Hi Eric, Although many companies are specifying Microsoft XP, I keep wondering what will happen in June when they are supposedly no longer going to make this available anymore. As it is they extended the OS sales.
I have been using Vista for not quite a year and have not been running ham programs on it because I have an XP tower along with the Vista tower and a KVM switch to make it handy to work on either machine with the same keyboard, video, and mouse. Because of your post, I decided that tonight was the time to go ahead and switch over to the Vista box and see how current ham digital programs work. Generally, things seem OK with the programs that I normally run: Multipsk Ham Radio Deluxe/Digital Master 780 NBEMS suite with VBdigi/flarq/flLogbook and can run the Sylpheed e-mail program recommended for this DXLabs suite with DX Commander (which does the interfacing to the rig with Multipsk), DXKeeper. Propview, DXView, etc. (not fully tested) Airlink Express - new program just released and targeted specifically for Vista but runs OK on XP Also, not fully tested but seem to work OK: QForms emergency messaging EasyPal for SSTV QWIKPSK Also can run my regular programs and some interesting ones: AVG Anti-Virus Open Office Suite of programs Media Monkey Irfanview Celestia and Stellarium for astronomy GIMP2 for graphics Firefox web browser Thunderbird e-mail As you can see, most of my general purpose programs are Open Source or at least freeware and when possible I use those that are available on Linux or Windows. I do have a dual boot to Linux Kubuntu, which is the first Linux variant that works reasonably well with my hardware. But I have not had many problems with most modern programs when using Vista. Dave Bernstein did discover a serious bug which may be fixed in SP1. However, Vista has plenty of problems with SP1 and some had trouble with it so they have backed off. Not sure if it is ready for prime time yet. Overall, Vista is a pretty face with superior font rendering when compared to XP and certainly much better than any of the Linux variants that just can not yet compete on my equipment (22" Samsung SyncMaster 225BW LCD Monitor). But it simply does not offer much else, other than some security improvements, some of which are too extreme and quite unnecessary and annoying. Some call this program Windows ME2. I won't go that far, as unlike ME, which was truly unstable, Vista is quite stable and solid for the average user. Like when was the last time you had a BSOD? I have not had one for many years, pretty much not since XP. (Can't say that about Linux which can crash the X windows pretty easily with a bug in PSKmail:( Vista is VERY easy to reload. I actually dumped Vista last year and attempted to install Ubuntu Linux but it was just not an adequate OS and of course can not run most of the high quality ham programs so it is just not practical to use. So I was pretty concerned when I was forced to reload Vista and surprisingly it was the easiest modern OS that I have reloaded from scratch. All the drivers were present on the reinstall disks you have to make up in advance. This is for an HP Pavilion a1730n which is a 4400+ AMD chip and 2 Gigs of RAM. Also, when I bought a low cost USB COM adapter, the driver was already in Vista while XP required installation of the drivers from a disk. This may be at least a part of why Vista is a very bloated OS. Even some of the MS top programmers have admitted it needs trimming. Thus, it needs tremendous resources to run moderately fast. That means the fastest possible microprocessor, video, and at least 2 Gig RAM. MS is running scared on this because sales are terrible. The only way it would have been adopted is due to it being forced on the users when they buy the computer. But note that Mac sales are drastically higher and even Linux is getting some traction here in the developed world. MS is already talking about Windows 7, which is the replacement for Vista. Can you imagine that? And that OS is years away by MS's reckoning, thus it will probably be many years past that date! Bottom line though: you are going to find it very difficult to buy anything here in the U.S. other than a Vista machine for a MS OS. It don't see Mac and Linux as being alternatives if you want to run MS Windows software as we digital hams want to do since that is the OS that has the best programs at this time. In some cases, the only software in certain categories. 73, Rick, KV9U wa0elm wrote: > I'm looking at purchasing a new laptop, and I can't find anything that > doesn't come with Vista. Is anyone having success running digital > software (e.g. MultiPSK and/or MMTTY) with Vista? Last I heard, most > digital software doesn't play nice with it. > > I thought about buying a Vista machine, and loading XP, but the > problem I've found is that some drivers may not be available for XP. > > I'd like to get a little guidance before I pull out what's left of my > hair. > > Thanks in advance, > > Eric > WA0ELM > >
