I have always had a love / hate relationship with Microsoft. I have been using them as a software Operating System for almost 30 years, but I found that their software was generally buggy, over inflated in terms of features and size, and frequently changing from one version to another caused many of my applications to cease to function. My latest issue has been with my digital cameras.
In the last five years I have very much enjoyed taking pictures with my digital cameras. My first digital camera was a Casio. It had no card, it could store about 16 640x480 pictures, it had only a serial cable to download them to the PC, and that took about 20 minutes for all 20 pictures. Battery life - 4 AA batteries - was about 20 pictures. But it was a start and it whetted my appetite for something better. The better came in the form of a Canon S30, a small 3 megapixel camera that took great pictures, used a Compact Flash card for storing up to a couple of hundred at a time, and a rechargeable battery that would also last a couple of hundred pictures. I have had this wonderful camera for about five years. When I retired from Penn State a couple of years ago, my retirement present was a Nikon D50, a still much better camera, with wonderful interchangeable lenses and great battery life and marvelous quality. I still use the Canon for quick pictures and for things a small camera suits better. But the Nikon is my first primary love.
This past month, though, I changed my computer from an HP something running Windows XP to a Dell Vostro running Vista Home Premium. As I have worked through the task of moving software from my old HP that I was planning to retire to the new Dell, I kept running into the "doesn't work on Vista" (sometimes not well, sometimes not at all, sometimes won't even install). So I would search google and the manufactures web sites, find the "Vista patches", and continue with the move of hundreds of programs and gigabytes of data.
This past week I started moving my Canon and Nikon software to Vista. After installing all of the Canon software, I started downloading the updates for Vista. To my surprise, there was no update for the camera USB driver for the S30. Looking around on google, I found that Canon didn't update the drivers for the S30. In short, it no longer works with all of the rest of the Canon software that I was using to organize my pictures. I could still get it to connect as a disk drive and drag the pictures into Vista, but the auto categorization features that the Canon software gave me no longer work. After thinking many unnice thoughts, I removed all of the Canon software from Vista and reinstalled all on my old HP. So I now have to keep that machine around to keep my Canon pictures organized.
I then started on moving my Nikon software to Vista. This time I didn't uninstall it from the HP. I checked the web site for Nikon first. They had an update that made their application Vista compatible. Fine. The update was an update - you had to install the CD version first and post a number of updates from their website. So I get the CD and try to install it. The install fails with the message that the operating system isn't supported. I go back to the Nikon web site. They only have patches for the installer, not the whole package. Too many people were "stealing" the software. My CD (and camera) is "too old" for them to support on Vista. So I leave that on my old HP as well.
I think all of this just says that if you have older cameras (more than a couple of years old), either (1) don't go to Vista on a new machine or (2) buy a new camera that is Vista compliant when you buy a new computer with Vista on it. In the case of Nikon, I could have just upgraded my HP to Vista and it would have worked (as well as Vista will work on a older machine). The Canon, alas, would still be toast.
In the last five years I have very much enjoyed taking pictures with my digital cameras. My first digital camera was a Casio. It had no card, it could store about 16 640x480 pictures, it had only a serial cable to download them to the PC, and that took about 20 minutes for all 20 pictures. Battery life - 4 AA batteries - was about 20 pictures. But it was a start and it whetted my appetite for something better. The better came in the form of a Canon S30, a small 3 megapixel camera that took great pictures, used a Compact Flash card for storing up to a couple of hundred at a time, and a rechargeable battery that would also last a couple of hundred pictures. I have had this wonderful camera for about five years. When I retired from Penn State a couple of years ago, my retirement present was a Nikon D50, a still much better camera, with wonderful interchangeable lenses and great battery life and marvelous quality. I still use the Canon for quick pictures and for things a small camera suits better. But the Nikon is my first primary love.
This past month, though, I changed my computer from an HP something running Windows XP to a Dell Vostro running Vista Home Premium. As I have worked through the task of moving software from my old HP that I was planning to retire to the new Dell, I kept running into the "doesn't work on Vista" (sometimes not well, sometimes not at all, sometimes won't even install). So I would search google and the manufactures web sites, find the "Vista patches", and continue with the move of hundreds of programs and gigabytes of data.
This past week I started moving my Canon and Nikon software to Vista. After installing all of the Canon software, I started downloading the updates for Vista. To my surprise, there was no update for the camera USB driver for the S30. Looking around on google, I found that Canon didn't update the drivers for the S30. In short, it no longer works with all of the rest of the Canon software that I was using to organize my pictures. I could still get it to connect as a disk drive and drag the pictures into Vista, but the auto categorization features that the Canon software gave me no longer work. After thinking many unnice thoughts, I removed all of the Canon software from Vista and reinstalled all on my old HP. So I now have to keep that machine around to keep my Canon pictures organized.
I then started on moving my Nikon software to Vista. This time I didn't uninstall it from the HP. I checked the web site for Nikon first. They had an update that made their application Vista compatible. Fine. The update was an update - you had to install the CD version first and post a number of updates from their website. So I get the CD and try to install it. The install fails with the message that the operating system isn't supported. I go back to the Nikon web site. They only have patches for the installer, not the whole package. Too many people were "stealing" the software. My CD (and camera) is "too old" for them to support on Vista. So I leave that on my old HP as well.
I think all of this just says that if you have older cameras (more than a couple of years old), either (1) don't go to Vista on a new machine or (2) buy a new camera that is Vista compliant when you buy a new computer with Vista on it. In the case of Nikon, I could have just upgraded my HP to Vista and it would have worked (as well as Vista will work on a older machine). The Canon, alas, would still be toast.
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