A few days ago, I wrote about 64bit Vista and losing the use of my scanner, an aging yet still cute Canon Lide 30. Well, after having used my 32bit Vista installation since November 17, 2006, I have finally thrown in the towel.

It was taking longer than it should to boot up, and the Windows Update feed for the SP2 RC was really playing up. I decided to try out 64bit Vista, ensuring that I put it through the WU SP2 saga before making a decision. Everything worked as it should. I also solved the ‘external drive’ issue, so here I am, typing in Windows Live writer with Vista 64bit as the base OS.

I am still frustrated that Canon never released 64bit drivers for what must have been one of the most popular scanners ever, but such is life. I will just have to have a 32bit OS on one of the drives to control it until such time as I feel the need to get a Vista 64/Win 7 64 compatible model. I have probably lost the use of a cheap Saitek Joystick and gamepad too. I am not much of a gamer and haven’t been bothered to see if either will still work. I use my scanner about the same as the game hardware, but that is not the point. My Lide 30 is half useful, where my gaming hardware just makes me look totally inept.. :-)

Having made the leap to 64bit, I will most likely stay with it if only because IE seems to load pages way faster than its 32bit equivalent. It’s not a case of me being slow to accept new stuff so much as my intense dislike of ‘waste’. The one good thing to come out of it is having the chance to clear out some of the junk that I have been storing for so long.

In the next couple of days, I will wipe out the old install and use Acronis Disk Director to drop this installation into it’s place, making sure that I have everything I need from the old one. Actually, before I dump it, I might just uninstall everything but the OS and try to work out why it became so sticky at times. It served me well, and I do so hate initiating reformat on a working OS. I have only just gotten over the loss of my XP installation.. :-(