On Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:31 -0500, "Bruce Walker" <[email protected]> wrote: > On 11-01-28 2:58 PM, Robert Blakely wrote: > > I'm currently pissed at PEXTAX corp. > > > > After a hiatus due to severe injury, I decided to go out with my buddies to > > (outside) Anza, CA to image the stars. I really don't have the many > > Benjamins to spend on an astro camera so do this with my K20D and I use the > > PENTAX Remote Assistant to do this. Fine. Now during the hiatus, I upgraded > > my computers to Windows 7. Well, it seems that the Remote Assistant will > > only work up through Vista!!! PENTAX has no plans to upgrade this software > > and all their cameras after the K20D will not offer fully remote > > operation!!! So much for the company of compatibility. Welcome to the > > company of decreasing capability. > > > > Now this is a USB connection. There are standards. If the folks that wrote > > the software had kept this in mind when writing the interface, there would > > be no compatibility problem. > > > > FYI, this feature is useful not just for astrophotography, but also medical > > imaging, Industrial imaging, surveillance imaging and many other imaging > > uses where automated remote operation is immensely a useful and necessary. > > > > I am considering dumping all my (considerable) Pentax equipment and > > converting to (probably) Nikon. At least the functionality I need will > > always be there as I upgrade - not only the camera equipment but also my > > necessary ancillary equipment. > > > > Call me pissed in California. > >
> > Bob, that most definitely sucks. But if I could suggest a couple of > less drastic solutions to the problem: > > 1) pick up an inexpensive netbook running XP or Vista. Cost as little as > $200 these days. > > 2) install one of the many virtual machine emulators (eg VMware, > VirtualBox, Xen) on your Win7 PC and install a minimal Vista config, > just enough to run RA under it. VirtualBox is free, as are certain > versions of VMware and Xen. > > http://www.virtualbox.org/ > http://www.xen.org/ > Yeah, I was going to suggest something similar. I don't have or need Remote Assistant but I have a VirtualBox set up (running Windows XP) on my Win 7 machine for those few programs that Win 7 has problems with. Works well. Cheers Brian ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Brian Walters Western Sydney Australia http://lyons-ryan.org/southernlight/ -- -- http://www.fastmail.fm - IMAP accessible web-mail -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
