14 DAY TRIAL // This one is not so much about Vista but about how does Windows Vista change the way we make music. Music is day by day growing into a software-related thing: not that personal skills and virtuosity would ever be compensated or worse - replaced - by computer programs; it's just that so much software is available today on the world market that making music has became a thing for virtually anyone: you don't need to have a very good ear because pitch-correctors are there for you, should you mess up the rhythms, "no problemo, amigo", the drum-machines are here for you and so on...
Now once Windows Vista came out and most new computers no longer come with XP and the music writers are suddenly facing a big problem: how can they do their jobs with software that doesn't work in Vista? And here I am speaking about very serious music-making, with scores and huge arrangements and the like, not the "boom-chiki-boom" type of softwares.
Two of the world's leading softwares for music composing and arranging, namely Sibelius and Finale have recently announced their new specs for Vista support. So far, Finale and Sibelius are now "Vista compatible" yet Sibelius user will definitely have to turn off the User Account Control (UAC) feature in Windows Vista.
New computers sport PCIe slots for the new generation of soundcards but simply installing these Vista-compatible programs on your new PC won't solve all the problems. As reported by many users, the problems appear even if sound-wise, all things are in perfect order (or soft/hardware producers claim they should be); since computers usually work as a whole, the most reported problems were determined by other Vista-caused conflicts which have eventually made the system unstable and users angry.
Even if both Finale and Sibelius producers have openly declared that they are still working onto making things better and Vista and their software "better friends", no absolute assurance can be spoken of.
Even more, Sibelius has put online a section especially dedicated to the Vista-issues and you can read and search for needed data here. Finale is a bit more reserved even, but here's one of their official statements: "Although our current notation products do not officially support Vista, we have completed limited testing without encountering any significant problems. We look forward to integrating Vista into our standard testing routines in the coming months and expect to officially support Vista with notation software released in the summer of 2007."
As ever and as I guess everybody has advised you so far, try the new software on Vista only after you've backed-up your sensitive data or even have a dual-boot computer. And pray...
