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Archive 2012 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?

  
 
ilikeglass
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


Question - is anyone still using Windows Vista 64bit with Lightroom 3? Is it reliable/stable with the latest service packs applied? I have a Win XP 32bit system which is being retired.

I'm building a new PC - i5 3750k processor with Asus Z77 motherboard and 8GB RAM. SSD drive will NOT be part of the system.

I have an unused & legal copy of Windows Vista 64bit that I can use. When Windows 8 reaches SP1 I'll buy an OEM copy of Windows 8 and do a fresh install. The PC is pretty much only for Lightroom, so fresh install not a big deal.


Thanks!



Aug 17, 2012 at 01:28 PM
Jo Dilbeck
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


Short and sweet, do NOT use Vista! It was IMHO the worst OS that Microsoft ever came out with. I danced with joy when I upgraded to Win 7. Couldn't give you specifics as it's been a few years since I used it, but if you have any choice, bite the bullet and go with Win 7 64bit. That and as much RAM as you can afford will go a long way!

Jo



Aug 17, 2012 at 03:16 PM
ilikeglass
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


Jo Dilbeck wrote:
Short and sweet, do NOT use Vista! It was IMHO the worst OS that Microsoft ever came out with. I danced with joy when I upgraded to Win 7. Couldn't give you specifics as it's been a few years since I used it, but if you have any choice, bite the bullet and go with Win 7 64bit. That and as much RAM as you can afford will go a long way!

Jo


I hear you, but I heard that several years ago it was very bad but with the latest service pack it was similar to Win 7.
If there are no other responses that may answer my question, lol.



Aug 17, 2012 at 04:24 PM
BobCollette
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


While I'm not a LR user, I have both Vista x64 and Win7 x64 installed on my computer. I think that they are quite similar, and there are some things that I like better with Vista. Vista is my default OS (if I turn it on and don't touch anything, it boots into Vista). The primary difference I see is that Vista boots slower than Win7, but that's been ameliorated by installing an SSD.

I must confess that I wasn't impressed with Vista x86, however (in my opinion), the 64-bit version is a whole different animal. I don't see any reason not to try it.



Aug 17, 2012 at 05:50 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


ilikeglass wrote:
Question - is anyone still using Windows Vista 64bit with Lightroom 3? Is it reliable/stable with the latest service packs applied? I have a Win XP 32bit system which is being retired.

I'm building a new PC - i5 3750k processor with Asus Z77 motherboard and 8GB RAM. SSD drive will NOT be part of the system.

I have an unused & legal copy of Windows Vista 64bit that I can use. When Windows 8 reaches SP1 I'll buy an OEM copy of Windows 8 and do a fresh install. The PC is pretty much only for Lightroom, so fresh install not
...Show more

I never had any issues with the 64bit vista so you should be ok there . And your going to go to 8 at some point anyway.

But I will warn you what I've found playing around with different configurations when I built my new machine.

The SSD drive is the biggest influence I've found when you deal with lightroom4 speed .
My old spec machine with no ssd couldn't run lr4 in a usable way . Move a slider didn't just have some lag it was almost go have a coffee slow.
Same spec machine with an ssd that had just the OS and lightroom4 on was usable. Still some lag but it was usable.
old spec was a dual core pentium (can't remember speed) with 4gig ram)

New spec machine (i5 2500k 16gig) with ssd (win7 , lr4 cs6, office installed on ssd , anything else on a platter drive.) runs lr4 without any noticeable lag at all .
New spec machine with same as above ghosted onto a sata platter drive runs lr4 noticably slower. Eg move a slider like NR and there is a second or 2 lag . Anything used on a brush is very slow.

So I would really recommend an ssd (mines just a 128gig) if your machine is mainly for Lightroom.



Aug 18, 2012 at 01:27 AM
ilikeglass
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


Ian.Dobinson wrote:
I never had any issues with the 64bit vista so you should be ok there . And your going to go to 8 at some point anyway.

But I will warn you what I've found playing around with different configurations when I built my new machine.

The SSD drive is the biggest influence I've found when you deal with lightroom4 speed .
My old spec machine with no ssd couldn't run lr4 in a usable way . Move a slider didn't just have some lag it was almost go have a coffee slow.
Same spec machine with an ssd that had just the OS
...Show more

Thanks - very interesting your experience with the SSD drive speeding things up with LR4. For this temporary build I'll use LR3 and will hold off on SSD until later in the year, then maybe two SSD RAID 1. Good to know Vista 64bit was ok for you. There's also the 90 day Windows 8 trial from MicroSoft, I found out about that after my initial post, so I think I'll try that with LR3 - not sure if that combo will even work but it won't take long to test.




Aug 18, 2012 at 08:16 AM
RustyBug
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


I've got 32 Bit Vista Business on my laptop (too old to install 64 bit OS).

I caught a wicked, nasty virus this past spring when FM got hacked into that required a rebuild and I wound up trying 32 Bit Vista Business that I had received as an alternate disc that had shipped with my beloved XP a few years back.

For some reason unknown to me, I never could get XP to reinstall correctly, so I gave Vista Business a try from dire measures. Given the HORROR stories @ Vista, I was very pleasantly surprised by it. I'm running Win 7 64 bit on another machine, and the two are rather similar in many regards.

I've also used Win 8 for about a month, but the user interface is a royal PITA to me. It is more "app" & "icon" oriented than anything Windows has put out before. It's the most "Mac-like" thing Windows has put out yet ... but they did NOT get it right, as the user interface is convoluted and very inefficient due to poor navigation layout/keystroke and unidentifiable paths.

From that, I'm back to Vista Business on my laptop currently, but if I had a 32 Bit Win 7 disc, that's what I'd be running instead of Vista Business. But, I'm having no problems with Vista Business & LR4 ... which BTW LR4 ... UPGRADE, the new ACR is so worth it.

If you can deal with the Win 8 user interface, it seemed stable enough, but even though I'm fine with Vista Business ... I'd recommend Win 7, as Vista support will die on the vine sooner than Win 7.



Aug 18, 2012 at 08:43 AM
SeverianTL
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


I'm in the same camp as Bob, Ian, and Rusty. Couldn't disagree more with Jo. (By the way Jo, "worst OS that Microsoft ever came out with," really? How soon the memories of Windows Me fade --like a bad dream! )

I ran Vista Business x64 for over 4 years on a Core 2 e6600 with 8GB RAM. I used LR 2.x and 3.x, as well as PS CS4 and CS5 without issue (in terms of the OS). But I did find LR 3.0 to be a significant resource hog, running much laggier (if that is a word) than LR 2.x. The subsequent "dot" releases of LR seemed to make things better and smoother. Maybe my old system was simply under-spec'ed for LR 3.x.

I finally built a new system last year when (coincidental to the installation of LR 3.6) one of my on-board Ethernet adapters and one of my hard drives started to fail intermittently --yep, you guessed it, the 1TB drive devoted to photos. I was convinced for a while that somehow LR 3.6 had screwed up my system! The new system runs Windows 7 Ultimate on an i7-980 with 24GB RAM and mirrored 2TB photo drives (backed up religiously). I use LR 4.1 and PS CS6 without issue, except one. The exception is off-topic but I'll discuss it below.

That exception relates to the peculiarities of the way my system is set up and a serious bug in Bridge CS6 and InDesign CS6, and to a lesser extent in Photoshop CS6. The peculiarity of my setup that these programs can't handle is that I did a custom install of Windows where my "Users" directory is on a different drive than the Windows drive. (That was done to maximize space on the smallish SSD that I was using as the "C" drive at the time. Subsequently upgraded to a much larger SSD during one of Amazon's "Deal of the Day" promotions. ) The bug is that when these CS6 programs don't find your user profile where they foolishly expect it, they try to write some temp or cache files to protected locations on the Windows drive. This makes them crash at launch. For Photoshop you can fix it by launching in safe mode and relocating the scratch disk. For Bridge and InDesign you are forced to run as an administrator. Of course if you only have an administrative account then this is a non-issue. Anyway, something to think about if you install Windows on an SSD and run most of your programs without elevated privileges. And another reason to use Lightroom instead of Bridge.



Aug 18, 2012 at 03:39 PM
SeverianTL
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


RustyBug wrote:
I've got 32 Bit Vista Business on my laptop (too old to install 64 bit OS).

I caught a wicked, nasty virus this past spring when FM got hacked into that required a rebuild and I wound up trying 32 Bit Vista Business that I had received as an alternate disc that had shipped with my beloved XP a few years back.

For some reason unknown to me, I never could get XP to reinstall correctly, so I gave Vista Business a try from dire measures. Given the HORROR stories @ Vista, I was very pleasantly surprised by it. I'm running
...Show more

In my opinion, Microsoft created another "XP monster" in Windows 7. It will be the OS of choice as the installed base of XP finally dwindles. Users will gravitate to it instead of the tabletized Windows 8 (and Windows 9, etc. if Microsoft continues down that path). I have a feeling that a lot of buyers will insist that new purchases have Win 7 installed instead of 8 and that this will persist your years to come, just like it did with XP.



Aug 18, 2012 at 03:51 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


+1 @ Win 7 = the new XP




Aug 18, 2012 at 10:11 PM
ilikeglass
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Windows Vista 64bit / Lighroom users?


In response to the replies, I decided against using Vista. Instead I went with the "free" 90 day trial of Windows 8, available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/jj554510.aspx.

For the last 10 days I've been using Lighroom 4 under Windows 8, and it works flawlessly. I'm primarily an Ubuntu user, and hate to admit it but I'm kind of enamored with Windows 8. I spend most of the time on the Win 8 desktop as opposed to Metro, and have no problem getting my work done.

As mentioned in my first post, the system i5 3750k processor with Asus Z77 motherboard but I'm using 16GB (4x8) of DDR3 memory instead of 8GB. For graphics on board only - no video card. At this time for Lightroom 8GB is more than enough.

One important caveat for the Windows 8 90 day trial - at the end of the 90 days the software will expire and can't be upgraded. A new install will be needed. I only use this PC for Lightroom so not a big deal to start fresh in a few months.



Sep 01, 2012 at 08:37 AM





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