Its about time for me to buy a new notebook, but I don’t know if I’m going to need to downgrade it to XP after I buy it. I have read reviews on the internet, but most of them either love Vista or seem to hate Microsoft.
Has anyone had any issues running MPLab, IFI Loader/Dashboard, EasyC, or Visual Studio 2005, on Vista?
I’m not trying to start a another discussion of Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, but I thought I might be able to get an less biased answer here than most of the review sites.
[EDIT]I’m currently looking at a computer equal to above:
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5600 (1.83GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache)
OS: Vista Ultimate
HDD: 80gb
RAM: 2gb
\EDIT]
Hate to give you a biased answer… but just my first inkling is it wont work. I think your major issue will be finding a usb -> serial converter compatible with vista.
I didnt even think about the fact that the drivers for that probably dont exist. Maybe look for a laptop with a serial port. I havent tried any of the software under Vista so I dont know if they work or not. Let us know if they do or dont once you get your laptop.
If you ask the supplier directly most, if not all, will provide Windows XP and a free upgrade to Vista. The catch is that the Vista coupon must be redeemed by March 31 if you get the Windows coupon. Some manufacturers might give you more time, but if not you can always just redeem your coupon now and hang onto the disk until you’re ready to use it.
I know when I was running the beta for VISTA it was able to run MPLAB and mcc18 and IFI Loader through my desktop’s serial port. I do not know about any of the other apps that you will need, as I don’t like easyc and I didn’t need VS2005, although I would be very surprised if it didn’t work with VISTA.
And you can get a laptop with a serial port, I have an HP Compaq nc6220 business model that has a REAL serial port.
Lol. I’ve had issues running built in-software and hardware. Let alone third party stuff. God-forbid we should run anything else than a Microsoft product…
Seriously. Lab-view has issues (USB-Serial port not recognized. Not sure why.) Everything is such a pain in Vista. Why can’t it just work? [SarcasticEDIT] Oh yeah… Answered my own question. It’s Microsoft… [/SarcasticEDIT]
That’s probably pretty mean, and Microsoft is a FIRST sponsor, so I’ll shut up now. My advice is: get a new laptop, downgrade to XP and sell your Vista key for half price. Someone out there wants it. You don’t.
After you have XP loaded, you should be all set. I mean, what advantage does Vista have over XP, besides hogging more resources and not being compatible with anything? Until they fix it, it’s not worth the headaches. And by then, who knows… Maybe Vienna will be out…
Dell has laptops that have serial ports. Just search a bit. . .
I just installed MPLab7.52 and C18 V2.4 complier and was able to compile our 2006 code. IFI Loader did open and looked for a connection when I tried downloading. . . Don’t have VEX or FRC nearby to test fully. I plugged in my USB to serial adapter and it says it is working correctly (Again nothing to test it with)
Visual Studio 2005 does work with Vista after getting the VS2005 SP2
Laptop Specs:
HP Pavillion P4 3.4 ghz
1 GB RAM
100 GB HD
I wouldn’t attempt to install on anything less then 1GB RAM
I didn’t have any problems with drivers for any of my devices. I did run into some problems with compatibility issues with older software. For Example: Rational Rose (a class digram/model software designer) wouldn’t work.
Note: I did a complete reformat when I installed Vista.
I have run all the programs you mentioned above without any problems. My computer’s specs are also way below what you mentioned so I’d imagine they will work fine. However, I am not sure about drivers for USB to serial converters. Also, I am running the 32-bit version of Vista and not 64-bit. I could not get drivers for most of my hardware on the 64-bit. These are just my results, I cannot guarantee anything for you. Windows Vista is new and there are many compatibility issues with other softwares. Many vendors are yet to upgrade but I am sure by the end of 2007 Vista will be more inviting. Good luck.
When I had vista installed on my computer, I went through the works with FIRST software, Autodesk 11 installed and ran fine… although it was pretty laggy (probably due to the system specs). Mplab works fine, as well as the ifi loader, although I haven’t been able to test the usb -> serial drivers. didn’t get to check vb 2005 before I took vista off…
This was all on a pretty old 2.0 Ghz pentium 4 with a gig of ram.
I’d like to note that Vista is a brand-spankin’-new operating system, and as with all new things; it needs a couple months to be debugged. It isn’t 'till millions of people start to quality control test an OS that a lot of the problems come out of the works. Back when XP came out, people were comparing it to 98 and asking why they needed to upgrade. After all, as of the release of XP, it only hogged more resources and wasn’t compatible with DOS, right? For a while, XP will get you where you need to go… but you might want to hang on to your copy of Vista for when the world starts to phase XP out. Give it time, it will get better.
I’m currently running Vista Ultimate (32 bit), and have no problems with USB-> Serial converters (in fact, I have tried both the ones based upon the pl2303 chipset and the FTDI chipset). They work without any problems.
lol. You know it’s sad when an operating system is so expensive that you have to win it to afford it… This is the only way that I could get my copy (raffle)… Mac OS is 79 bux with student discount.
They have had 6 YEARS… (since development in 2001…) I’m just saying…
[/M$Rant]
I love the folks at Microsoft. I just think they have too much on their plate. It’s unforunate that the rest of the world has to suffer from this. Windows could be a much better place, and it’s too bad it’s not.
I honestly dont want to sway from the topic, but I just felt the need to say this due some previous swaying:
People pay thousands of dollars on their hardware and then complain about the price of an operating system, but really, without the operating system, you cant use the hardware…
Remember, that is 6 years of closed-doors employee quality control testing, when only one and a half of those years could be used to test a completed operating system. They basically builtf vista from the ground up, and they didn’t do a bad job.
I really don’t care about the Mac/PC fights, but I really dislike when someone from one or the other side makes up reasons to hate the other operating system. After all, it did take ‘till version 9.3 on OSX for it to be even remotely usable for me. A couple months’ wait for Vista to be perfect shouldn’t be bad.
As of now, only one out of six people had problems running the software that was asked about in the original post, and that one didn’t really cite specific problems, they just showed a dislike for Vista, so I don’t think the rest of the world is suffering ;).
Just a few thoughts from yours truly,
-Cody
P.S. I’m not trying to incite an argument with this post, just trying to provide an un-biased opinion of vista.
Microsoft has worked hard to create the Ultimate (no pun intended) operating system. And, being fair to Microsoft, they have a lot more compatibility issues because their software needs to work on any kind of PC with any kind of hardware…
But as far as price… I can understand I high price… But 4 different prices for 4 different sets of features? We have all been waiting around for this operating system, and now that it’s out, we need to pay more for these extra features… many of which competitors are bundling with the OS by default. It just seems like Microsoft is losing its competitive edge to companies like Google and Red Hat and Apple… These products hit the same features at a much lower price point.
OK… I’ll stop my ranting about Microsoft now. They genuinely have a great operating system and a great team of developers (I know quite a few core developers and a lot of MSDN subscribers…) It just seems that Microsoft doesn’t have that bleeding edge software… Like they did back in '95 when no one had ever seen Winnie-The-Pooh come to life.
:yikes: 