Not really surprising. A XP replacement has been out for years now and they're tried & true so no reason to hold on to supporting it.
Windows 7 Ultimate is $290 @ newegg (non-OEM so we can install it every time we rebuild).
If I got that then I could go 64-bit. The ONLY disappointing part is that I bought Syntheyes in 32-bit because I have XP 32. I'd need to upgrade that. :D On the plus side I have another 4gb of RAM sitting in my closet that's ready to use on my machine!
Flip that’s an issue for me, I run xp one machine and w7 on the other. this might mean that I wont be able to traffic projects between the two systems.
Remember, you ONLY NEED to upgrade if you NEED Vegas 11. All previous versions will work on XP no problem. This may delay my upgrade plans from 12 to 13 so I can get Win7 first.
If you like Windows XP there's no reason not to like Windows 7. I balked at first on the idea of having to upgrade, but in the end I'm certainly glad I did.
It does take a little getting used to, like any new upgrade. But I have found it to be every bit a stable as XP, and I've been using it for a year now.
We can't expect to move forward while standing in the same place.
For those of you who are running your business on Windows XP, you should be aware that end of support for Windows XP was April 14, 2009. That means you are running your business on an unsupported product and if something breaks, Microsoft support is going to tell you to upgrade to Windows 7 and call them back. So you have been playing with fire for several years now and it is time to face that fact. How can you expect Sony to continue to support an OS that the original manufacturer no longer supports?
It's time to move on. Here are the facts directly from Microsoft:
Windows 7 64-bit is so far superior to XP that can't imagine going back to using XP anymore. It's the best upgrade of Microsoft OS that I've ever made.
you should be aware that end of support for Windows XP was April 14, 2009. My everyday car is my 1990 BMW 525i. It's support (warranty) ended in 1993. However, it is still the best car for my needs and I haven't been even remotely tempted to buy something else.
It is true that I can't plug in my son's iPod directly (although there are workarounds); I don't have any integrated cup holders (although there are workarounds); and I don't have side airbags (although when I grew up, you couldn't even get seat belts as optional equipment). However, if anyone told me that I couldn't put current day gasoline into the car, I'd be pretty upset.
Oh wait, that already happened! My 1966 Mercedes 230SL (which I took over from my dad) uses leaded premium, and requires lead for valve lubrication. However, I use an aftermarket product that gets around even that.
The point is that there are workarounds, and hopefully we'll be able to find a way to use Vegas 11 on XP. If not, since there actually hasn't been anything added to Vegas 11 that I really need, and apparently absolutely nothing that will speed up my workflow, I hopefully can continue "driving" Vegas 7,8, & 10 (with 90% of my work still done on 7) for a long time.
JR,
How painful is an upgrade to Win 7 on top of XP??
And, so if EoS was 2009, how come they are still pushing updates to us poor XP users? I did read the fact sheet, but I must have missed something... :-)
> "How painful is an upgrade to Win 7 on top of XP??"
There is no upgrade path across 2 OS releases. The path is XP -> Vista, and Vista -> Windows 7 but no XP -> Windows 7.
Having said that, I would NEVER in a million years upgrade an OS in place. I always build new and migrate my data. You have less problems that way.
The "pain" is directly related to how many applications that you use support Windows 7. That pain was probably a lot greater in the early days of Windows 7 but now, almost everyone supports it so it should be rather painless (other than re-installing all of your applications which is always a pain anyway). You'll need to download Windows 7 drivers for all of your peripherals. I believe there a program you can download from Microsoft and run and it will tell you what hardware that you have that is not supported. If you have a very old audio card it might not be supported, especially if you are upgrading to 64-bit (and why wouldn't you).
> "And, so if EoS was 2009, how come they are still pushing updates to us poor XP users? I did read the fact sheet, but I must have missed something... :-)"
I assume they will push updates until end of extended support (April 8, 2014). But what that means is unless you have purchased an extended support contract from Microsoft, you can't call them for support. So they will happily break your system with their updates but they will not support fixing it unless you pay extra (not a good position to be in).
I've got a legacy graphics suite i've used for the last 15 years and still depend on daily for personal, media, and professional use. The company that created it went belly up 10 years ago and the product is abandoned. There will never be support for it anymore, and it doesn't run under Win7.
My SysAdmin at work showed me an elegant solution. He got me to instal Oracle's free VirtualBox and we set up a virtual WinXP machine on my new laptop. Double-click an icon and XP is running in a window on my screen, just like it has for the past 10 years. I can effortlessly switch between XP apps running natively under XP and Win7. I can even copy & paste between them. Any resources that i share locally in Win7 such as drive folders, network connections, printers, etc. are available to be used under XP.
Only one thing i haven't sussed yet is that the PrntScr buffer from Win7 doesn't paste into XP apps but i can certainly get around that if i need to.
I guess then maybe a fresh build in a partition may be the go. Have tons of HDD space on current boot drive. That way I can dual boot until happy with Win 7.