CF-19 and Windows 7

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JAYMZ
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CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by JAYMZ »

Before embarking on an experiment I would like to poll the group and see if anyone has any thoughts that I may have missed...

My work laptop is a CF-19 that is a couple years old but was only fired up when it was assigned to me at my new job... We are doing some "I wonder what would happen if" with some things at work and testing various applications we have with Windows 7. This will include our tablet PCR (Pre-Hospital Care Report) applications for ambulance crews on the road.

First thing is, will Windows 7 work on the CF-19? Has anyone tried it? I found a site to get any drivers that I may need, but like I said I don't want to have to turn this into a lesson in futility if I don't have to. I can't afford to have my laptop be down for an extended period of time.
JAYMZ

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jmr061
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by jmr061 »

I put Windows 7 on my CF18 for a short time and had no issues with it.

I only went back to XP because of CPS issues.

Jason
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bezking
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by bezking »

JAYMZ wrote:Before embarking on an experiment I would like to poll the group and see if anyone has any thoughts that I may have missed...

My work laptop is a CF-19 that is a couple years old but was only fired up when it was assigned to me at my new job... We are doing some "I wonder what would happen if" with some things at work and testing various applications we have with Windows 7. This will include our tablet PCR (Pre-Hospital Care Report) applications for ambulance crews on the road.

First thing is, will Windows 7 work on the CF-19? Has anyone tried it? I found a site to get any drivers that I may need, but like I said I don't want to have to turn this into a lesson in futility if I don't have to. I can't afford to have my laptop be down for an extended period of time.
There is a definite difference between "will it work" and "will it be usable." Post the specs for the CF-19 and we can help make that determination. 8)
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JAYMZ
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by JAYMZ »

bezking wrote:
JAYMZ wrote:SNIP....
There is a definite difference between "will it work" and "will it be usable." Post the specs for the CF-19 and we can help make that determination. 8)
Specs wise it should work; I am looking for personal experiences, not useless "post your specs" replies. That being said, thank you Jason for the feedback. I am going to find out one way or another on Monday, but hoping to have a leg up on any anticipated issues.
JAYMZ

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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by jmr061 »

If you partition the HD you can install WIN7 and it will come up with dual boot. Then you don't lose your XP stuff.

Jason
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JAYMZ
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by JAYMZ »

I already Ghosted the drive yesterday and have several spare hard drives hanging around that I can image to if I need/want to as well. It is all an experiment to see what works and what doesn't. We are a beta facility for one of our vendors and we are getting some new versions of things to test out in a couple of weeks so, we'll put it all through its paces with Win7. I should be able to get to all that sometime into November though, got 3 other projects that are wrapping up between now and the end of the month to concentrate more energy on first.

Thx again Jason.
JAYMZ

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smokeybehr
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by smokeybehr »

All I have to say is:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/

Several guys have done it. It takes a LOT of tweaking and twiddling to get it just right.
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Jim202
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by Jim202 »

Do you have a compelling reason why your trying to go to Win7? In most cases for what the radio world deals
with, the Win7 is more of a problem than what you think it may be worth. Applications are struggling to play catch
up with the program. Printer drivers have not moved to the catch up lane yet.

Jim
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JAYMZ
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by JAYMZ »

I saw that site and it was a lot more trouble than it seemed to be worth... so it was not a viable option for this scenario. If it was just my computer and I was in a tinkering mood, then hell yeah I would be doing everything I could even if it took 6 months.

And as far as having a compelling reason... mainly because of the fact that my job is a beta test ground for one of our software vendors, and there is a new version coming out soon that is supposed to be supporting Windows 7 so we were going to run it all through its paces and see what we could break and what not to find the bugs. Fortunately, it all has nothing to do with radios. That being said, on my personal laptop I have some Motorola and Kenwood programming software for radios that I have and haven't had a lick of trouble. And the printer bit is a non-issue for me since I don't own a printer. And any printers that we have at work all work fine on the three Windows 7 machines we have. So, I guess the compelling reason is mainly to be somewhat proactive so when there comes a day when we may HAVE to use Windows 7 on all of our machines, we know what the "gotchas" are ahead of time. Boy Scout motto is "Be Prepared", a little research and testing now can probably save a lot of headaches and complaints down the road.
JAYMZ

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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by ASTROMODAT »

We have used CF-19's for the past year, but have recently gone to new PC's that have Windows 7 installed, and no serial port, of course. We are in the process of converting from XTL5000 and XTS5000 radios to APX7000/7500 radios. One thing for sure is that the new APX CPS runs really fast on our new machines with Windows 7. On the CF-19 with XP,the APX CPS was slower than a dog (probably due to the slower/older processor in the CF-19), and the APX Tuner software was horribly unstable. With Windows 7 and the new laptops, the APX CPS andTuner software runs like a champ!
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tuckerm
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by tuckerm »

Why don't you guys use Virtual Machines? I run all my radio programming stuff in a Windows XP VM on top of my Windows 7 work computer.

VMware offers free tools for this stuff and I'd be willing to help you guys get set up.
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tvsjr
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by tvsjr »

tuckerm wrote:Why don't you guys use Virtual Machines? I run all my radio programming stuff in a Windows XP VM on top of my Windows 7 work computer.

VMware offers free tools for this stuff and I'd be willing to help you guys get set up.
If I was going to run XP on top of 7, I'd simply use XP Mode which is a VPC VM that can integrate with 7 (a la Parallels).

However, VMs do burn more resources, which is a real problem on an already constrained box, and they add another operating system to maintain, patch, scan for virii, etc. They are great for some situations, but a native app is almost always preferable.
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tuckerm
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by tuckerm »

tvsjr wrote:
tuckerm wrote:Why don't you guys use Virtual Machines? I run all my radio programming stuff in a Windows XP VM on top of my Windows 7 work computer.

VMware offers free tools for this stuff and I'd be willing to help you guys get set up.
If I was going to run XP on top of 7, I'd simply use XP Mode which is a VPC VM that can integrate with 7 (a la Parallels).

However, VMs do burn more resources, which is a real problem on an already constrained box, and they add another operating system to maintain, patch, scan for virii, etc. They are great for some situations, but a native app is almost always preferable.
VMs don't take up that much more resources. In fact, I have an XP VM with 512MBs of RAM and one processor. ( My laptop has 4GBs of Ram, Dual Cores). I hardly notice it's running...even on my slower machines I hardly notice it's running.

The biggest difference between "XP MODE" and VMs is I can build up my VM with all my softwares, patches, etc and take a snapshot of it. That way, if something happens to it, I simply revert back to the snapshot. I can also copy that VM to other machines, eg: I don't have to have it sitting on my LT, I can bring it up on my server, etc.
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tvsjr
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by tvsjr »

Disclaimer: I currently care and feed dozens of VMs running on VPC 2007, VMware vSphere (ESX/ESXi), VMware Server/Workstation, etc. Everything from workstation VMs on my laptop, to two ESXi boxes at home, to enterprise-class vSphere deployments in tier-1 data centers.

Yes, VMs running in a host operating system take up that much more resources, in that each VM linearly adds its requirements to the overall system requirements.

Let's say I'm running a Windows 7 machine that has 2GB RAM and dual cores. Let's say the workload on this physical system (OS + software) needs 1GB RAM and 1 core. I fire up an XP VM (XP Mode under VPC, VMWare Workstation, whatever) which needs 512MB RAM and a core for its workload. Now, my system requirements are 1.5GB and 2 cores. Fire up a third VM, and the requirements increase more.

A VM is just that - a virtual machine. You still have to give it all the resources it would need if it were running on a physical device rather than a virtual one. And that VM still has all the same security risks - it should run antivirus, be patched, etc. just like any other device.

Now let's say I was running a Windows 7 laptop, an XP VM, and ASTRO 25 CPS R14... then I upgraded to ASTRO25 CPS R15 running natively in Windows 7, with no VM. My system requirements drop by the amount that XP needed (plus some overhead), and the native version runs that much quicker.

Now, if you have a hot laptop or desktop and you aren't doing much with it, then running a VM isn't a significant hit. However, that's not everyone. Toughbooks are, by nature, older and more tested hardware. They aren't usually the hottest boxes out there. Or, you have people like me, who need every ounce of memory and processor power they can get (running large databases locally, serious development/compilation efforts, data analysis/ETL, etc.) that don't want the hit of yet another box running on my box.

For desktop use, since you have an underlying full-featured host operating system, if you can run the app there it's going to be more efficient, burn fewer resources, and run faster. Running it in a VM is great if you need the features a VM provides - the ability to run a different operating system, the ability to create a second "virtual" computer (great for testing distributed applications), the ability to run in a "sandbox", etc. If you don't require those features, VMs are a waste.

"XP Mode" actually is a VM all its own, running inside of Virtual PC 2007. If you start VPC 2007 from the menu, you can see the XP desktop, run Windows Update, install AV, associate USB devices with the guest (which actually works for programming purposes), etc. The Parallels-style integration is just a nice feature... there's still a complete XP VM running out there in the background. And yes, you can take snapshots, back the volume file up, move it around, etc. just like any other VM.
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by JAYMZ »

tvsjr, Going off topic in my own topic... You have any issues with a P2V of a SQL server at all? We did one last week and it corrupted all of the data.. even thought we were told that it should all just port right over. We got it working by just creating a brand new machine, installing SQL and doing a backup and restore of the database. So.. it's working, but we are a little comnused as to why it bolloxed up our data. Table names were messed up, data was messed up... but everything else was just fine.
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tvsjr
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Re: CF-19 and Windows 7

Post by tvsjr »

Dunno... I've never done SQL Server on a VM. There are some things that deserve a physical box, and that's one of them!

I've done P2V of MySQL boxen with no challenges, however...
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