Calibre 4 for Windows 7 seems fine, why front page says no?

[Peter Blaise]

Calibre 4 for Windows 7 seems fine, why front page says no?

I've been updating version to version and never noticed that the front page says Calibre 4 is for Windows 8 and 10, but to use Calibre 3 for Windows 7.

Why, when Celibre 4 works fine on Windows 7?

Thanks for any insight ( I could not find any thread explaining this when searching here, so if someone knows of an existing thread, or a way to find it, please share - thanks ).
.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Peter Blaise

Calibre 4 for Windows 7 seems fine, why front page says no?

I've been updating version to version and never noticed that the front page says Calibre 4 is for Windows 8 and 10, but to use Calibre 3 for Windows 7.

Why, when Celibre 4 works fine on Windows 7?

Thanks for any insight ( I could not find any thread explaining this when searching here, so if someone knows of an existing thread, or a way to find it, please share - thanks ).
.

If you looked at the calibre thread, you would have found quite a few mentions of issues with calibre 4 and Windows 7 video drivers. A couple of threads to take a look at: Having trouble with Calibre not opening, Viewer displays nothing when loading any book from my database, Calibre on Windows 7, almost endlessly etc. BTW, this is not unique to Windows 7 as several Linux users have reported similar issues along with at least one Windows 10 user whose problem went away when he updated his video driver. As phrased by diapdealer, "I use Arch Linux, and the cutoff age of video-cards that are falling into legacy-driver support is getting much closer to yesterday than it is to last year".

I would suggest working on your Google-fu.

[Peter Blaise]

Thanks David SA ... bbuutt ... that's any OS video drivers and Google search, not Windows 7 and Calibre Mobilread search in these threads.

So, the caveat against Windows 7 on the front page of Calibre download is because ... ?!?

Oh, nevermind.

There is no problem with Calibre 4 on Windows 7.

So, if you're reading, Kovid Goyal, please change the front page downloads to say:

IF you are having video problems displaying the Calibre Ebook program,
THEN please revert to the prior v3 release that uses older video calls.

... now to see how it loads in Windows XP ...
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[kovidgoyal]

Umm No. I dont support end-of-lifed operating systems. If it works for you on windows 7, good for you, enjoy.

[Peter Blaise]

- "... Umm No. I dont support end-of-lifed operating systems. If it works for you on windows 7, good for you, enjoy ..." - [ Kovid Goyal creator of calibre ]

Hi Kovid Goyal, so pleased to meet you, and thank you for your unique, inventive, savvy, and powerful work creating your ebook and library management program.

- - - - -

Ahh, your comment explains part of why the Calibre Ebook download_windows64 page mentions only Windows 8 and 10 as currently supported by Calibre v4.

I imagine that Calibre v3 was the release that was last intentionally supportive of Windows 7.

However, Windows 7 is still supported ( by Microsoft, I presume you mean ), up to January 2023 as of this moment, even though Microsoft marketing had a big "... please buy Windows 10 ..." hullabaloo in January 2020.

Yet, Calibre v4 is from October 2019, when Windows 7 was unquestionably extant, still being sold new by Dell, Microcenter, and others.

And yet, Microsoft declared Windows 8 unsupported way back in January 2016.

You mean Windows 8.1, right?

May I suggest a simple statement like:

"... Calibre Ebook is tested on, and supports, Microsoft-publicly-supported Windows versions ( at the moment, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 ), so if the current Calibre Ebook v4 program misbehaves for you on another version of Windows, you can downgrade to a prior version of Calibre Ebook v3 without risk to your library by downloading from here: https://download.calibre-ebook.com/ ..."

The challenge may be to not get entangled in Microsoft's marketing hooey, and insure the best empowerment of Calibre Ebook users.

Calibre Ebook v4 works no problem on Windows 7.

- - - - -

The second issue I had was the lack of search sophistication here at MobilRead.com forums for Calibre, where it ignored the [ 3 ] in a [ Calibre 3 ] search, and it ignored the [ 7 ] in a [ Windows 7 ] search, then it also ignored the words [ v3 ] and [ v7 ], hence my being unable to find any mention of any transition supporting why the Calibre download page directed Windows 7 users to Calibre v3 instead of the current Calibre v4.

I'm grateful to attentive readers like [ David DNSB Bibliophagist ] who suggested that perhaps prior threads about video card incompatibilities were the source of misbehaviors under Windows 7.

But the information was not findable here in the forums without an attentive reader/chaperone like [ David DNSB Bibliophagist ] - thanks again.

I've never experience display misbehavior from Calibre.

I have never witnessed any misbehavior of any Calibre version under any version of Windows, by the way.

- - - - -

So, that's it, I'm cool, carry on.

Thanks for exploring this and sharing.
.

[Quoth]

There is no official RETAIL / ordinary end user support of Win7 since January 2020.
It's not been officially sold since the end of October 2016 (Professional OEM only)
Microsoft ended the sale of new retail copies of Windows 7 in October 2014, and the sale of new OEM licenses for Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate ended on October 31, 2014. That's FIVE AND A HALF years ago.
Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015.

Certainly you can still buy licences and still PAY for some sort of support. I doubt many programmers are continuing support. Certainly not smaller outfits.

So, as Kovid says, enjoy it working, but don't expect him to support Windows 7. Older versions of Mac OS and Linux are not supported either, for various reasons. Though with Linux an ungrade is free (though one 2005 laptop I have doesn't work with graphics except in a generic X server mode after upgrade from Ubuntu 9!) and some old Linux you can update parts.

[JSWolf]

@Peter Blaise while you are correct about Calibre 4 being released while Windows 7 was still supported, since then, the version of QTwebkit used in Calibre 4.10 has changed to a newer version that brings it's own issues. Where Calibre 4 worked, Calibre 4.10+ may not as we've seen from some posts.

If a computer running Windows 7 doesn't run Windows 7 Calibre 4, then the only thing one can try is to buy a current video card that has a Windows 7 driver and hope it works. If it still doesn't work, then the next step is to upgrade to Windows 10.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

So, as Kovid says, enjoy it working, but don't expect him to support Windows 7. Older versions of Mac OS and Linux are not supported either, for various reasons. Though with Linux an ungrade is free (though one 2005 laptop I have doesn't work with graphics except in a generic X server mode after upgrade from Ubuntu 9!) and some old Linux you can update parts

An upgrade to Windows 10 is still free. I did so earlier this year.

You can get the free upgrade here. This is direct from Microsoft.