[Consolidation-Locked] Lightroom 4 on XP

[Guest]

Lightroom 4 comes with a 32 and 64 bit install but does not install under XP.  Lightroom 3.6 supports XP.

WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN WARNED BEFORE YOU ACCEPTED PAYMENT FOR THE UPGRADE.

Fortunately, I was able to upgrade on a laptop (Windows 7 64 bit) but the display is not optimal (my desktop XP is much better).

Do you contemplate recompiling the product for Windows XP?

Message title was edited by: Brett N

[Jeffrey_A_Wright]

The only upgrade availabe is for Lightroom 4.  Is it possible for you to upgrade your computer to Windows 7 or Vista?

[Guest]

That is the most ridiculous response I have ever seen!.

Do you have any clue how difficult it would be to upgrade from XP to Windows 7?  Besides having to spend $200 for the operating system, in upgrading to Windows 7 he will probably have to reinstall all of his applications. Upgrading to Windows 7 could take several days, even if he is an expert!

This was an insensitive and ignorant response to the user and you should be ashamed of it.

Clearly Adobe has miscalculated the significance of their decision not to support XP.

[Jeffrey_A_Wright]

I am sorry Selmslie.  Gennadym can try to purchase an older version of Lightroom from a reseller besides Adobe.  Beyond that though Windows Vista is required to use Photoshop Lightroom 4.

You are right though it will depend on the hardware capabilities of Gennadym's computer for the ease of upgrading to Windows Vista or Windows 7.  If it is a fairly recent computer the upgrade to Windows Vista would possibly be the easiest to implement.  Although depending on how long Windows has been installed, and if they are having any other difficulties with their Windows XP installation, then they may want to format and install Windows 7 so they can have a nice clean install of the operating system.

[Guest]

There are probably thousands of Lightroom XP users who will be better off stopping at v3.x until they make a commitment to Windows 7. Your suggestion to go to a reseller should have been part of your original response since Lightroom development has decided that these users are not worthy of v4.0.

The user wants to upgrade from v1.x so it is pretty clear that he is an old user and there is a good chance that his PC is older and he has many applications that he would need to reinstall. Even if he upgrades his PC, reinstalling will be a protracted exercise.

I have been developing software for over forty years (mainframe and DOS 1.x through Windows 7) so I know what Lightroom development might have been thinking when they decided not to support XP. They have saved a few dollars but at the cost of some negative reactions from some users.

After all, .Net 4.0 works on XP SP3 as well as Windows 7, so it is not clear what Windows 7 capabilities cannot be supported under XP.

[Guest]

Jeff & Selmslie, thank you so much for the answers.

Let me describe my use case, maybe the product team can learn something from it.

I am a fine art photographer, I am shooting in big cities, e.g. I am frequently travelling to NYC, Chicago, Houston, etc. Usually I do about 300 pictures on a typical shooting day, but on some days it can be as many as 800. Therefore, I travel with a laptop and process, tag and backup photographs on the same day. Lightroom is a central piece of my workflow - without lightroom it just won't be possible to work through so many pictures.

I have a powerful laptop with a large screen that is 5 years old, it runs XP and it has 4GB of RAM which is its maximum.

Upgrading to Win 7 is not an option for several reasons. I just cannot allow an OS kernel which is 5 times bigger than XP's kernel because I really need this memory for Lighroom and Photoshop and my huge photographs (100 to 200MB PSD files). Besides that, I would need to spend weeks for reinstalling and setting up all my software.

Upgrading the computer is not an option as well. Most of my pictures are vertical, e.g. I will need at least 1000 pixels screen height (my current one has 1050) and a minimum 8GB of RAM.  Quoting such a laptop on dell.com will quickly get  you to well above 1000 bucks, plus second battery, backup device (DVD writer or BluRay), docking station, etc - will be around 2K USD. I cannot do it just for the Lightroom.

At some point in the future I will probably need a higher resolution camera and at that point I will have to upgrade the laptop, because I will produce bigger files. Computers will be more powerful at that time, so there is no sense to upgrade the machine now just for the Lightroom. Until that time I will stay with my XP.

Now, I am using lighroom since its launch back in 2007. I even enjoyed a 1st week discount from adobe, dedicated to "early adopters and active beta testers". 😉

Today  I'm running Lightroom 1.4.1 and it's very unstable with my 40000-pictures library. Sometimes it crashes and sometimes it says "out of memory".

I tried LR 2.0 and it was very slow. Version 3 was supposed to have a huge performance improvement and it does. I have installed 3.6 in demo mode last Friday and it works OK. When  and I click "buy", it gets me to the page selling version 4, which won't run on my XP. Too disappointing. Now you're saying I have to find some reseller that hopefully will be able to sell me an upgrade.

If I'd would do it a couple of weeks ago before lightroom 4 announcement, I would be happy by now with the $80 upgrade via adobe web site. Instead, I have to find some reseller. Well, if I can find a reseller whom I can paypal USD 80 and get a serial number back - I'm OK. If you know one - please suggest. Otherwise, I'll just stay with 1.4.1 until some future time when I'll maybe upgrade the machine.

I just wonder why not just issue a serial number for 3.6 when I already have it installed? Why not make version 4.0 serial number valid for version 3.6?

I worked for Microsoft full time for 4 years, two of them being PM, managing localization of Microsoft Security Essentials (home antivirus) and Forefront corporate antivirus. So I perfectly understand what is test matrix and how much it costs to support an extra OS, so no claims here. I just wonder why I can't use version 4 serial number for 3.6 or continue buying version 3.6 serial from adobe with the same ease as I can do it for 4.0.

Five weeks ago it was possible to upgrade automatically via the web site. But five weeks ago I was too busy preparing for the FotoFest 2012 in Houston. I am telling you so much detail just to make a point that fine art photographers also have time constraints and cannot upgrade software and computers at a schedule dictated by software companies. There at Microsoft we used 'case studies' to describe real customers, their computing routines and habits. I hope that my little case study will help you better understand photographer's needs and constraints.

And I also hope that you'll help me find a simple way to get a valid serial number for my already-installed Lightroom 3.6 (demo more) on XP to convert it to full mode.

Thank you so much,

Gennady

http://www.gennadymeergus.com

[JGColeman]

In regards to the original post, no super-special "warning" is to be expected from Adobe.  A very basic rule of thumb when purchasing any software is to check the system requirements first.  I'll admit that I get lazy sometimes and don't bother to do this, but it's not as if it's the software company's fault!

@OP:  Sure, it sucks that you bought LR4 thinking it would work on Windows XP, only to be severely disappointed.  I can sympathize.  And, sure, this is the first version of Lightroom that doesn't work on XP.

At the same time, its all right there in the publicly-available list of system requirements... nothing was hidden from you.  If you took all of a few minutes to check the requirements, there would've been no surprises at all.  I really don't think that Adobe ought to have to plaster huge warnings all over their LR4-related pages to effectively punch you in the face with the news that LR4 doesn't work on XP.  Software buyers have always been expected to read the system requirements... its a pretty fundamental part of the software-buying process.  That LR used to run on XP until the latest version is really beside the point.  Check the system requirements from now on (it only takes a minute) and I guarantee you'll never have this problem again with any software, even many years into the future.

[Guest]

Clearly an oversight on my part (as well as many others) and Adobe was kind enough to offer me a refund, which I declined as I was able to install it on a Windows 7 machine anyhow.

As others have pointed out, this is the first (and so far, only) editing software that has dropped support for XP. XP will be supported by Microsoft for another 22 months, mainly because Vista was such a disaster, but also because there is still a significant XP user community. As I pointed out earlier, the issue does not seem to be XP as much as it is the 64-bit requirement.

Not everyone is enamored with Lightroom, for a number of reasons.  I don't think this situation calls for the condescending comments I have heard from several Lightroom users.

[JGColeman]

I run LR4 on Windows 7 32-bit... so I'd say it has more to do with Windows XP (at least as far as Windows goes... I don't use Macs).

Indeed, people have gotten quite worked up over this.  I mean, I think it really as to do with the fact that people are so divided over their opinion of operating systems.  For example, I have commonly heard the argument that "Vista was a disaster", as you say.  Not for me... worked just fine... no complaints.  Maybe Vista was indeed a disaster for some, but certainly not all.  I mean, the average Joe or Jane that bought a computer with Vista installed (i.e. the average users that comprise the bulk of the computer-using community) was really pretty indifferent on the issue.

So the moment that somebody says "so-and-so operating system is crappy", some people offer resounding agreements while others sit there scratching their head wondering what was so profoundly bad about it.  And, as with opinions on car manufacturers, for example, people who've had a bad experience with a given operating system have a tendency to vehemently insist that everyone in the world had the same problems.  This, of course, is not the case... so any severely polarized arguments about the quality of an OS are going to generate equally polarized responses.

The real divisive issue here is that, in a world where the average computer arguably becomes a dinosaur in 5 years, there's a significant portion of the population that feels like Windows XP users will clutch at the more-than-a-decade-old OS until somebody finally forcefully pries it from their aging fingers.  I will admit that my own viewpoint lies more along these lines.  And the viewpoint on that side of the argument is that "windows xp users need to move on at some point" and that they are gonna be pissed about it no matter when it happens... so why not just start prying now.  Yes, Windows XP was good n' all, but for many people its getting to a point where its over-stayed its welcome, especially when people that are quite happy with Win7 machines see comments on the Adobe site where people claim that Adobe "ought to be ashamed" for not supporting XP, as if it's some kind of obligatory qualification for any software worth it's salt.  Nonsense!  There is nothing to be ashamed about... that's honestly more than a bit melodramatic.

The people on this side of the argument sort of think," You've been able to use the same OS for 10 years... that, in itself, is a miracle."  How much longer did you really think it would last?

And, sure, I'll admit that that may be a rather insensitive viewpoint that doesn't take into account the requirements of many users which, for this reason or that, still use XP.  But, at the same time, I really feel like this is less about XP being some "super-amazing" operating system and more about people being angry that they might have to upgrade a computer earlier than they preferred in order to use LR4.  Understandable... but also inevitable.  Maybe Adobe could've tried to hold off on dropping XP support for LR4 by disabling menus or the such, but how long is it going to go on for? LR5? LR6?

I imagine that some would try to say that," Adobe should just support XP entirely until Microsoft drops support for XP."  Yet, earlier in this thread, somebody wrote something like, "Just because MS is dropping support for XP doesn't mean its going away."  I mean, there comes a point where it's just unreasonable to not finally upgrade... take your pick between Vista or 7... even Win8 will be out later this year.  You've got no shortage of choices... and if you truly believe that they are all terrible... well, you really need to re-evaluate the situation.  There needs to be some point at which XP users are willing to adopt a "new XP"... either that, or simply accept that their aging choice of OS is going to become more and more of an inconvenience for them with the progressively greater loss of support that will undoubtedly occur over the next few years.

Hell, I've never enjoyed laying down the cash for a new machine... it sucks... and it's expensive.  But, I've also had no choice but to do it a half-dozen times over the past 14 years or so... that's just the nature of the digital beast these days, guys.  It's not Adobe's fault... and, quite honestly, it's not Adobe's problem... not in a mean way... just in a frank and practical sense.

[Guest]

The key here is "...bought a computer with Vista installed."  Many who upgraded from XP to Vista were unsuccessful and ended up returning to XP.

The company where I worked has more than 84,000 employees worldwide and probably half of them already had one or more computers when Vista came out.  Like most other large companies, they looked at Vista and did not find it to be stable enough for corporate use (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista).  Most major corporations with such a large exposure preferred to stay with a stable Windows XP and wait for Windows 7.

In fact, some companies demanded that Microsoft allow them to downgrade their new hardware from Windows 7 to Windows XP because of the expense of having to convert their old hardware (the recession didn't help) and because of their lack of confidence in Microsoft.  This external pressure forced Microsoft to extend support for XP several years beyond their original planned cutoff.

Now there are rumblings about whether Windows 8 will be another Vista experience.  Microsoft may have gotten Windows 7 right and may do the same for Windows 8, but Vista was a nightmare they are still trying to live down.

The down side of this for Adobe is that it has given many of us an incentive to look into other photo editing software.  We are learning that there are indeed lots of other solutions out there, many of them free, that are easier to use and that do not have a lot of extra features (baggage) that some of us will never need.

[CatOne]

Windows XP is 11 years old now.  There are lots of new APIs that are in Vista and 7 and it is WAY MORE WORK to build that functionality into Lightroom if supporting 3 platforms was necessary.

Would you expect to still be using Windows XP 5 years from now?  How long should Adobe be saddled by customers that want to use an OS that hasn't seen active feature development in almost a decade?

Also, most photographers aren't "major corporations" and aren't saddled by legacy IT environments with all sorts of crapware that manage the machines.  Upgrading (or buying a new machine) more frequently than every 5 years is probably a reasonable expectation for folks who buy a new camera that shoots RAW more than every 5 years.

[Hal P Anderson]

It's a dead horse. I suppose that if people want to keep beating it, no harm will be done, but it isn't going to pull the cart anymore.

I'd suggest finding something more fun and profitable to do than to endlessly complain about dropped support for your favourite operating system--support that isn't going to get undropped.

Hal

[JP Hess]

I agree.  It might make you feel better to complain, and to threaten Adobe that you will take your business elsewhere.  But the reality is that it isn't going to do any good.  This thread could go on for months.  If that's the way you want to entertain yourself then go ahead.  It isn't going to change anything in this regard.

[DdeGannes]

I agree with Jim, and I do not think this thread can lead to any further meaningfull discussion. Maybe a moderator could make a decision here!

[daring_Odyssey15A8]

Forget about the OS wars, just let us know where to buy a working license for Lr 3.6 on Win XP!

[web-weaver]

As Adobe doesn't sell Lr 3.6 any more you have to find a 3rd party vendor (Amazon? B&H?).

[RikkFlohr]

Best Buy has copies: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Adobe+Photoshop+Lightroom+3+-+Mac/Windows/1221845.p?id=1218237047831&sku...  only 299.00. You could almost buy a Win 7 Laptop for that!

[DdeGannes]

Amazon has it for US$92. see link.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003739DVY/ref=s9_simh_gw_p65_d0_g65_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd...

[Brett N]

Please see http://forums.adobe.com/message/4131900