Who was the bright spark at Trimble who decided Vista 64 shouldn’t be supported??? Win 7 sucks and I have had no real need to go to win8 until now.
Vista has not been supported (other than extended support) Vista since April of 2010. Not only does Vista have problems with resource allocation, the lack of patches and support from Microsoft means that any problems that arise would be almost impossible to fix, considering the fact that Vista was intended to support primarily 32-bit technology. On top of that, in terms of number of prople who still use Vista, you are likely one of only a handful of individuals using that software because it is unfortunately outdated (just like XP). That, and most modern hardware does not support the Vista operating system anymore.
I do not work for Trimble, unfortunately, but I have more than 20 years of experience in the tech field. The hardware requirements to run newer programs like Sketchup 2015, are likely higher than what Vista could handle. You would do better upgrading your OS and any hardware necessary, such as the graphics card, as Sketchup is graphics intensive.
~Drew
It might not be in bad faith, but just have economical reasons.
Generally opinions around the net seem to be at least ‘skeptical’ about Vista, and rather positive about Windows 7. This is the first time that I hear someone favor Vista, but that’s fine.
If we look from an engineering stand point, there were several things that caused issues with SketchUp (driver, graphics driver, memory management, side-by-side configuration) and that make support harder than for example for newer operating systems.
If we look at market share, we notice that [SketchUp drops support for older systems][1] when they fall under a certain market share, like many softwares do (XP: 16.32%, Vista: 1.23%). It’s always a trade-off, but this allows to keep development at least a bit focused on features and performance so that the next release is not too disappointing for the majority of users.
This be just to give some background to comprehend what might lead to these decisions at Trimble. Of course it’s not nice to loose support, but if too many options ‘suck’ for you, you should maybe widen your view.
[1]: SketchUp Hardware and Software Requirements | SketchUp Help
I have no statistical data, but I understand that users of a 64-bit version were a tiny minority in Windows XP and Vista, and the share of 64-bit has become significant only with Windows 7, with more than 2 GB of memory becoming standard in new computers delivered.
I would guess that in reality people that benefit from the 64-bit version of SketchUp are those with recent multicore computers and using rendering plugins with multicore support.
Anssi
You all have valid points but I must admit I’ve never had any issues with vista 64 and any other 64bit programme. Max, Vray and Pshop all work as expected.
Guess I should look into the costs of upgrading vs buying a new box.
Vista is a lame duck and resource hog… aka epic fail:
