What pain to expect from Vista?

[telemarker (Keith)]

OK, I've just bought a new laptop and it comes with Vista installed. What pain can I expect with astro software (guiding, capture and Canon DSLR).
I was previously using a Mac, so am not committed to any particular guiding program and use a Meade LPI or webcam for guiding/planetary capture and Canon DSLR for DSO. Could I have some advice as to my options?

Let the Vista/XP war begin!!!

[multiweb (Marc)]

I believe you might have some trouble finding some drivers in Vista for various hardware as developers have now to pay a fee to sign their driver to work under this OS. Other than that I don't think there are any major issues with the running of most programs. It's bit tighter security wise, that's all.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

This has been done to death. Seems XP is the go to drive your scope/image capture (driver issues), but Vista flies with Photoshop, maybe a dual boot?

[acropolite (Phil)]

I don't like Vista despite having it on one of my home PC's. Things that should be easy and straightforward become an excercise in research and fault finding.

Explorer is changed and simply doesn't preform as easily or efficiently, despite looking flashy.

Microsoft have gone out of their way to make things look different and operate in a different fashion, so much so that it's often more difficult to do things that were simple with XP.
Try doing a backup to a shared resource on an XP machine with simple file sharing, you can drag and drop files from explorer, but Vista decides you need a user and password to access the same simple shared resource for backups.

The only plus I can find is that 64 Bit ultimate runs PS very quickly, making the most of Vista's extended ram capabilities.

Rather than being the Vanguard of operating systems Vista is IMO the Mudguard, shiny on top and crap underneath.

The first thing I did when I got my last laptop was remove Vista and install XP pro.

If you do go with Vista immediately disable UAC, it's an absolute PITA and while you're at it disable auto update (it will still do some updates despite being disabled) as it is not uncommon for the updates to kill the OS.

[telemarker (Keith)]

Thanks for the replies. Have loaded up some of the software and it seems to work. The major problem was the LPI driver. Just let it load the Trust webcam driver and renamed it to Meade LPI in the registry and it seems to work OK. Now for some clear skies!!!???

[AlexN]

I use vista on my notebook and desktop, the notebook drives my mount through EQMOD, Guides the mount using a DBK31 and PHD and captures using nebulosity 2 and a QHY8 with no problems at all...

[ozstockman (Mike)]

I'm also using Vista and the following work without any problems:

cameras: QHY5 and QHY8
software: PHD, Nebulosity 1 & 2, Cartes Du Ceil and EQMOD.

I've tested it on Home Premium, Business and Ultimate versions of Vista and got the same great result on all them.

cheers,

Mike

[h0ughy (David)]

some little help here to reconfigure vista to be more XP like