BTZS Plotter Program & Windows 7

[frednewman]

I have been running the BTZS Plotter program on Windows XP and it does run fine on Windows 7. The problem is with the software for the Palm Pilot which does not run on Windows 7. I have been emailing the programer that did the Windows version of Plotter and he suggested:

"If you have Windows 7 Pro or above, you can download and install
something called XP mode for free. Here are some details:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/get-started.aspx

It takes some work but it's pretty straightforward. Once it's install
you can use it to run programs that would normally only run under XP
correctly. This includes installing USB devices that require XP.
Installing devices gets a little more complicated but basically, you
tell XP to use the particular USB device and then you start it up, which
launches a full XP OS running in its own window. At that point you can
install whatever drivers you need into this special virtual XP OS. Once
that is done, when you run the programs that need those devices, it just
launches the virtual XP and works. It's not guaranteed to work with all
USB devices but it works for most I think.

Here is some specific info on using the Palm software with XP mode. It
looks like there are some hitches but it seems to work for these folks.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprovirt/thread/01ee
8887-b2d9-4001-bcfd-c4e0579d3aa1

It's very similar to the virtual Windows programs that people use on
Macs. This is how Phil ran WinPlotter, using a virtual Windows on his
Mac. Now MS has something specifically for Windows to run older XP-only
software."

You might give this a try. It is an incredible program. I have been using this program since it came out and have done hundreds of film and paper tests.

Phil Davis was very happy running virtual PC on his MAC. Whenever I had visited Phil and I would help him enter test data and he was would just switch operating systems and continue working. To this day I'm glad he decided to use the 21 step - step tablet and not the 31 step one - that would mean entering another 50 data entries for each film test - 105 data entries was enough for me.

Fred Newman

 

[juan]

The Palm desktop software I use says it will work on 64-bit systems via bluetooth. My bluetooth transmitter does not work on 64-bits, and I have not bought one to try this. At present, I'm keeping an old computer running XP mainly to import BTZS data. Thanks for the link - I'll try it out. I'd hate to lose the Palm program - it's much more convenient than writing the data down in a notebook and using the BTZS slider to figure it out.
juan

 

[jgjbowen]

Fred,

thanks for the information

 

[Mahler_one]

Fred: Another way to proceed would be to simply keep your old computer on hand ( running XP ) for use with BTZS and other programs. I understand that such might be a luxury, but OTOH, computer technology moves so rapidly that one's older computer would most likely be "good" for little else other than running certain programs that might not run on Windows 7. After all, to run subsequent operating systems will take more and more hard disc space and RAM and many of us are "stuck" in older computers that do not have an inexpensive up grade path. The price of new computers has become so inexpensive that it might make little sense to even think about up grading one's older computer running XP. Simply a thought.

Fred: Will the ExpoDev program run on the newer Palm operating systems?