Vista troubles

For the most part I have been very happy with my Asus laptop with Vista Ultimate loaded on it. It has been stable and basic email, web surfing and my day to day applications have all worked fine (including Office 2007). My kudos to Intel, Adobe and Synaptic for having Vista drivers and software updates ready before the launch date.

 My biggest issue to date is some specialized applications and hardware that I use. I have a couple of applications that I use to control my Canon Digital Rebel XT camera for use when taking astrophotos (through one of my scopes). It appears however that the problem is not woth the application but with the Canon driver. I can’t seem to get the images off the camera to the application for focusing or post processing purposes. Even Canon’s own remote shooting application does not work properly. Canon has at least indicated that an update is being prepared now and to be patient.

Another specialized piece of hardware I have is a modified web cam that is used to take planetary images. At least with other cameras and such I have been able to load the drivers, not so with this camera. A call to the company earlier in December to ask about Windows Vista drivers did not go well. I was asked what was Windows Vista by tech support?

The above problems ave forced me to bring my old HP tablet out if the dust and reinstall the OS so that I could at least use something to take pictures. Hopefully it will be able to RIP again in the near future!

This is just an indication of what can happen if you are an earlier adaptor. If you do have specialized software or hardware make sure that you run the Vista upgrade advisor before going to see if there will be any issues or have a second PC that you can use for XP waiting. Within the next month or two we shuld be seeing releases from vendors updating software and hardware drivers for Windows Vista.

Stephen