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POS Receipt Printer and 64-Bit Vista

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    POS Receipt Printer and 64-Bit Vista

    Just a quick note to share a recent experience.

    Some of our customers are getting Vista 64-bit O/S on their new PCs. Many of them use a Star 500 series USB receipt printer. Turns out that they don't work under 64-bit Vista.

    When you try and add a printer using the 32-bit print driver you get a message that the driver isn't compatible.

    Back down to 32-bit Vista and all is well.

    Problem is that Star (among others) hasn't released a 64-bit driver yet.

    We're telling our clients to back down to 32-bit Vista (at a cost of about $200 a crack). And as other people elsewhere have pointed out, XP Service Pack 3 is still the best Windows O/S.

    Best wishes,
    Mel Thompson

    #2
    Re: POS Receipt Printer and 64-Bit Vista

    Originally posted by Mel Thompson View Post
    Just a quick note to share a recent experience.

    Some of our customers are getting Vista 64-bit O/S on their new PCs. Many of them use a Star 500 series USB receipt printer. Turns out that they don't work under 64-bit Vista.

    When you try and add a printer using the 32-bit print driver you get a message that the driver isn't compatible.

    Back down to 32-bit Vista and all is well.

    Problem is that Star (among others) hasn't released a 64-bit driver yet.

    We're telling our clients to back down to 32-bit Vista (at a cost of about $200 a crack). And as other people elsewhere have pointed out, XP Service Pack 3 is still the best Windows O/S.

    Best wishes,
    Mel Thompson
    There are a number of issues that need to be considered before moving to 64 bit OS.

    My needs are a little different and I run Win 7 (32 bit) in a Parallels VM on a Macbook Pro. The 64 bit of Win 7 will not run in Parallels VM or VMware's Fusion.

    Not a big deal because in looking at various benchmarks, it will be some time before we see any 64 bit apps taking advantage of the 64 bit OS; and even then, the speed difference may be negligible in many cases.

    Not sure about staying with WinXP after running Win7 for a short time. It's what Vista should have been and I'd never go back to Vista, let a lone WinXP. BTW, there is a free download for the professional version and above of Win7 that allows you to run XPM (a virtual machine version of WinXP - free download) to run those apps that won't run in Vista/Win7. Tested it and it works! We happen to have an app that won't run in Vista - MCL for creating apps on handheld computers.
    John J. Fatte', CPA
    PRO-WARE, LLC
    Omaha, NE 68137

    Comment


      #3
      Re: POS Receipt Printer and 64-Bit Vista

      Originally posted by Mel Thompson View Post
      Just a quick note to share a recent experience.

      Some of our customers are getting Vista 64-bit O/S on their new PCs. Many of them use a Star 500 series USB receipt printer. Turns out that they don't work under 64-bit Vista.

      When you try and add a printer using the 32-bit print driver you get a message that the driver isn't compatible.

      Back down to 32-bit Vista and all is well.

      Problem is that Star (among others) hasn't released a 64-bit driver yet.

      We're telling our clients to back down to 32-bit Vista (at a cost of about $200 a crack). And as other people elsewhere have pointed out, XP Service Pack 3 is still the best Windows O/S.

      Best wishes,
      Mel Thompson
      Good information Mel...thanks. The case we discussed in XP pro so no 64 bit problems on that one
      John

      Comment


        #4
        Re: POS Receipt Printer and 64-Bit Vista

        My comments about Vista are based primarily from the view of our users. Most of our users find Vista to be clumsy, annoying (having to turn off UAC, for example) and hard to use beyond just launching programs.

        Windows 7, while its interface seems to be cleaner than Vista, is from everything I've read Vista with lipstick. It's still a resource hog and still slower than XP.

        The XPM download for Windows 7 does give the possibility of Microsoft being able to clean the old deadwood out of Vista/Win 7 by not having to worry about backwards compatibility issues. This can only be good, if and when it happens.

        Eventually software will be able to take advantage of 64-bit cpu's, but for the present it presents additional complications for little added value to the average user.

        This is not to denigrate your comments - Win 7 from an interface PoV certainly seems to be cleaner than Vista and therefore is an improvement. When we get another PC this late Fall we'll get Win 7 on it, if for no other reason than to make sure all the features of our Alpha apps will run under it.

        By the way - has anyone on the Forum worked with OPOS? It looks to be a pain to use, but makes it much easier to support just about any pos hardware imaginable.

        Best wishes,
        Mel Thompson

        Comment


          #5
          Re: POS Receipt Printer and 64-Bit Vista

          Originally posted by Mel Thompson View Post
          My comments about Vista are based primarily from the view of our users. Most of our users find Vista to be clumsy, annoying (having to turn off UAC, for example) and hard to use beyond just launching programs.

          Windows 7, while its interface seems to be cleaner than Vista, is from everything I've read Vista with lipstick. It's still a resource hog and still slower than XP.

          The XPM download for Windows 7 does give the possibility of Microsoft being able to clean the old deadwood out of Vista/Win 7 by not having to worry about backwards compatibility issues. This can only be good, if and when it happens.

          Eventually software will be able to take advantage of 64-bit cpu's, but for the present it presents additional complications for little added value to the average user.

          This is not to denigrate your comments - Win 7 from an interface PoV certainly seems to be cleaner than Vista and therefore is an improvement. When we get another PC this late Fall we'll get Win 7 on it, if for no other reason than to make sure all the features of our Alpha apps will run under it.

          By the way - has anyone on the Forum worked with OPOS? It looks to be a pain to use, but makes it much easier to support just about any pos hardware imaginable.

          Best wishes,
          Mel Thompson
          Never heard of OPOS but it sounds interesting.

          All good points and I'm sure Win7 is MS's attempt to demonstrate that they can make a worthy successor to WinXP - still considered by many to be the best OS Microsoft has ever delivered.

          Yes, there is a lot of eye candy in Win7, but what really sets it apart is speed INMHO. When I first started using Vista, I quickly backed off because it was so unbelievably slow - and as you say - a real system hog. After service pack 1, I gave it another try and found it much improved to the point that I could start using it.

          Win7 is a step up from Vista. Not sure if it's as fast as WinXP, but certainly very close. There are some things that I would definitely say are much faster, such as copying large data files from one drive to another.

          Obviously, MS wants to get those die hard XP users to upgrade to Win7 and hence the XPM for free was created. However, I really think they should have lowered the price by at least half of what it is if they really wanted them to upgrade.

          Mel, just curious... is your POS of sale system written for a specific customer or is adaptable to any type of retail operation?
          John J. Fatte', CPA
          PRO-WARE, LLC
          Omaha, NE 68137

          Comment


            #6
            Re: POS Receipt Printer and 64-Bit Vista

            I am glad to hear that Win 7 seems faster than its Vista predecessors. All too often, and especially working with large files, it has been like watching paint dry.

            Our POS system is highly customized for a specific marketplace. What makes the target market unique is that the retailers carry a mix of collectibles, perpetual inventory product and one-time product. One-time products are typically 25%-65% of total store volume depending on relative size... bigger stores rely less on this product relative to other merchandise.

            The one-time products(unique title/issue combinations) are pre-ordered on a non-returnable basis typically two months prior to publication. When ordering retailers need to be able to see all the previous sales history for the series, as opposed to a simple time-based history as is the case for perpetual inventory products.

            Then there are customer pre-orders, with and without discounts; plus all the normal stuff like layaways, trade credit, etc.

            On the other hand, the market is too weird and relatively small for Microsoft to bother with.

            Best wishes,
            Mel Thompson

            Comment

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