provided Mac versions with no additional license cost.

 

I run Photoshop and Qimage ( and other windows apps) under windows XP pro ( one 32b and one 64b virtual machine ) using parallels 4 which was also free with my macpro.

 

I replaced MS office with open office (also free), which at the current release is quite good although admittedly I am a basic rather than power user of office apps.

 

The native mac apps are much faster and more stable than their windows equivalents, I have not booted in months, and I no longer check for viruses,rootkits, keybots and other nasties. Unix leaves them no place to hide.

 

Windows XP running virtual under parallels / leopard is actually more stable than running native, because the VM layers (and leopard which is BSD unix under the covers), shield the hardware from windows ( or mac ) applications.

 

Applications having direct access to hardware is the root cause of windows security and stability problems and I do not believe that windows 7 has addressed this.

 

Regards ... Harold

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  • 2 months later...
After a lost weekend I thought others might be interested to know that although the installation experience with Windows 7 RC was fairly straightforward AND Lightroom and PS CS4 really fly on at Dell T3400 Workstation, there's a downside...

  • Older software like Dreamweaver 8 and Adobe Acrobat Professional 7 can't be installed
  • Older hardware like a Canon LIDE 30 scanner won't work
  • Older printers like an Epson Photo 2100 (:() and HP LJ 1005 won't work ...

SO - although there's a real benefit on image processing (and don't forget when you buy LR or PS you get both the 32 and 64 bit versions), there's a major additional software / hardware expense implicit in buying into 64 bit computing.

 

Kudos to Microsoft for making the RC version freely available - I know that for the moment, with 2 desktop PCs and a laptop all happily running with XP Pro, I won't be planning to change for a year or two.... can't bring myself to throw perfectly functioning kit away for a marginal benefit...

 

Hope the experience may save others a bit of time!

:)

 

I'm very happy after making the leap from XP to Windows 7 - 64 bit. CS4 seems pleased with it's new environment.

 

A minor flatbed scanner driver issue remains to be dealt with, but more troubling - Win 7 flatly rejects my attempts to introduce it directly to my little DLux 4. It won't recognize the camera as a USB device, nor will it recognize the SD card reader built into the PC.

 

Did you encounter this obstacle?

 

Cheers

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UPDATE.

I now have Windows 7 Pro 64 running on my main machine (Dell ST3400 Workstation) and Windows 7 home premium 64 on a new Sony Vaio SR51 laptop. VERY happy. Networking's a piece of cake, and LR really flies on both machines.

 

For the first time in a long time it feels like Microsoft gave me an operating system that simplified things for me - and speeded them up.

 

Happy bunny...

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After uppgraded to Windows 7 I have some minor problems

 

The card reader built into the PC will not work

But the main problem is that Windows 7 will not read SDHC at all

C1 pro does freeze from time to time

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Jarle - you may need to check drivers... I'd had problems with the built in card reader on my Dell from the outset - and as it was a bit fiddly getting at it under the desk I've been using an external USB Hama card reader via a hub - no problems with the transfer. Certainly no problems with SDHC, so I think what you have is hardware related rather than a direct Windows 7 issue. (no problem also reading SDHC cards on my Windows 7 64 bit Vaio laptop direct from the internal reader). Hope you can get this fixed? What brand is your machine?

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Chris – I have a costume build water cooled pc with Asus Motherboard P5E64 WS Evolution, and Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU X9777, 3,20 GHz

Can’t find any driver for the card reader - maybe I need to upgrade the Bios?

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Jarle - not an expert in this! However, for the motherboard you should look at driver updates here:

 

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-

 

But I don't think this is going to be your problem. What I'd recommend is to go to Device Manager and check DRIVES (see the attached image). You should then see what's working and what isn't - and if need be update drivers. On my system the card reader is listed as a TEAC advice. Whatever, the SD reader is going to be something quite seperate from your mother board / CPU and will have been sourced from a third party supplier.

 

Your job is to find what make it is and then get drivers (Vista 64 bit will probably work if you can't get Windows 7).

 

Best of luck!

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... or you could use driver update client software, such as DriverScanner 2009 that will look at your machine (or swimming pool in B&W's case :D), go away and get the latest drivers for you, and ask you if you want to update or stick. Make sure that you find a bona fide, trustworthy one though because you'll let it loose inside your system.

 

Disclaimer: I haven't used DriverScanner 2009 myself and am in no way connected to it but I have used other Liutilities software before and have found it to be trustworthy. I just wish I could remember the name of the driver update client that I did use. :(

 

Pete.

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