G
GregS
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
Whats the issues with 64 bit Windows 7. What software works ?
greg
greg
Whats the issues with 64 bit Windows 7. What software works ?
Grant said:No problems here with Win7 x64. There's a free 'XP Mode' virtual machine
for running older software. No serial comms program on Win7 (but Win7
supports fax), but the old XP utilities are there, I assume they work.
Does "no serial comms" mean there is not even a feature to do RS232 via
a USB adapter? That would kill a ton of apps here at my office.
Grant said:Sorry, I meant no Hyperterminal application, that's why I added the
bit about fax software to confirm it does do serial comms technically,
'cos that's serial comms. I assume XPMode's Hyperterminal works fine.
If you don't buy W7 Pro or the next tier up, then it'll cost you
about $80 to upgrade to W7 Pro so you can run a "virtual XP" machine
and, on it, supposedly run the software non-pro W7 is designed to
ignore.
After that there are still issues.
---
**** you, Grant.
If you buy W7 64 home edition, which is what came installed in a PC I
bought about 3 months ago, then it won't run most 32 bit applications
that run on XP.
I tried it, and got an "incompatible application" or some such message
when trying to install it.
AutoCAD, ORCAD, HP3500C, Acrobat 5, almost everything I had on an XP
box before it blew up.
So, Microsoft touts: "Give is 80 bucks and we'll turn W7 Home into W7
pro and turn on the virtual XP machine so you can run your old stuff."
Pretty cool... $80 for a downgrade. :-(
So, of course, instead of buying all new software, or a new box to run
XP on, or turning my W7 box into an XP box, I went for the $80 deal.
Started out fine, and I even got AutoCAD to run (but not Qbasic; it
bitched about not being able to run in full-screen mode and when I
said OK, it gave me about half a screen or so with a really ugly
aspect ratio to play around in.
Then, I was finished with it and put it into hibernate mode to get
back into W7, and there it's stayed ever since.
Try as I might, I can't wake it up, and there are other issues like
locked folders and files where "ownership" and "privileges" have to be
wrested from the machine in order to get things to work.
Of course it's on me to figure it all out, and I will, eventually, but
in the meantime this thing is a huge pain in the ass trying to run a
race with all the hurdles Microsoft has so carefully placed on the
track.
Spehro said:Have you tried VMWare?
That reminds me of the "talk-through" button on the 2nd generation of
portable cassette players. Suddenly your classmates could communicate
with others again. Wow! What a concept! Of course now the communicating
would eat batteries but ...
Anyhow, after what John listed there I think Win7 is as "mega-out" for
me as was Vista which I successfully sat out. Who needs a crippled OS
that can't easily run existing apps that XP could?
---
No, but thanks for the clue.
I just went over to their web site and it looks like a solution.
Do you have any experience with it?
Spehro said:Somebody who needs to run new applications that XP with it's
moronic^H^H^Hhistorical 3.5G limit on RAM can't.
Spehro said:Yes, it seems to work well, but I've not used it that extensively-
there was one or two apps that I wanted to run on my Win7 netbook but
couldn't get going and it solved that completely (can't recall right
now what they were, I only use the netbook on long trips).
Also, in a company with a bunch of engineers it's a way to allow folks
to play in their own sandbox (eg. install software and do risky (!)
stuff like that) without earning the ire of the IT dudes. A couple of
my guys have workstation installed and it seems good. You can also
save the virtual machine as a kind of backup for an entire
environment, not sure how well that will work far into the future
though.
WangoTango said:I use Vista 64 on my workstation w/ 12GB of RAM and it has been the most
stable system I have ever run. I do use VMWare on it and, in fact, run
Win7 64 bit in a VM with VERY respectable "Windows Experience" numbers.
In the mid 7's across the board. It is nice to have a Win98SE, XP Pro,
and Win7 64 VMs suspended and ready to run in seconds so I am looking at
EXACTLY the same OS a customer is looking at. I don't get all the foot
dragging and complaining about something they have no real experience
in. Like the "I skipped over Vista because....." how would they know
that if they skipped over it? ...
... From the Apple ads on TV? I certainly
like Vista better than XP.
Another one is Sun VirtualBox. I run that here, to be able to try out
Linux programs. Works well, and even allows mousing back and forth
between XP and Ubuntu, as well as copy and paste between the two. IOW
you do not have to abandon the programs you normally run while using a
guest OS.
John: If you do that jot down the commands to get out of full screen
mode. More than once I had the situation where I hadn't used it for a
while and forgot how to get back out of full-screen Ubuntu. It's like ..
*THUD" .. whooops, the keys are still in there. Embarrassing, but
luckily nobody saw that
That reminds me of the "talk-through" button on the 2nd generation of
portable cassette players. Suddenly your classmates could communicate
with others again. Wow! What a concept! Of course now the communicating
would eat batteries but ...
Anyhow, after what John listed there I think Win7 is as "mega-out" for
me as was Vista which I successfully sat out. Who needs a crippled OS
that can't easily run existing apps that XP could?
Then yes. But I haven't ever run into that sort of limit. I think we
overdo it a bit with SW-bloat these days. In 1990 I was happily running
numerous DOS apps concurrently (switched though) in 5MB of RAM. When I
bought a laptop with 8MB it felt like stepping into a limo.
My kind of work and the tools aren't all that different from 1990. CAD,
word processor, SPICE, spreadsheet, Internet and email. Ok, the
simulator uses a bit more RAM and that helps, but not that much RAM.
Grant said:...
Exactly right
Except with Oracle/Sun I'd be wary about their free software at the
moment?
Though Sun's VirtualBox is generally considered second best after
vmware, with MSFT's offering lots below others out there.
The free vmware server version 1.xx is pretty good, got a decent
console. I didn't like server version 2 so much 'cos it's web
based UI, which is fine for running some guest server VMs you
don't need to actually watch.
Anyone running multiple monitors? Nothing better than having a
guest OS fullscreen on the other monitor, running two OS at once
Doesn't matter what host OS you use, you get good access to the
'other' guest OS very easily this way. It's as easy as running
another machine FS with MSFT's RDP. Or the old VNC, for that
matter.
MSFT's XP Mode is simply a preconfigured, free WinXP guest VM for
Win7's (pro and up, 'home' msftware is for idiots) Virtual PC,
that I've noticed no problems with. The VM even needs updates
just like a 'real' WinXP SP3 too.
Grant said:I would've thought CAD would like gobs of memory? This win7 x64 box has
6GB, the other one 4GB. I'm not feeling an urgency to up the ram size,
as it's rarely used.
Grant said:Depends on what you want to run, Win7 (x64) doesn't run 16 bit apps, which
WinXP will run. So maybe you have some really old apps you still use?
I've got a game (arachnid) written in 1991 that doesn't run on Win7, all
I've noticed yet. And, I been running Win7 since the first public beta.
Mostly skipped Vista until about 6 months before Win7 came out. After
all, Win7 internally is windows 6.1, a 'fixed' Vista. Bloatware with a
pretty GUI.
Have you tried XP 64 bit? Virtually no drivers So if you need 64
bit for big number-crunching or large memory efficiency, you're probably
better off with Linux or one of the *BSDs 64bit distros, if you don't
like Win7. At least Win7 x64 can run all the 32 bit apps just fine.
John F. paints a dark picture 'cos he didn't stump up the cash for the
pro version, I've noticed none of the downsides he mentions. MSFT have
dumbed down their 'home' offerings for years, surprises me anyone would
try to use home version for serious work.
Joerg said:Another one is Sun VirtualBox. I run that here, to be able to try out
Linux programs. Works well, and even allows mousing back and forth
between XP and Ubuntu, as well as copy and paste between the two. IOW
you do not have to abandon the programs you normally run while using a
guest OS.
John: If you do that jot down the commands to get out of full screen
mode. More than once I had the situation where I hadn't used it for a
while and forgot how to get back out of full-screen Ubuntu. It's like
..
*THUD" .. whooops, the keys are still in there. Embarrassing, but
luckily nobody saw that