Once again b3t gives good advice. Go get Vista 64 bit or at least plan on upgrading to the 64 bit version of Windows 7 when it comes out - which should be soon.

Well, I haven't really seen any advantage to Vista over XP - or I probably would have - I've tried Windows 7 and the only advantage I saw there was Window Media Player 13 was nice in that it played my videos from bluray fine - and Media player 11 doesn't. I guess the partition management is nice in Vista - but still I figured I would skip it and wait on Windows 7 - and maybe upgrade to an i7 at the same time - by then prices on compontents should be down to something reasonable compared to early adopter prices that are still out there.

Guess I can wait on a trial version of 9 to come out and ensure it's compatible first before buying too. I agree it probably won't be vaildated on XP64, but thought I would ask just in case.

"Well, I haven't really seen any advantage to Vista over XP"

The advantage (to sony) is money. It costs money to support all these platforms. There are few people still running xp64. I suspect that sony feels (and I agree) that the money could be better spent elsewhere.

And I should point out it's not just sony either. Maybe you should face the fact that the xp64 days are numbered and use this time for a COMPLETE upgrade. You have got a point though... windows 7 is just around the corner... maybe wait? Either way though xp64 is pretty much done.

I'm almost sure SCS will officially NOT support VP9 under XP64, but my guess is that it will unofficially work just fine on XP64

When the trial becomes available just test it and see if all is well...

Ted

"but my guess is that it will unofficially work just fine on XP64"

Frankly I don't see why it wouldn't, but I'm not so sure that's the issue anymore. It's just plain getting old and sooner or later you're going to get into trouble with it.

I agree, Vegas Pro 9 almost certainly won't be supported in XP x64 but will very likely work.

I still haven't seen a compelling reason to switch to Vista, and I plan to hold out with my XP x64 on my desktop as long as possible, until something I need just plain doesn't work. Hopefully this will be after Windows 7 is "stable" (e.g. past SP1).

My XP x64 experience has been OK but in some respects it has been an absolute PITA. Getting Dreamweaver to work with it was hell, and getting a webcam to work with it was even worse. If I went back in time I would have stuck with 32-bit.

Hi,

I used to be on XP64. It was really performing excellently, and was ROCK SOLID. Vegas Pro 8 never was "officially" supported on this OS, but worked like a charm! Why wouldn't it have? I was a very happy camper, and held the rendertest speed record for a long time with this rig. The came Bluray and I opted to switch and then the trouble started...

The ONLY reason why I swithed to Vista (64 bit) was the lack of Bluray (UDM5) support in XP64 (DVDA was not able to burn to BLuray disks directly in XP64 - due to this limitation).

The surprise was however big when I learned that Vista is not natively supporting reading/writing of Bluray disks, not even with SP1 installed. This functionality is promised in SP2, that was again promised to be published 2nd of April (this year). Still waiting...

People complaining about Vista have reasons, also other than emotional ones. I have experienced lot of Vista problems, even blue screens, and instability, on the same PC that XP64 ran completely stable. Vegas Pro 8 runs slower on Vista 64 - compared to XP64 on the same PC. The rendertest got a 2 scond penalty. I have a computer with all experience indexes at 5,9 (highest possible), so the sluggishness is not due to harware limitations. And I run with all fancy windows animations off anyhow.

XP64 NEVER crashed on me - not a single time! All operations were snappy, even data transfers between HD's. With Vista everything is slower. Even the data transfer speed is close to ridiculous.

My suggestion is, do NOT switch to Vista before you are forced to. Your plan sounds ok to me. Try the VP9 on XP64, and if it works and fulfills your needs, why switch PREMATURELY? There will come the day when you are forced to anyhow switch...and probably you could skip Vista completely and jump directly to W7.

Christian

"People complaining about Vista have reasons, also other than emotional ones. I have experienced lot of Vista problems, even blue screens, and instability,"

More proof there is something wrong with your machine. I've been running Vista64 (ultimate) for well over a year.... NEVER had a blue screen or ANY instability.

As for sluggishness.... It is true that if you don't set it up properly it will run slower. Things like M$'s new search feature defaults on so you have to actively turn it off. All these little extras default on which take up precious ram and cpu. Turn them off however and it all works fine.

Blu Ray... well... don't know if its natively supported or not.... but it works fine. No problems at all. What functionality are you missing?

And Windows 7.... Look how long it took them to develop Vista. Compare that to how long windows 7 has been on the drawing board (it's almost ready) In other words It's pretty much pure vista under the hood... some neat little add-ons though.

Looking at the latest post on render test by nielslade: XP64 is slightly faster than Vista - I only have one application that won't work on XP64 today which is the HPScanner UI - but I have a 32 bit OS on another machine I use for that infrequent use - and it's not supported in W764 either so not a reason to switch there. I'll just stick with 64 until forced to move by something I really need - hopefully a couple more years - Don't like learning the ins and outs of new OS anyway, or donating money to MS either.

Please blink, there is nothing wrong with my machine. You must be the only person here that never has anything wrong with his PC, and if something is wrong its the HW, not SW... Please do not take this as offending your opinions, but sometimes I just wonder....

The blue screens and instability comes from that some software and drivers have a hard time running on Vista. Or then Vista has some serious flaws that show up in some combinations, and not in some other. This is the exact same machine that was 100% stable with XP64. No HW added, no HW removed. You probably use your PC purely for video editing, there are people that also do other things with their computers...

Before I switched I double checked that all drivers I need exist also certified for Vista...

I have gone through the PC-magazine's excellent 99-point list of how to tune Vista to operate as smootly as XP. Still there IS a difference. Obviosly, I have turned off every stupid background process, such as indexing, defraggin etc. Everything (!) is turned off and still there is a clear speed penalty especially running Vegas.

BTW - Vista does not write to bluray disks natively... This is (probably) going to change with SP2, some day...

W7 is basically Vista to a quite big extent, your'e right on that. Just packaged more neatly with revamped eye-candy and some marginally improved functionality - and renamed - ofcourse... That's why some people have no big hopes in this "next" almost as bloated OS...

Christian

"The blue screens and instability comes from that some software and drivers have a hard time running on Vista. "

Then I would suggest you put the blame where the blame is due.... on the hardware manufacturers that pump out rather questionable drivers.

I had the exact same machine to when I made the switch and there was some hardware that I surely had to dump by the wayside in the midst of the switch.... that's life.

"BTW - Vista does not write to bluray disks natively... This is (probably) going to change with SP2, some day..."
My guess is that it will change sooner or later too.... but in the meantime let me ask you this.... Does the Sony PS3 support HD DVD? Will it ever? Does the Xbox play Blu ray? There was a war and nobody knew who was going to win. Not withstanding, M$ was on the other side of that war. You're going to have to give them a bit of time to adjust to this.


"W7 is basically Vista to a quite big extent, your'e right on that."
And be prepared to possibly dump more hardware.... or put up with the blu screens :)

Microsoft put a women in charge of Windows 7. Read it in the paper.
JJK

Very interesting thread.. Talking about choice of operating systems with comments like "just get over it.." Like it's a fashion statement or something.

If someone where hanging on to WIndows 95, I could see that attitude ("get over it.") 95% of modern software probably can't even run stably on that OS. When it's the reverse situation (software that's stable on XP doesn't run on Vista), I just don't get it.

I too am one of those users who does more than just Vegas renders on his PC. And I'm not real interested in dumping all my software to go buy new stuff made for an OS that is such a bomb that computers vendors are downgrading it off their new machines.

One person who has hardware that he probably hand-picked for Vista compatibility, or who bought a system that the vendor carefully tested for Vista, doesn't discredit everyone else who has personal experience with problems and direct observation of performance issues.

That said, if a machine is for production (not just hobby work), it certainly would be best to go with a configuration supported by SCS. In 64 bit worlds, that would only be Vista 64.

And that's the key to the issue here.... if you're using vegas on a pro level... then why dick around?