I have the ipf9100 and the driver I downloaded from the website installed without a hitch on Vista 64.
Yeah, it's strange that Canon doesn't support XP x64 when (as far as I know) the build produced for the Vista x64 and Server 2003 drivers support all three.
These 64 bit operating systems are increasingly important as file sizes increase. I now deal with files as large as 700MB or bigger and need more than the 4GB limit XP32 or Vista32 allows.
I completely agree and the fact that both Canon and Microsoft are so lax with their motivation to support 64 bit OSes is absolutely mind numbing. CANON of all people should take this seriously. The fact that they don't support XP x64 at least for their 1 series cameras is unforgivable. Even though Photoshop is a 32 bit application is DOES take advantage of having more than 4 gigs of RAM (in a 64 bit OS like OSX, Win XP x64 or Vista x64 it will use 3.25 gigs for itself and then it can allocate up to another 2 gigs of RAM to use as a scratch disk before it starts hitting up mechanical media and this has some obvious advantages if you're working on large files). That and the fact that even though PS is still only a 32 bit app.... if you're editing a large, stitched 16 bit panorama... those files get BIG and they will use ALL of the RAM allocated to PS. In a 32 bit OS that doesn't leave you enough room to run the OS, Bridge, and email app and a browser without making the machine hit the swap space.
Fortunately support looks to be a little better with Vista 64 (although Vista has other issues). Unfortunately Microsoft totally dropped the ball with Vista. Vista
should have been ONLY a 64 bit OS. No 32 bit support. Let's face it... someone who can tolerate running a machine with a processor that doesn't support 64 bits (I'm not saying 64 bits is a requirement, just chronologically, processors that are still 32 bits are a little long in the tooth at this point in time) is NOT going to upgrade to either version of Vista (and even if they wanted to, hardware that old probably wouldn't support Vista anyway so it's a moot point).
Microsoft had a really opportunity to force some progress in the industry but instead... bah. And what's up with home, pro, ultimate, semi-pro, penultimate amateur aspiring pro, and Vista "my first OS" versions? Freakin' idiots. TWO VERSIONS people... Vista (which should have been 64 bits) and Vista Server. That's it. TWO versions. $125 for the regular version and whatever they want to charge for the server version.
Cheers, Joe
