Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: rbthum on June 11, 2013, 12:52:48 pm

Title: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: rbthum on June 11, 2013, 12:52:48 pm
Is there any way to make LR 5 run on Vista?  The beta did, but the final LR 5 download stops installing when it detects no Windows 7.

Help.    :(
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Isaac on June 11, 2013, 01:20:36 pm
System requirements / Windows (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom/tech-specs.html)

    Microsoft® Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1 or Windows 8
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Steve House on June 11, 2013, 01:51:43 pm
Is there any way to make LR 5 run on Vista?  The beta did, but the final LR 5 download stops installing when it detects no Windows 7.

Help.    :(
Why not upgrade to Win 7?  Upgrading over Vista was seamless on the two computers I done it with and 7 is far more stable than Vista
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: egd5 on June 11, 2013, 02:56:21 pm
Well Hell. That just sucks.Vista has been fine on my PC since day one. I just may have to join all the Adobe haters now.
On the other hand, I just saved $80.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: RikkFlohr on June 11, 2013, 04:05:24 pm
Well Hell. That just sucks.Vista has been fine on my PC since day one. I just may have to join all the Adobe haters now.
On the other hand, I just saved $80.

Just because Vista has been fine since day one doesn't preclude Win 7's being better.  You may have also cost yourself image quality and time-spent. Your dime - your choice.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: jferrari on June 11, 2013, 09:33:11 pm
Seriously??? So now in addition to buying the upgrades to LR, I have to buy Windows 7 for all four of my Vista boxes??? There's not one single thing that 7 does that I can't live without as compared to the capability of Vista. Just getting pissier by the minute...
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: egd5 on June 11, 2013, 09:42:57 pm
They're determined to drag us kicking and screaming into the 21st century whether we want to or not. ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Steve House on June 11, 2013, 11:33:51 pm
Seriously??? So now in addition to buying the upgrades to LR, I have to buy Windows 7 for all four of my Vista boxes??? There's not one single thing that 7 does that I can't live without as compared to the capability of Vista. Just getting pissier by the minute...
I hear ya - still have one PC running XP here 'cause that particular hardware just won't handle anything newer.  But as new software comes out with new capabilities, eventually you run into brick wall where the software needs OS calls that don't exist in older systems or you want newer hardware and you need to upgrade the operating systems to take advantage of its new capabilities.  I've been working with PCs since the 1970's and the need to continuously upgrade has always been a simple fact of life - Sisyphus would feel right at home today.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: rbthum on June 12, 2013, 01:10:50 am
Changing OS is a giant hassle - you have to reinstall all your programs, you'll need upgraded versions of some critical ones (like SilverFast), some hardware is not compatible, etc.  Why do it if you don't have to?

Since LR5 beta operated under Vista (although Adobe said it wouldn't support Vista), doesn't someone know a way to get the final LR5 to work under Vista as well?

Of course, if LR5 isn't materially better than LR4, perhaps there's no reason to upgrade or to swap OS.  Can someone comment on the differences?
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: PhotoEcosse on June 12, 2013, 02:36:32 am
There's not one single thing that 7 does that I can't live without as compared to the capability of Vista.

My wordprocessing and spreadsheet needs were (and still would be today) met by the versions of WordStar and SuperCalc that I ran on a CPM+ operating system in the early 80s. But I would have to concede that, for photo-processing, the software and OS platforms of today are a big improvement on what was available even 5 years ago.

Having said that, I really have no interest at present in upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8. I tend to only move up in OS terms when I replace a PC and get the current Windows version with it. Which, currently, means about once every three years.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Rhossydd on June 12, 2013, 03:30:33 am
But as new software comes out with new capabilities, eventually you run into brick wall where the software needs OS calls that don't exist in older systems or you want newer hardware and you need to upgrade the operating systems to take advantage of its new capabilities.
The real issue is do you need those 'new facilities' to do the job ?
When support for XP was dropped by LR in version 4, some people claimed it was because process 2012 needed those 'new facilities' to run. It didn't as the matching version of ACR ran just fine(actually much faster) in PS on XP. It seems the only things that needed the 'new facilities' were the support for video. Did anyone at Adobe ask users whether they want video support or the ability to run on older hardware (possibly faster) ? you know the answer.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: john beardsworth on June 12, 2013, 04:02:23 am
"Did anyone at Adobe ask users?" The answer is probably yes - Adobe do conduct market research.

There's also the cost involved in writing and testing code for a small and fast-declining portion of the user base. Vista's under 1% of Lightroom users (Snow Leopard's around 6%).

John.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Rhossydd on June 12, 2013, 04:22:06 am
The answer is probably yes. Adobe do conduct market research.
I'm sure they do, but are they asking the right questions to the right people ?
Asking would you like video support, is easy and most people would just say yes. Qualifying it by saying what you loose by having it, it won't run on your existing hardware, the whole program may run slower etc and the answer may well be different.
Quote
There's also the cost involved in writing and testing code for a small and fast-declining portion of the user base. Vista's under 1% of Lightroom users
There's also costs involved in writing unnecessary code too. ACR/PS CS6 ran just fine on XP, so it really wasn't any core functionality that caused it to be dropped.
Vista has never been exactly popular, but I'm still seeing a lot of customers using XP (over 20%).
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: john beardsworth on June 12, 2013, 04:53:34 am
Unless they're complete morons, they probably ask enough questions from enough angles to make a rational decision. Remember existing core functionality gets rewritten (eg Slideshow this time), the basis is laid for future developments, and existing core functionality is fine tuned - or fixed. There's little point doing it for operating systems and hardware that will be a tiny minority of your customers.

XP users are probably under 4% of total Lightroom users now compared with 6.7% when LR support for it was dropped last year.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Rhossydd on June 12, 2013, 05:27:17 am
XP users are probably under 4% of total Lightroom users now compared with 6.7% when LR support for it was dropped last year.
Using stats like this is just daft as the program no longer supports the OS.

As I said, for my customers of colourprofiles.com (who by definition are serious about their photography) I'm still seeing over 20% using XP & Vista. It's also interesting to see fewer and fewer using the latest versions of PS too (25% using CS3 or older). 5 years ago when we first starting tracking photo editor used nearly 90% were using the very latest version of PS, last year that had dropped to 30%(possibly lower as that figure is skewed by the use of ACPU).
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: john beardsworth on June 12, 2013, 06:19:38 am
Depends how they are used. 6.7% gives some indication of roughly when Adobe find it uneconomic to continue to support an older OS (see Snow Leopard number above) while 4% shows your "a lot of customers using XP (over 20%)" may not be representative. I'd believe my 4% not least because you'd have to be a complete numpty to visit my Lightroom site for anything other than Lightroom, and also because my numbers are usually close to another two Lightroom-only sites.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Rhossydd on June 12, 2013, 06:33:47 am
6.7% gives some indication of roughly when Adobe find it uneconomic to continue to support....
I think we've discovered that anything less than 10% doesn't matter at all to Adobe.
Every selection of users(and potential users) they alienate will look elsewhere and leave. They may not care now, but in future that lack of care may come back to haunt them.
Quote
"a lot of customers using XP (over 20%)" may not be representative.
It may not be representative of current LR users, but it's an indication of the nature of usage amongst the wider photographic community.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Steve House on June 12, 2013, 07:58:00 am
Changing OS is a giant hassle - you have to reinstall all your programs, you'll need upgraded versions of some critical ones (like SilverFast), some hardware is not compatible, etc.  Why do it if you don't have to?
...
Actually I upgraded by installing Win 7 on top of Vista and virtually everything came over without problems.  I know the conventional wisdom says the best practice is to reformat and do a clean install but I decided to try the upgrade path instead and it worked just fine, just some minor cleanup but no re-installs needed.  But if I were on Vista today and needed to update because it wasn't supported in some software I wanted to use, I'd skip 7 and go to 8.  It just makes no sense to me to 'upgrade' to something that's already on the way out and some of the Win 8 frustrations should soon be fixed in the update due in a couple of months.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: john beardsworth on June 12, 2013, 08:06:46 am
I think we've discovered that anything less than 10% doesn't matter at all to Adobe.
Every selection of users(and potential users) they alienate will look elsewhere and leave. They may not care now, but in future that lack of care may come back to haunt them.It may not be representative of current LR users, but it's an indication of the nature of usage amongst the wider photographic community.
Current LR users are all that matters here. If the rest of the potential market hasn't come over already, you're not going to win over much more of them by continuing to support older OS's.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: jferrari on June 12, 2013, 08:09:31 am
<rant> I, too, come from the days of mag tapes, punch cards and floppy discs the size of dinner plates but the issue here is not that LR5 WON'T run on Vista 64bit, it's that the coders wrote in a switch that asks: "Is operating system Windows 7 or greater?" Yes or no. As mentioned elsewhere, to upgrade a computer that is used daily for business is not to be taken lightly. Printer drivers, (a BIGGIE!) scanner drivers and software, display calibration, ICC profiles and bloated UI are some of the genuine concerns I have in addition to the cost outlay. Now, if I didn't have a 64bit platform I could justify the upgrade. But to upgrade just because Bill Gates is starving to death... Don't get me started. </rant>
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Steve House on June 12, 2013, 08:17:58 am
<rant> I, too, come from the days of mag tapes, punch cards and floppy discs the size of dinner plates but the issue here is not that LR5 WON'T run on Vista 64bit, it's that the coders wrote in a switch that asks: "Is operating system Windows 7 or greater?" Yes or no. As mentioned elsewhere, to upgrade a computer that is used daily for business is not to be taken lightly. Printer drivers, (a BIGGIE!) scanner drivers and software, display calibration, ICC profiles and bloated UI are some of the genuine concerns I have in addition to the cost outlay. Now, if I didn't have a 64bit platform I could justify the upgrade. But to upgrade just because Bill Gates is starving to death... Don't get me started. </rant>
Didn't say periodic OS upgrades were to be taken lightly, just that they are a fact of life.  My "day job" is a PC applications trainer and I'm still training new users on Office 2003 fer cryin' out loud!  In fact, I've still got clients who are still "upgrading" to 2003! :D  I have no insider info but I'm confident Adobe didn't make Win7 or later required for LR5 out of any concern for Microsoft's bottom line - it got to be that something in the code doesn't work properly in older OSs.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: PeterAit on June 12, 2013, 11:07:45 am
Is there any way to make LR 5 run on Vista?  The beta did, but the final LR 5 download stops installing when it detects no Windows 7.

Help.    :(

Get Windows 7! It is *SO* much better than Vista, LR-compatibility aside.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Rhossydd on June 12, 2013, 12:16:19 pm
Current LR users are all that matters here.
No, otherwise they'd support their existing users that use older OSs.

They're just happy to loose any that won't play the 'buy the latest' game.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: john beardsworth on June 12, 2013, 12:21:02 pm
That's just sensible business.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Steve House on June 12, 2013, 12:29:24 pm
No, otherwise they'd support their existing users that use older OSs.

They're just happy to loose any that won't play the 'buy the latest' game.
Time marches on - remember Vista is 10 years old in an industry where a "generation" is about 18 months.  I'm not knocking it - although it got a bad rap in some circles I personally had no problems with it on two computers where it was installed but all things eventually must pass.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Dan Glynhampton on June 12, 2013, 04:28:58 pm
Time marches on - remember Vista is 10 years old in an industry where a "generation" is about 18 months.

It's not quite that old, Microsoft (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/history) say it was released in 2006 and Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista) (if you trust that source) says it became generally available on the 30th January 2007, so that's just over six years.

But your point is well made, OS capabilities advance every few years and once LR needs something that isn't in an older version then support will be dropped.  I think another significant factor is the testing time and effort required to support multiple versions.  Supporting 3 versions of an OS instead of 2 could increase the test time by 50% if full functional testing is carried out (which I would hope it is) and that's a significant overhead.

Dan
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: rbthum on June 13, 2013, 12:07:18 am
Actually I upgraded by installing Win 7 on top of Vista and virtually everything came over without problems.  I know the conventional wisdom says the best practice is to reformat and do a clean install but I decided to try the upgrade path instead and it worked just fine, just some minor cleanup but no re-installs needed.  But if I were on Vista today and needed to update because it wasn't supported in some software I wanted to use, I'd skip 7 and go to 8.  It just makes no sense to me to 'upgrade' to something that's already on the way out and some of the Win 8 frustrations should soon be fixed in the update due in a couple of months.

What do you mean "on top of Vista"?  Is there something about an "upgade path" that eliminates the need to reinstall S/W, drivers, etc.?
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: mlewis on June 13, 2013, 02:41:09 am
What do you mean "on top of Vista"?  Is there something about an "upgade path" that eliminates the need to reinstall S/W, drivers, etc.?
If you want to upgarde from Vista x32 to Win7 x32 or Vista x64 to Win7 x64 all you have to do is insert the upgrade media and install Win7 using the upgrade option.  All your software etc will not need reinstalling.

If you wish to change bit depth of OS then you will need to do a clean install - start again from scratch.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Rhossydd on June 13, 2013, 05:08:10 am
That's just sensible business.
The really smart thing is not to restrict the software install, so if users of older OSs can get it working they can still buy the upgrade and use it as the OP here wanted.

LR3 came with a warning when trying to install on 'unsupported' hardware, but you could carry on and in my experience still get a useful installation.
On my XP netbook LR3 ran well enough, LR4 wouldn't install and would have been a bit sluggish, LR5's speed improvements might have made it viable on that hardware, but it can't be installed, so I'm not rushing to buy the upgrade. "sensible business" ??
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: john beardsworth on June 13, 2013, 05:24:54 am
My starting point would also be a dislike of restrictions at installation, but even with disclaimers and warnings users will still pass on the blame and give you the bad reputation when your product doesn't work properly. It's good business sense not to attempt to please everyone.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Rhossydd on June 13, 2013, 05:36:07 am
It's good business sense not to attempt to please everyone.
Adobe have certainly managed that recently.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: john beardsworth on June 13, 2013, 07:00:43 am
Adobe have certainly managed that recently.
And only time will tell if they've made the right call. I'm bored with this.
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: werner from aurora on June 13, 2013, 08:03:33 am
I too was playing with the beta version on my Vista 64 system. I almost upgraded never thinking the release version would not work. I use Silvervast for my scanning, If I upgrade to 7 I need to fork out another $250.00 to Silvervast to get it to work with 7. It is the main reason I stick with vista 64 as I also have another (non photography) program that only works with Vista. All of a sudden upgrading to Lightroom 5 will cost me 5-6 hundred bucks!! Why would 5 beta work and then not work on the release?  FRUSTRATING!!!
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: PhotoEcosse on June 13, 2013, 11:12:26 am
All of a sudden upgrading to Lightroom 5 will cost me 5-6 hundred bucks!! Why would 5 beta work and then not work on the release?  FRUSTRATING!!!

One possible reason is that the beta-testing revealed some bugs and the easiest way to resolve the bugs involved restricting the release version to Win7&8
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Richowens on June 13, 2013, 02:30:21 pm
One possible reason is that the beta-testing revealed some bugs and the easiest way to resolve the bugs involved restricting the release version to Win7&8

 No, the release notes with the Beta stated that Vista was not supported, Win7 with service pack 1 or Win8. Many people complained about this on the LRBeta forums.

 Werner, I moved Silverfast from XP to win7 without any addditional cost when my XP box went up in smoke. Also any program that runs on Vista will run on Wn7 under emulation,
I think that is the correct term.

 I think if you run the upgrade you will find about everything will transfer over seamlessly. It did for me when I took my Vista laptop to Win7, drivers, programs, data.... even down to the screen calibration.

Rich
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: PeterAit on June 13, 2013, 05:10:46 pm
There's not one single thing that 7 does that I can't live without as compared to the capability of Vista.

So, if you can live without running LR 5, what's the problem?
Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: Eric Myrvaagnes on June 13, 2013, 05:43:30 pm
All the way through XP my mantra was that MS-DOS 3.1 was Microsoft's only OS that was ready for prime time.

With Vista, my Blue Screens of Death went down from about once a week to once every couple of months. With Windows 7 (64) they occur only once a year at most. And I can run any old software in "compatibility" mode with no trouble.

Eric M.


Title: Re: LR 5 and Vista 64
Post by: jferrari on June 13, 2013, 07:04:17 pm
So, if you can live without running LR 5, what's the problem?
Where did I say I could live without LR5? Read what I actually said. I was talking about the forced upgrade to Windows 7 or above. You know what? Don't bother. I'm done with this.