Vista x64 Hall of Shame

Here is a list of products that do not support Vista x64. This is shameful for several reasons:

  1. Vista is the currently shipping OS and x64 is the “Ultimate” expression of that OS.
  2. Vista x64 is the second generation of x64 OSs, so it is hardly brand-new and the requirements for supporting the system are well known
  3. Most medium to high end systems are x64 capable.
  4. Most high end system support as much as 4GB of memory.
  5. One can only make use of 4GB of memory with an x64 edition OS. With an x86 edition one only can address 2.7 or 3.5GB of memory depending on the hardware available. See this Alienware Support post.

Disclaimer: I do not have any financial interest in any of these products or Microsoft. I have an Vista x64 system, so I do have an interest in products supporting that platform. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Note: I find the Vista x64 system to be very reliable and usable. While I agree that it is not a large upgrade from Win-XP, I have no interest in going back, and I’m not annoyed by “Account Control” popups, but prefer running with Account Control Enabled.

Microsoft

No support for the Fingerprint Reader on Vista x64
Finger Reader

How hard could this be? Recompile the code. Vista is touted as the end all and be all for modern security in operating systems but they don’t support their own biometric security device on Vista x64? How lame is that??

OEM Licenses Don’t Include Media or X64 Editions.
When you purchase Windows Vista Ultimate with a system:

  1. You don’t get certified media from Microsoft. But instead you get a lame backup disk, or the ability to backup your own system disk to your own media. How lame is that?
  2. You don’t get the x64 edition. If you want x64 you have to pay an additional $300 for a brand new license. Are they really trying to make more money with x64 for bleeding edge desktops?

Why isn’t Microsoft trying to encourage adoption of x64 edition for high end systems?. After all, isn’t Max OSX running in x64 on every system that supports it? Linux does automatically doesn’t it? Hey, I’d run Linux if most of the dozens of applications that I use would run on it. Why is Microsoft holding back with x64? Don’t they have it working yet? Seems perfectly stable to me… Time to pony up and support it, Microsoft.

Alienware

Alienware appears because they are suppliers of the bleeding edge of computing. Where do they get off not supporting the bleeding edge of Windows OSs. There are several problems with their attitude:

  1. They silently let you buy a 4GB system with no warning that not all the memory will be supported by the OS they ship. You order 4GB and you get to use 2.7GB because they only support Vista x86 edition.
  2. They refuse to support the x64 edition on their systems even though the vast majority of the systems are x64 capable. And by the way they act in all other ways like a bleeding edge system provider.
  3. They provide the lame OEM licensed version of the software so you don’t get x64 media or indeed any media for the OS from Microsoft.
  4. Their hardware editions, like AlienFX lighting, does not have Vista x64 drivers. Glad I set up my lighting before I installed x64…

Corel Photo Album
The trial for Corel Photo Album 6 installs a driver which is not signed. It’s a codec from Sonic I think. So there is a warning about the driver not being signed. But the install continues anyway and you are lead to believe that the system has taken care of the problem. Only the driver is in fact installed anyway.
Now you are hosed…. The system refused to boot because Vista refuses to boot with any unsigned drivers.

How lame is that?? What I mean is that both Vista was willing to install an unsigned driver, causing a boot failure, and that Corel didn’t test on x64 and so didn’t find the problem.

BTW, to recover, you have to boot your original CD media and then “Recover the system”. At least when you have done that, you don’t lose anything.

Adobe Reader 8.1 Breaks
Adobe Reader
Adobe reader 8.1.x cannot resize the window. Actually the window resizes, but the window content does not resize either. Not sure whether this is Vista – how could it be?? – or Vista x64? Releases since I first ran this on x64 back in May 2007 have had this problem.

Several Adobe products that I wanted to upgrade, like Adobe Premier, do not run on x64.

These are the notable products that do not run on Vista x64. I will do another post with a compact list of all the products that I’m using on Vista x64.

– windy