XP on 3 desktops and 3 laptops, Vista on one laptop. I dread having to move to another OS because some of the software I use simply will not work on anything other than XP without a seriously expensive upgrade. I use a package to process noise meter data, NorReview, that cost me £2500 a few years ago. It won't work under Vista or 7 and to upgrade to the latest version which will work will cost me £600. The other noise meter package I use will only work under Test Mode in Windows 7, which concerns me. None of my noise meters can download under anything other than a Microsoft OS as the drivers are very specific, so it's no use me even contemplating a Mac or Linux.
I also have an Excel spreadsheet installed that behaves somewhat bizarrely, it won't run under Vista or 7 (I think!), but will only run under XP on some machines and not others. Can't for the life of me work out why and there's no support for it any more. If anyone wants to try it and let me know if it works on their machine and let me know if they are running XP, Vista or Windows 7 and which version of Excel, I'd be very grateful. It's a niche application for calculating the internal noise levels and reverberation times of rooms based on the constructional details and the external noise level, produced by the Building Research Establishment some years ago for use in respect of new schools. It obviously uses macros so you need to allow them, but it's a safe source. The link to the BRE page is
here and to the zip file is
here. If you have any interest in acoustics it's a useful and interesting tool. I rely on it to calculate noise levels in rooms affected by traffic noise, which means I live in terror of the pc that runs it deciding to quit!
Gordon
