Installing LabVIEW Professional with LabVIEW CE

[RTSLVU]

I heed to take some work home and have LabVIEW Community Edition installed on my home computer.

With NIPM being such a P.O.S. I an worried about installing LabVIEW Professional on the same computer. Should I completely remove LabVIEW CE before I install LabVIEW Professional?

[Gregory]

You can make a virtual machine for free using VirtualBox and the image from Microsoft. It will be like installing on a fresh PC and won't mess up your home PC if something goes wrong.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/

[Bob_Schor]

I, personally, wouldn't attempt it, for several reasons:

1. It is tricky enough having, say, LabVIEW 2019 (your "main development environment") and LabVIEW 2020 (so you can "try out the latest features", or, in my case, "view VIs that users post on the LabVIEW Forums), on the same PC.  You run a significant risk of open an VI in the "wrong" LabVIEW Version -- if the Version is too old, LabVIEW will sneer and say "Dummy, you need Version XYZZY", while if the Version is newer, and you mistakenly save the VI, you no longer can open it in the original Version.
2. I have no idea how, or even if, NI keep Community Edition separated from Regular Licensed Edition.  I can imagine nightmares.
3. You almost certainly would need separate VCS Repositories for "Work" and "Play" LabVIEW development (forgive the frivolous names, but it's easier to type).

Several suggestions (which I use, in fact):

• Get a Work Laptop and bring it home when you need to do "Work" at home.  You should be able to justify it to your employer.  [I have such a machine -- during these times of CoVID, it spends a lot of time in my basement Home Office].
• Run the "odd" LabVIEW in a Virtual Machine.  I have a VM I call "LabVIEW 2020" which has LabVIEW 2019 and LabVIEW 2020 (I wanted, in part, to test installing 2020 "on top of" an existing LabVIEW installation).  Learned some Sad Facts about the myRIO Software Toolkit 2020 (it doesn't seem to exist!).  As a matter of fact, I also have a VM called "Community Edition", which has (you guessed it!) LabVIEW 2020 Community Edition.  I confess I've done almost nothing with this, as I've been running a licensed LabVIEW Professional on my Home Machine.
• See if you can "extend" your Professional License to cover your Home Machine, allowing you to remove Community Edition and replace it with a "Licensed for Work" Version.  [This is probably easier in an Academic environment ...].
• Talk to NI -- they might have a "Creative" suggestion.

Bob Schor

[RTSLVU]

Honestly I would love to be able to take my work laptop home and use it, but due to "corporate security policies" I am not allowed to install anything, including LabVIEW drivers. 

My work laptop is literally nothing more than a $1600 email terminal.

[Hooovahh]

Just a minor thing.  I've seen and heard people from NI specifically say that they don't want LabVIEW Community Edition to be abbreviated CE, and want it fully spelled out.  I didn't fully understand the reasoning of it, but a non-NI employee said:

Don't call it CE as that has some not so great connocation with something that was once the base for Microsoft Phone. It was a half hearted attempt from Microsoft to embrace the embedded market and then morphed into the Windows Phone product which we all know how it ended)

---

It might have something to do with Google search algorithms, or helping people find the correct content too. 

I too would suggest a VM if possible.  I prefer VirtualBox at the moment.

[billko]

---

@Hooovahh wrote:

Just a minor thing.  I've seen and heard people from NI specifically say that they don't want LabVIEW Community Edition to be abbreviated CE, and want it fully spelled out.  I didn't fully understand the reasoning of it, but a non-NI employee said:

Don't call it CE as that has some not so great connocation with something that was once the base for Microsoft Phone. It was a half hearted attempt from Microsoft to embrace the embedded market and then morphed into the Windows Phone product which we all know how it ended)

---

It might have something to do with Google search algorithms, or helping people find the correct content too. 

I too would suggest a VM if possible.  I prefer VirtualBox at the moment.

---

There is a "Windows CE".  I guess they don't want people to think LabVIEW is available for Windows CE.

[RTSLVU]

---

@billko wrote:

---

---

There is a "Windows CE".  I guess they don't want people to think LabVIEW is available for Windows CE.

---

I thought Windows CE was deprecated and replaced with Windows IoT years ago...

[rolfk]

---

@RTSLVU wrote:

---

@billko wrote:

---

---

There is a "Windows CE".  I guess they don't want people to think LabVIEW is available for Windows CE.

---

I thought Windows CE was deprecated and replaced with Windows IoT years ago...

---

Yes! But Windows IoT has little to do with Windows CE technically. IoT, except the Enterprise edition which is basically Windows 10 Embedded, is based on the UWP platform. This is basically mostly based on .Net technology without the old Win32 kernel of standard Windows.

Windows CE was a half baked and ultimately failed attempt by Microsoft to embrace the embedded market. Parts of it were eventually used for Windows Phone, which did not have a better fate.

So yes NI does not want people to associate LabVIEW Community Edition with Windows CE. Partly because people may be confused what the CE stands for if they know anything about Windows CE, partly because the memories about Windows CE are mostly not fond ones for those who ever had to deal with it.

[labviewman]

I agree 100% with Gregory on using a virtual machine.  I have been using virtual machines for decades to develop and support LabVIEW and Veristand.  Most all of the hardware I use is Ethernet-based (various RT targets) and RS232 or RS485-based so it works quite well.  It's about the only practical way to have multiple versions of software on the same computer, and works great to test-out installers for PC applications.

Currently I have LabVIEW 2015SP1, 2016, 2018, 2020SP1 & Veristand 2020 R4 on my work computer, each in their own virtual machine where I can install any legal and licensed software...all isolated from the work computer OS and network. I could connect the work network to the VM, but I don't ever need to. To communicate with my RT targets, I have a USB-NIC that uses drivers built into the IT image for the bare-metal OS and configured such that only the VM can use it (we use VMware Workstation Pro)...IT had to configure the NIC in Windows and via VMware "Virtual Network Editor".

One recommendation I have is to use a shared-drive to store all your work files so they don't reside inside the VM...that way if something happens to the VM, you don't lose any data.

If anyone needs help with this, send me a msg.  I only use VMware Workstation, but I suspect Virtual Box would work well too.

[Yamaeda]

Heh, my first thought was: Is there a Collectors Edition? ^^