Vista Compatibility?

[jarvis24]

Great to hear Dell is continuing to allow the XP option! I'm sure this will be a relief to many while the Vista issues are worked out. Glad to hear your study went well

[jarvis24]

Update: July 27th, 2007

MediaLab: Still no reports of any trouble with MediaLab on Vista. We may soon elevate ourselves to the level of cautiously optimistic. Note we have had one user report trouble playings some types of videos. Still not sure why. Will update if/when we figure it out.

DirectRT: We are continuing to work out the issues between Vista and DirectRT. We are happy to announce that we now able to run error free sessions with most input files. It will probably take us a month or two to finish, polish and test all the new code that was required to ensure this compatibility. We are shooting to have it ready for the release of v2008 in the fall. Note that it will be a free upgrade to any users who bought DirectRT v2006 after April 1st of this year.

[jarvis24]

[edited from support email]

I'm now about to purchase the laptop I'll be using to collect my data (with DirectRT) but my ideal laptop (in view of all the other programs I'm using) has Windows Vista. I've been reading the forum pages and I know there have been some problems with DirectRT on Vista and so you're working on a Vista version. However, I'm looking to start collecting my data just after Christmas, so I was going to play it safe and get an XP machine. Now a colleague has suggested the emulator 'Virtual PC' to run XP within Vista, which would mean I could get my preferred computer. Have you tried this? Is the performance adequate?

[jarvis24]

I would avoid it if you can. The Vista version is nearing completion and I would be surprised if you couldn't use it by Christmas (if not by the end of October). You could also look at a dual-boot system instead. i.e., installing both Vista and XP such that you can choose which loads when you boot the computer. Running XP natively will certainly provide a better environment for DirectRT than would running it emulated through Virtual PC. It would work, it just wouldn't be ideal.

[jarvis24]

[edited from support email]

Would like to purchase three new media lab and three new direct RT licenses for my lab. Those computers, unfortunately, have Vista (recent discount dell/hp purchases where removing Vista voids warranty).

Thus, can anyone tell me about when medialab/direct rt will be available for Vista?

[jarvis24]

MediaLab v2006-v2008 continues to be running ok in most cases on Vista with the exception of some video issues we're still trying to work out. With respect to DirectRT, we have a couple options to offer--we have an alpha version of DirectRT for Vista you can try--but it's new and we're still working out some issues. You can use it now and we will continue to fix any bugs that come up over the coming months.

The other option (see above) would be to install XP on your systems--you ought to be able to do this as a "dual boot" setup where Vista is left intact and you simply choose which version of Windows you want when you start the system. That way you could use the standard v2008 XP version of DirectRT without voiding your warranty (unless it states otherwise, of course).

[jarvis24]

Update: April 15th, 2008

MediaLab: as above

DirectRT: We are currently on our 6th release of the DirectRT Vista Beta. Let us know if you want to check it out--so far, it's looking good and we are already building improvements into it as we prepare for v2010 which will be both Vista and XP compatible. Do remember though that it remains a beta which means that we make no promises about its performance yet.

Note that the 5th beta is available here (as of April 15th, 2008):

<contact us at service@....com for current beta link>

And the 6th will be available within the next day or so which addresses some installation issues that a couple users have reported. As far as I know there are no functional differences from the 5th beta so long as the install goes ok and no errors are generated when you try to run an input file.