Windows 7

i haven't heard anything. i still run the antique XP. :)

Yeah, I skipped Vista too. I d/led the Win7 RC, and it runs significantly better than Vista on my old laptop (A Dell 5100). I figured I would give it a go, and $50 is the price of a game. If it ends up being as bad as Vista, I'm not out that much.

that's interesting that Win7 is running better than Vista. if that's the case and Windows 7 is well adopted, maybe Altera and other companies will be quick to support it.

I have been running Quartus on Windows Vista without any problems. I don't think there are many significant under the hood changes from Vista to Windows 7 compared to XP vs Vista. I suspect the most recent versions of Quartus will work fine in Windows 7. Although, as I have not tried it and I have not heard from anyone else who has either, I can't be sure.

I'm not shilling for MS, but Win7 is significantly faster on my system than Vista. I tried Vista for a couple of months, but every time I tried to do real work, the system either got in my way, or crashed. I finally dropped back to XP. So far, the Win7 RC has been fairly stable, and fairly quick. It's still not as fast as XP on this machine, but I know eventually XP will "die" in terms of support.

Update: I can get Quartus II V9.0 sp2 running under Windows 7 x64 just fine, but USB-Blaster is not yet supported (drivers won't work, as in Windows Vista x64), so if you are dependant on the USB-Blaster, you're better off to wait until Altera supports Windows x64 with signed drivers, or hit F8 and disable driver signing necessity on each system boot.

And what about Win7 x32? Do you think USB-Blaster would work?

It works fine under Vista x32 and internally there isn't that much difference I think between the two, at least driver wise, so most of the Vista drivers will work on 7 also, including the USB-Blaster. But I'd be lying if I'd say it works 100% guaranteed, since I cannot verify it, because right now I am the only one with Vista x32 and Windows 7 x64 at work, the rest is still running XP.

Does anyone know how to install a USB "Software Guard" under Windows 7 x32?

From what I gather from altera.com, software guard is supported under Vista, so it should work under 7. However, since QII V8.0 software guards aren't supported anymore and I don't think QII versions smaller V8.0 will be supported under 7, so I guess you should try to get a NIC license or floating license from Altera support instead. Or is the dongle a lifetime license?