At 09:06 AM 3/8/2007, W2AGN wrote: >Eric Wachsmann wrote: > > Our official position is that we currently only officially support Windows > > XP and 2000. We expect to support Vista once the many driver issues > > (soundcards, USB Adapter, VAC, vCOM, etc) have been resolved. > > > > Unofficially, several people have been running PowerSDR in Vista since it > > was in Beta without a problem. > > > > > > Eric Wachsmann > > FlexRadio Systems > > >Sound like another good reason to come out with a PowerSDR for Linux >ASAP! Then >we can dump Microsoft!
The issue isn't whether PowerSDR works on Vista (it does) but rather, as Eric points out, support for the audio devices and such. What makes you think that you'll get driver support for arbitrary audio devices faster with Linux than MS? The manufacturers of the devices have a significant financial incentive to get their drivers working with MS (at least for the commercial products like Edirol, etc.). I think this more points up that we cannot be stationary, and support a particular OS version forever. Sooner or later, you have to support the new platforms (which is why MS has a very generous beta program that gives away free copies of the OS long before it's officially released.. they WANT third party vendors to support their new OS). It's been more than 5 years since MS last released a new OS, which is an eternity in the business. There should be a regular plan of updates for PowerSDR to keep it moving forward on new platforms, and, unless Flex has infinite support resources, at some point, they have to end-of-life support for old versions. This is a reality of software radios that leverage the inexpensive consumer computing platform. You've reduced the initial cost of the overall system at the expense of periodic upgrades. Instead of forking out many kilobucks for a hardware radio with bulletproof embedded software that will last for 20 years, you fork out less than a kilobuck a bunch of times over the life span. It's a different pricing and cost model entirely. Complain about perpetual upgrades if you like, but I suspect most people prefer their new PC to whatever they had back in 1995, and that's only 10 years ago, and even more they prefer it to what they used in 1985 (which probably worked only off floppies). The alternative is a software radio that has the processor built in (e.g. a TenTec Orion). Here you pay for everything upfront, and, presumably TenTec will support it for 10-15 years, rolling out bug fixes and feature improvements, but you don't get to take advantage of improvements in computing power (since the processor is "soldered in"). Consider that for the SDR1000 model, if you had bought it back when it first came out, you probably had a sub 1GHz computer to run it, and it sucked up most of the CPU to do a fairly limited set of functions. Today, you've got the SAME hardware radio, but you can get a 2 or 3 GHz machine for $500 and leverage that increased power to get a lot of enhanced functionality (sub receivers, fancy filtering, waterfall displays, etc.etc.etc.). I doubt that there are many other aspects of ham radio where a $500 upgrade to the shack gives you as much increased functionality. Jim, W6RMK James Lux, P.E. Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group Flight Communications Systems Section Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena CA 91109 tel: (818)354-2075 fax: (818)393-6875 _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/
