A week before the official release of Vista, Google owned company @Last released a new version of SketchUp. Version 6 works great in Windows XP. Vista is a different story. After a little struggle I succeeded in running it under Vista.

At the moment of writing, SketchUp 6 has no Vista support. Kinda weird knowing that the release candidates for Vista are widely available some time now and that almost every new PC sold these days has Vista pre-installed. Potential new customers are being left in the dark.

After my first attempt installing version 6, I was forced to go back to version 5. That version installed without problems, but would not accept my license key. I could enter it and click ok, but without any message the license window closed. SketchUp kept asking for a key every time I started it.

The solution to this problem lies in the permissions a program has in Vista. SketchUp does not prompt for Adminstrator rights, so you should manually run it as administrator the first time (right click, run as administrator). Now the license key is recorder properly and you can use SketchUp without running it as administrator.

After the success with version 5, I was sure I could also beat the latest. The installer of SketchUp 6 won't run in Vista. It tells you that the operating system is not supported. The trick to fool the installer in thinking it is running on Windows XP is the compatibility mode. Right click on the installer file, go to the tab called 'compatibility' and select Windows XP SP 2. You can now install SketchUp 6.

After the installation finished, you also need to set the compatibility for the SketchUp program file. It is also wise to start the first time as administrator to save you from the license key trouble.

The combination of compatibility mode and 'run as administrator' will be used a lot the next few months. A lot of programs have not yet been updated to run smooth in Vista. I hope the ones I use will be in the next weeks.