Windows 10 is coming… What do Venus 1500 V4 customers need to know?

Microsoft recently announced a July 29, 2015, release date for the Windows 10 Operating System. For those of you using Windows 7 or 8.1, there will be no charge from Microsoft to upgrade, but before you do so, please read the following information about how this may affect Venus 1500 V4 users!

Daktronics strives to be the industry leader in control software and to lead with innovation in both our displays and control solutions. To make sure that our customers have the best available software, Daktronics has developed a new software system that will be released in the fall of 2015.

Due to the new software system that will be launched soon, the continued development on Venus 1500 V4 software has been limited. Because of this, the release of Windows 10 may be a challenge for our Venus 1500 V4 software systems users.

We have found that the Venus 1500 V4 software is able to install on a Windows 10 operating system, and our software engineering team has not experienced any notable inconveniences. However, Daktronics will not be redesigning our current Venus 1500 V4 software to be compatible with Windows 10, nor will the software be fully tested on this new operating system.

You are probably asking yourself, what does this mean for me? What are my options? What can I do now?

For right now, here is what you can do:

1. Stay in your current Windows Operating System and continue to use Venus 1500 V4 as you are today.
2. Update to Windows 10 and use Venus 1500 V4 as you always have. Daktronics will continue to fully support Venus 1500 V4 with the following recommended Microsoft operating systems:  XP, Vista, Windows 7 and 8.

As noted above, Windows 10 users may continue to use Venus 1500 V4; however, this operating system has not been tested for use as an approved operating system. As such, customer support will be limited to operations support such as how-to, importing graphics, scheduling and playlist features, etc…

If you are using a Daktronics control software other than Venus 1500 V4, please read the following blog article from The Control Panel for information on those products: 

Windows 10 Notice – What Do Live Events And Spectaculars Customers Need To Know?

As always, thanks for reading! Please let us know if there’s anything you would like to see us write about. See you next week!