Resolve 10 - No more Windows 7?

Hello,

I was looking through the Resolve 10 Windows config guide. Looks like Blackmagic has switched over to Windows 8. I see no mention of Windows 7. Can anyone give any more detail about that please?

Will Resolve 10 not work on Windows 7? Or will it not work as well? Or will performance not be any different between Windows 7 and 8. I wish that 7 was still supported, as I'm not really loving Windows 8 and it's wonderful Metro interface.

thanks,
Peter

As someone reluctant to initially adopt it myself, there is really no reason not to now and W7 is about to be approaching being a legacy OS.

It is literally W7 with feature and performance improvements, better memory support and efficiency, improved networking, and the list could go on.

MetroUI is terrible and nothing will change that but if you know how, you never have to see it other than sporadically.

8.1 is slightly better but desktop users are still stuck with metro which is bad form on MS's part. Now that Ballmer is out of the picture maybe we have hope for a non-metro patch before the next major revision.

W7 does not have a lot of little things/optimzations that W8 has: SSD optimizations, UEFI device compatibility enhancements, etc.

Grab a spare drive and download the 8.1 .ISO and give it a shot. Add the "desktop taskbar" to your taskbar for a more traditional start menu functionality and familiarize yourself with the W8 shortcuts and hotkeys and your gripes slowly start to fade. Add in something like Rainmeter and you'd never know it was W8 other than the moment you login.

[Dwaine Maggart]

I'm not sure what the official word on this is. Peter C can perhaps comment. But V10 runs OK on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit on our Windows test machine here. I suspect we are just being forward looking, and advising people that Win 8 is a better way to go. For all the reasons Daniel mentioned.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Hi guys, i expect v10 may work ok on Win7, but we QA on Win8 and all new systems should be on Win8 for the reasons described above.
Peter

W7 does not have a lot of little things/optimzations that W8 has: SSD optimizations, UEFI device compatibility enhancements, etc.

That's a very short list and software written in C++ has had SSD optimizations for years.

Anyway my point is, I believe many users on Windows will be using Windows 7 for many many years to come, just like when Windows XP came out. Windows 8 has had such a bad reputation, justifiably so, that I believe it will never gain much market share. Maybe Windows 9 may gain back some reputation.

Please BMD, keep supporting Windows 7 64-bit.

Jules

I used Windows 7 every day for a long time before moving to Windows 8. When I log into Win8 I never see the MetroUI and I have the little $5 Stardock Start8 Menu Button, so the desktop works just like Win7. I've had better performance with Win8 and lot less trouble than I did with Win7. DaVinci Resolve runs great on Win8.

I see a lot of people getting superfluously emotional over Win8, but feature-wise and performance-wise it's better than Win7.

Thanks for clarifying the Windows OS situation.

I have to agree with Jules. I do wish that Blackmagic would have both Win 7 and Win 8 as certified options. I understand about moving on to newer versions, but Windows 8 is still quite new and many institutions have found it better for the work that they do. I am aware of workaround for Win 8, but it seems that maintaining support for the professional Windows 7 would be something very helpful for your users.

If the performance is hugely different, or there are some other great features of Windows 8 I would get it. But I ran Win 8 on my personal laptop and it was a pain to use. Just finding where they moved all the system options was a chore. And some were in the Metro area and some in the 'classic' area. Just not as easy to maintain for professional users in my opinion.

Please continue to test and support Win 7 if possible. Are you moving Resolve to be a full screen 'Metro' app? It's just the fact that the user is not given the option of staying with Windows 7 (if they want to have a fully compliant system). Many people working on big projects are not keen on updating the software quite that often. I have found that changing things on a working production system can cause instability and downtime to fix those instabilities.

Well that is just my .02

-Peter

I have Resolve 10 Lite installed and working fine on Windows 7 64bit.

W7 does not have a lot of little things/optimzations that W8 has: SSD optimizations, UEFI device compatibility enhancements, etc.

That's a very short list and software written in C++ has had SSD optimizations for years.

And I'm did not state otherwise. W8 is still optimized for UEFI standards and UEFI hardware and any system running current generation hardware will benefit greater from W8 compared to 7. Whether it's shorter load times, shorter boot times, or more efficient memory and resource management there is really no contesting which is the "higher performer" and everything is merely subjective and an issue of perception, and to an extent reluctance to adopt new technology. Now sure, these improvements may not impact you at the end of the day but they *are* there. W8 is essentially W7 SP3 with a bad GUI. I'm in no way a fanboy and users should work in the environment that is best and most comfortable for them, but change is inevitable. The hate for Vista was legitimate. The hate for 8 is somewhat less justified.

Just finding where they moved all the system options was a chore. And some were in the Metro area and some in the 'classic' area. Just not as easy to maintain for professional users in my opinion.

They are actually in the same exact spot which they used to be, Microsoft just failed to adequately inform everyone. If you right click the bottom left corner where the start button pops out (or right click the start button on 8.1 preview) the customizeable "Power User" menu pops up instead of the Metro UI start and you will see all your system options (and more "at a glance" compared to W7) just one click away.

I used Windows 7 every day for a long time before moving to Windows 8. When I log into Win8 I never see the MetroUI and I have the little $5 Stardock Start8 Menu Button, so the desktop works just like Win7. I've had better performance with Win8 and lot less trouble than I did with Win7. DaVinci Resolve runs great on Win8.

I see a lot of people getting superfluously emotional over Win8, but feature-wise and performance-wise it's better than Win7.

I'm slightly embarrassed to have not known of this prior to now, as all the ones I've seen were... well, they could have been better. This looks nearly perfect and I'd gladly toss $5 the way of the dev for it. Thank you for that tip.