Sometimes to ‘coax’ the vista x64 driver to load in 7, you need to skip the installer and get the OS to look in the directory by pointing it to the .INF file.

The 7 kernel is basically the same as the Vista kernel. To me vista -> 7 is the same basic transition from 2000 -> XP where they introduced a new kernel (2000, Vista) and so had a bunch of core driver/compatibility issues but the next rev most of the drivers were ready or an easy port and they spent their time tweaking performance and the UI.

As for animation studios, my understanding it is Linux for the rendering (cheap commodity hardware) and then Windows for the end-users. IRIX would probably be the way to go if they didn’t get crushed by the commodity market.

There is Premiere Elements (also comes in a bundle with Photoshop Elements). I believe the bundle was around $100 when I got it. I wasn’t doing too much video stuff so YMMV. Oh yeah at one point in time you could download a demo. Not sure if that still exists.

I’d agree that the production studios are heavy lifters of the OS – nice analogy by the way. Also I’m slightly surprised that they use Windows at all. I thought all the rendering used to be done on SGI farms running IRIX?

I also had almost no issue with Vista x64 drivers on Windows 7. The only one that I could really call a driver was the hard-drive-inertia-detector-and-parker (called cleverly: ProtectSmart Hard Drive). There were also several media-related utilities that wouldn’t install because they did not recognise 7’s version of MCE.

As for Mac OS-X, yes, I agree with you. iLife is acclaimed to be a phenomenal piece of software (I’ve never used it but defer to the unanimous deluge of positive media coverage). It would still have been a 2x investment, turning a null-cash-flow purchase to a negative one.

Add in that I already own 2 retail copies of Vista – plus the laptop comes with a third – which includes the editting software I considered “good enough” to begin with. I really have nothing against WMM – except for the fact that it’s not included in Windows 7.

When it comes to heavy lifting, nobody uses Vista because of stability problems. All the movie productions houses (Disney, Pixar, ILM, Dreamworks) are staying on XP-64 until Win7 is released.

If you want an OS with built-in decent media editing, there’s always Mac OS X.

Reid

For the tasks I use it for, it’s always been drop-dead simple to use and never given me any problems. I don’t do any heavy work, so anything more expensive doesn’t make sense. I might pay $100 if there was something out there that blew me away. The latest Premiere is $600, which isn’t worth it to me.

From the link you provided, alot of comments seem to suggest Sony Vegas. They have 4 editions, and any of three the lower end ones would probably suit me fine – and they’re all less than $115. I might have to try a demo.

I think MS is at least acknowledging that people need this stuff included with the OS to make it useful – however they have a long way to go. Photo Gallery and Live Photo Gallery are fantastic, IMO. So is WMP (though I think the camp is heavily divided on that one). Even though I find WMM “good enough for me”, I by no means consider it to be “good”, let alone “fantastic”. They’ve really got to put in way more effort to make it appealing to the masses.

Anyway, back to the point – in Windows 7, what would I have used (without knowing about Sony Vegas of course)? Live WMM, it its current beta state, is positively useless, even for me. So unfortunately, it weighed in a bit heavier than it otherwise would have.

BTW, thanks for reading and for the great comment…

I find it strange that you put some weight on the lack of Windows Movie Maker. It’s a very limited application – http://bit.ly/PX51q

On drivers, as long as video and audio work…well, that’s it. I did have to find a better sound driver than the one Windows provided; it kept going silent after waking up from Sleep. My soft buttons for sound work fine. The others have been useless since the day I bought the laptop because I wiped the HP drive they point to.

I see how that bug would be annoying, might be a 64-bit issue. But that’s part of the fun in trying out pre-production software Isn’t it?