Someone asked for it, so here is.  A blog on Windows Vista and what impact it has with RentMaster.

Windows Vista has been rather problematic for software developers in general.  Microsoft decided to make Windows Vista a lot more secure to stop hackers and malware and spyware and viruses from attacking your computer.  In the process of doing this they changed a lot of things that go on under the covers in Windows, which meant that a lot of software that used to work fine in Windows XP or earlier did not work in Windows Vista.  Some would argue that Microsoft made a mistake, while others would say that it had to be done to make windows more secure.  Personally I am still using Windows XP as I prefer it over Vista at the moment.

Fortunately the impact on RentMaster software has only been small as follows

- There is a separate install package for Vista.  Vista comes with a lot of the files required by RentMaster preinstalled.  (The same applies to Windows XP actually).  The problem with Vista is that Vista does not like you over-writing those files, even if the file you are writing is exactly the same as the file it already has.  So the Vista installation package has removed the files which it already has, making it a smaller download.  The core RentMaster software is 100% identical to the windows XP version.

- When running the install, you need to run it as an administrator.  This is because you are installing files to the hard drive, and non-administrators are not allowed to do that.  Instructions here www.rentmaster.co.nz/installvista.aspx

- You can not do a database compaction if you are running RentMaster as a non-administrator.  If you try to do a database compaction and it detects you are not an administrator, it will tell you it cant be done.  This is a limitation of the Microsoft Access Database Engine, which I can not change.  To run the software as an administrator, instead of clicking the RentMaster icon to run it, right click the icon instead and choose Run as Administrator.  This is similar to the instructions above on installing the Vista version.

- The tutorials and demos require Adobe Flash Player to be installed on your computer.  In Windows XP and earlier if you tried to run a demo the system would tell you that you need to install the Flash player if you dont already have it.  In Windows Vista it just keeps quiet and the demo does not run.  In this case you will need to go to www.adobe.com and download the Flash Player manually, then try the demos again.  (Actually I suspect Internet Explorer version 7 might do the same thing in Windows XP, but I am not 100% sure on that).

So as you can see the known limitations are quite minor and all have work-arounds.  So really RentMaster can run just as well in Vista as it can in any other version of windows.