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Working Around Vista Apps' Incompatibilities
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft says there are over 1,000 applications you can run on Windows Vista with few, if any, issues. However, Windows apps number in the tens of thousands. Add to that the facts that x64 Vista versions don't support legacy 16-bit code, and that the Windows Resource Protection in Vista breaks some apps, and you've got a big issue. InformationWeek lists a host of workarounds in How To Manage Windows Vista Application Compatibility. Among the tips discussed are Vista's compatibility mode, its Program Compatibility Assistant wizard, and a little-known form of file and registry virtualization that's built into the OS. What problems have you encountered with incompatible apps, and are any issues you've encountered deal-breakers that could further roil the already muddied adoption picture for Vista?"
Port WINE to Vista.
Don't bother with Vista at the moment. Let some other muppet sort out the pain.
Deleted
Don't get Vista!
I have been using Windows 2000 for years now and have found it to be the best and most stable Windows OS so far. 95 and 98 were a constant headache with the BSOD and XP is just 2000 with a ton of useless eye candy, not to mention the PITA of product activation everytime you want to change the hardware.
Vista has proven itself to be as big a mistake as Windows ME. Nothing works with it, it is full of DRM crap that keeps you from doing anything and there is really no reason to "upgrade" to it anyway.
Sales are far below what MS thought they would be because no one really wants it anyway, witennesed by many government and corporate organizations even refusing to allow their systems to be switched over to it.
In a word, it's a disaster!
*snicker*
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Even if it did, every time Outlook was started, it wanted to do its final install and first run configuration. Same with the other Office Apps as well.
Vista = Forced Obsolescence.
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
From my albeit limited experience with Vista my opinion is that many of the standard set of application that I ALWAYS INSTALL (you know the sort of thing, the sort of app that you take with you everywhere) is going to be a replication of the old problems we had with DLL Hell back in the old days.
This sort of problem even exhibits itself on Server 2003 SBS. For example, it regards Hypersnap 6 as a threat to OS security. I have to specifivally allow it to run. Duh, I'm installing the frigging thing so naturally, I want it to run. Note, that Plain Server 2003 does not regard this application as a threat.
The ability of this sort of application to run on the various versions of Vista is going to be a royal pain in the arse of many small application vendors. Microsoft has (IMHO) deliberately made their life hell and actually (Again IMHO) threatens their existance. And its all in the name of security.
This all reminds me of the late, great Kenny Everett (From the UK) and his catchphrase "In the Best Possible Taste"
I am sure there are many small application makers out there who are really struggling to get the mess of Vista Security sorted out. I guess these guys are too small to even register on M$ radar but I try to support them when they have the sort of app I use regularly.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Boy sounds like moving to Vista (and wanting to run Windows apps) requires as much work as moving to Linux. All the work but no reward of getting a more advanced OS like Linux - sounds like a loose-loose situation. Looks like its time for more OT in the marketing Dept.
Its not the years, its the mileage
Exactly, don't buy Vista at all, and maybe it'll send the message to Microsoft that this is not what people want in an operating system. Maybe now they're trying to force people off Windows 2000 and XP, but they may have to provide longer support if enough people send the message that they're not going to buy the new product. Will MS really only support 10-25% of their customers and leave the rest in the cold if it came to that?
Twinstiq, game news
I dont touch MS software with a ten foot pole, but for Vista I've ordered a 100 foot pole.
Even the MS fanb^H^H^H^Hapol^H^H^H^Hafficionados are saying to stay away from it, it must be bad.
Of course, one of the problems of using MS is that eventually, MS is going to force you to, either directly or indirectly. For the gamers, eventually new games wont run on anything but Vista, and for business folk, once a few businesses are conned into upgrading to it (and of course new versions of Word/etc, which will of course not open in earlier versions, that any business that interacts with them (that is stupid enough to consider MS-Word a good format to exchange data in) will have to ugprade too, and so on. And they call GPL software viral.
And of course, with Vista's build in 'calling home', when and if MS wants you to move to something else, they will just slowly tell every Vista that 'calls home' thats its obsolete, and it will slowly begin to lose functionaility, and eventually you'll be forced to upgrade again.
Just like the drug pusher, MS cannot make money unless you keep buying more. To borrow a phrase from another war: 'Just say No' to MS. Now is the time to get off their drugs.
That's great! Now Debian has a order of magnitude more applications than Windows?
Rethinking email
The application should strive to achieve compatibility with the OS, not the other way around. Microsoft has been wasting boatloads of resources on just maintaining backward compatibility with bugs and misbehaving applications (or so sayeth the leaked commented Windows OS code). This is the shortest possible explanation for how the Windows OS family has become the mess that it is today.
If they feel they need to expend the resources to get compatibility in order, here's what I think Microsoft should do:
PATCH THE APPS. Distribute or make downloadable the patches and upgrades necessary to make it happen. Hell, it could be a quality way for Microsoft to improve their relationship with vendors of all types. They'll spend the money anyway.
If I wanted to mess around with getting Windows apps working, I would be installing them on Linux with WINE or running them on Windows in virtualization (Virtualbox).
Oh wait, I do that already:) Should I have some schadenfreude that Window users get to join the fun or be more sympathetic? In any case, I suppose this won't prompt any developers of normal apps to develop them in a way to become platform independent (Firefox seem to do just fine as a large project...)
I've been running the Business version of Vista 32-bit since January and I've only had a couple apps not work properly. All the games I've tried have worked (some with a crash here and there, but that's nothing out of the ordinary), most of the productivity software I've used is just fine, and the random other stuff hasn't been a problem.
All the people that keep saying "wait 6 months for it to be fixed" forget something: 5 years after the release of XP, they were still fixing it. If you're not going to adopt until the OS is "fixed", then you've got a long wait ahead.
The irony is that I'm not even sure why home users would move.
I've been following Vista developments for years, since back when there were going to be three big pillars underlying it. As far as I can see, from a technical perspective, the only remaining major functional improvement over XP is that Vista supports DirectX 10, and Microsoft are pretty much guaranteed to restrict that artificially to Vista-only.
Of course, going by the history, that won't even start to affect any games except Microsoft's own for at least a couple of years, since most games software isn't using everything DX9 offers yet. Similarly, DX10-supporting hardware won't be even close to mainstream for at least a year or two. Given that PC games now represent only a quarter or so of the market (the consoles are well and truly in charge today) and the majority of home users still aren't going to have Vista for a while, games companies may be hesitant to tread those waters even as they reach the point where the extra goodies in DX10 may be genuinely useful.
Apart from that, what possible reason is there for a home user to upgrade? There's been a lot of negative press for Vista, not just about DRM but also all the hardware and software compatibility problems. The UI is different, which for many users means "bad" by default, even if with time they might come to prefer it. If home users were really serious about security, the world wouldn't be full of botnets. And the list goes on...
I can understand businesses with professional IT people placing some value on improved security or networking features, so if and when the compatibility is sorted out and the trust issues with phoning home and being activated/disabled/whatever remotely are irrevocably fixed, businesses might move. But home users? Not for years, except for the people who just get it with new PCs. (And even the rate of buying those isn't what it used to be.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There's only two things I can think of that don't work in Windows XP x64 that weren't bad practice in Windows XP x86 or even Windows 2000:
1: Device Drivers
2: Kernel hooks (e.g. Anti-virus software)
Any software that doesn't use either of these, doesn't work on Windows x64 edition, and is less than 5 years old, was obviously not very well written.
Would you trust a program to be secure and bug-free if it doesn't even adhere to the OS's guidelines?
"Vista has proven itself to be as big a mistake as Windows ME. Nothing works with it, it is full of DRM crap that keeps you from doing anything and there is really no reason to "upgrade" to it anyway."
1) How did it prove itself to be as big a mistake as Windows ME? No one knew how bad ME was until a year after it when Microsoft was already almost done with XP. ME was an intermediate OS, which was why it sucked. Vista is far more stable than XP or even 2000 on a machine meeting its recommended specs with hardware on the HCL. 3 machines in my house run Vista without a problem, and two of them have the dreaded "Vista Capable" logo.
2) DRM crap? I bet you don't even have a bluray or HDDVD drive in the first place. Hell, I bet you torrent all of your movies, so you shouldn't be complaining. Vista doesn't DRM everything. You can still watch your torrented movies (it's the only way to get decent HD rips anyhow)
3) no real reason to upgrade. Right, well I found BitLocker to be a perfect reason. To each his own; I can see where you're coming from but there are people that disagree with you.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Who do you blame for iTunes not working on Vista? Apple or Microsoft?
I vote for Apple: they had the specs, and they were unwilling or unable to make their app meet those specs. If Microsoft stops making allowances for misbehaving apps, the whole system will be a lot more stable in the future: short-term pain for long-term gain.
- Why not just block the apps that rely on undocumented behavior?
The purist in me would love to take the Linux route and force anybody doing weird stuff to fix their software, but in the long run, Microsoft is a business and their customers want compatibility with shitty software. Reading Raymond Chen's stuff changed my views on Windows backwards compatibility 100%.Gag. I have two boxes I run XP on (dual boot with Linux) and that's as far as it is ever going to get. I'm off the Microsoft treadmill and doubt I will ever get back on. I can do everything I need to do under XP or Linux - with more and more that I can do under Linux all the time. I don't think I've booted into Windows in a couple of months now - literally.
Adios, Microsoft.
I installed Vista alongside XP thinking I'd stay with XP a while yet, but I have not booted XP once since bringing up Vista. Vista application compability wasn't as bad as I'd been lead to believe. Sure I had to scratch my head a bit to get Pixel Shaders working in Media Player Classic (I used them to correct some corrupt videos I have), and some games needed a few XP files from the System32 directory, but the only piece of software I've yet to get running is 3D Mark 99 Max.
This reminds me a little about the Windows 2000 switchover. There was a lot of talk about compatibility issues with various games and apps, but the only thing that affected me was the wonky Sound Blaster Live drivers. Come to think of it, Vista actually supports all my hardware, although I had to slack my memory timings bellow specs. Tip, if you get a BSOD with Win32.sys as the culprit then run memtest86, hell run memtest86 anyway.
That makes way too much sense, so it's highly unlikely that Microsoft will do that.
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
It's a steaming turd with a windows logo on it. I've been testing Vista in a corporate software development environment since the beginning of last year and the fact that a user has to jump through so many hoops just to get a farking program to run properly should be a clear and obvious warning to those of us who still value our sanity that we need to simply steer clear of this steaming pile called Vista.
My peace of mind does not depend on
16bit installers don't all work on the x64 version of XP (and I'm assuming Vista). XP doesn't 'convert' the 16bit installer to 32bit as the article says... it actually has 32bit versions of several common installers with it. When you try running the 16bit one it recognises it and runs the 32bit replacement instead.
Of course that means only the recognised ones work. There are plenty of installers I've come across which won't work (mostly for games... Dungeon Keeper & Dune 2000 come to mind).
My 'solution' was to run a 32bit version of Windows XP inside a virtual machine and install the programs there. More annoying because I have to run the virtual machine to use them, but at least I can still run them.
"have to specifivally allow it to run. Duh, I'm installing the frigging thing so naturally, I want it to run"
if microsoft did take that attitude to security, they would be hassled constantly by people on here about writing an insecure O/S. People are tricked every day into installing spyware and trojans. I'm glad about any additional protection that stops people installing that stuff, even if the side effect is a slight PITA when installing legit software.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Microsoft seriously need to start work on a "Windows Neo" or something that is redesigned from the core and will break compatibility with _everything_ unless they can create some "Classic" thing like Apple did for OSX.
I see this as the only way to "fix" the Windows codebase which must look like a complete, utter mess after a decade of hacks.
No, id say they wont 'downgrade' to vista unless they *know* their critical apps work.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Last week MS announced that OEMs would not be able to sell systems with XP by the end of the year (and I'm sure that MS is really pressuring OEMs to offer special deals on Vista systems). I'm sure this is part of a MS plan to "get Vista out there in numbers" - thus forcing software companies to port/patch products for Vista.
Of course that begs the question will MS patch Office 2004 etc. - the answer there is hell no. Which is understandable - I mean once you start patching a MS product where / when do you stop. The symbol for infinity is not part of any project planner I've used.
Its not the years, its the mileage
i mean
mech warrior 3 wont run on xp either
look at me cry
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Does "not touching something with a N-foot pole" use a pole?
"The extra DRM abilities of Vista do not stop you doing *anything* in comparison to any other OS. It simply allows you to play back media which you won't be able to play back on any OS which doesn't have the exact same restrictions. Beyond this, if you don't use this DRM infested media, there is no difference between using Vista, Mac OSX or Linux."
Very soon the MPAA and the RIAA will make sure that all you have is "DRM infested media", and I'm sure that the game manufacturers will be doing something along the same lines as well.
With all the problems VISTA seems to have, and expensive upgrade needed, better buy a mac. VISTA seems to be as bad as Windows Millennium was.
its so simple to solve all your windows problems: just upgrade for free to windows vista ultimate plus! service pack 1
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Things have mostly worked on my brand new Vista box (old box died). One annoyance that I encountered is that Photoshop CS2 would nag me to register each time I launched it, even though I had "successfully" (?) registered a couple of times. Adobe's response was that it was "a known issue". I then reset the compatibility mode so that it would run as administrator. That brought even more complaints from Vista and CS2. However, when I reset CS2 to run as a normal user the problem mysteriously went away. Hope this may help someone else. --Carey
The application should strive to achieve compatibility with the OS, not the other way around.
When I worked support for a Softwre developer, I would get into arguments over this with them. They wrote an app that basically would try to force its own DLL's into the System directory and require a reboot.
I explain, that if you have to reboot and put things into the Windows\system directory then it is going to give us nightmares on the support end.
Low and behold we actually had someone with a WinNT server install our software and it blew the server up. So much can go wrong when you start forcing the OS to comply with the software.
That said... Why should someone who will never run the older software be forced to carry all this baggage. From a support and consumer standpoint the apps should be modified and not the OS.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Point number one: It hardly matters whether the changes done to achieve compatibility are done in the OS or in the application, when both pieces of code originate from the same corporation. Many of these non-Vista-compatible applications are Microsoft products.
Point number two: Microsoft has "boatloads of resources" to "waste" on backwards compatibility, largely because they drove the independent application developers out of business or into narrow margin survival mode. When you buy up every independent source of revenue in the consumer software business, so that every dime of software money on the average desktop goes to you, you ought to have enough money sloshing around that you can afford to fix a few bugs.
Every desktop computer you see, a majority of the software money goes to Microsoft. Microsoft makes more money than Apple on every Mac sold. Microsoft gets $30 to $90 on every Dell sold, and Dell often gets less than that in margin. In the businesses I support, the only non-Microsoft money I see on any desktop machines is the occasional Adobe product and the even less frequent occasional licensed copy of WinZip or Eudora.
When you write every single piece of software on the harddisk, there is no one else to blame when some of them are incompatible with each other.
... how far would WINE have to go to get ahead of MSWinVista64 on backward compatibility?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
My experience of Vista is limited, but from what I can tell a lot of the incompatibilities come from developers getting used to the slack security and expecting things like Administrator priviledges, write access in to \Windows, acccess to HK_Local_Machine etc. There was some breakage going from Windows XP SP1 to SP2 as well, and since I use a User account on XP, it's sometimes been a struggle to get some apps (and some parts of XP itself) to work right. While I suppose MS could have made compatability better by having real virtualization of an older Windows or what have you, if this makes apps behave better overall then maybe it's for the best.
I tried Vista so I could get my own opinion of it (as a Linux and xp fan). Tbh, I found it cumbersome even with aero off although I am pointing my fingers at the nvidia drivers, I like to play football manager in a window and that was slower then under wine! but wait for it... it does allow me to play Dungeon Keeper II!! I have not been able to play that since I switched from 2000 years ago. I have tried under everything including vmware to no avail, for this reason alone vista will stay on my hard drive. I don't think vista is as uncompatible as people think, hell once I have the time I plan on trying some of my old games and see what works! Maquis196
That simply isn't true.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Do digital restrictions in OSX or Linux:
I'll give you a quick hint: there are no digital restrictions in free software.
The consensus opinion is that Vista's digital restrictions set it up for failure. Really, it even annoys fanboys to the point where no one wants it. My opinion is that they just make obvious M$ intentions but don't represent any change of attitude.
DRM is snakeoil, much like Windows itself. All digital restriction schemes have the same attitude and end goal. The way M$ does it now represents the absurd lengths required make them even look like they could work. Big publishers want to control your digital media in a way that they could not with paper or even broadcast. It's not going to work but we need to fight it every step of the way. The easiest way to avoid it is to not buy things filled with such obvious contempt for the customer.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
My son's computer was set so that his login was a "Limited" user. Lots of pre-2002 (i.e. written for Win9x, therefore pre user account level and permissions,) games had major issues. They insisted on running as an Administrator. Which meant either changing his login to Administrator (not likely,) or me coming in and typing in my password every time he wanted to run Microsoft's own "Midtown Madness".
Vista, on the other hand, appears to let old games work just fine on a Limited account. Obviously, REALLY old games don't work at all, but Win98-era games work just fine again.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
1. Download Debian 4.0 [http/ftp][torrent]
2. Install
3. Don't give a shit about Microsoft or Windows anymore.
I went Debian (sid at the time) five years ago when XP started edging out Win2k installations. Now that Etch is out I've moved back the stable branch. It just works, it comes with everything I need, and I don't have to spend all of my time babysitting all of the add-on crap and drivers that inevitably comes with owning a Windows PC.
FTA
"In the end, though, you should seriously consider moving to software virtualization during your Vista migration. Software virtualization allows you to package applications once and only once to deploy them to your PCs. Virtualized applications do not touch the operating system so your systems stay pristine at all times."
If the problems that Vista faces; I am not sure why they didn't take a play from Apples book (no pun intended). They should have:
1) Designed the OS from scratch.
2) Provided a virtualized version of an older system like XP. Something that Apple did when OS X was released. I believe that the virtual environment was running something like version 9.
They wouldn't have these compatibility issues and would have potentially built a more robust / secure OS. Also, it would have given all the application programmers the ability to port over their programs in the interim. It would have been a win win situation. Apps would be available for the new OS; and you would have a new "potentially" feature rich OS ready for deployment.
Personally, I would have liked to see their prototype OS "Singular" come to fruition.
Yeah,
And it all goes back to M$ wanting to control exactly what I can or can't run on my PC.
All it needs is for Microsoft to let the small app vendors register their apps and then Windows can chack to see it the app you are trying to install is listed and has something like an MD5SUM on the main executable that matches that held in the M$ Database.
OR
Let me set myself up as the Ugber Geek/SuperUser/Smart Alec who knows all and then as long as I am installing from this account then it bypasses these checks. This 'special' account would not be available on most home user versions of Vista but O/S's like Server 2003 Small Business Server? How many non uber geek types will be installing this on their desktop systems?
Their comes a point when the sort of so called security enhancememnts that get put into an O/S are self defeating. People will switch them off just to be able to use the syatem in a realistic way. This does not enhance the overall security of the system.
I agree that M$ does need to improce the OOTB security of the basic/agerage person that installs/uses Vists but there are times when this is just to intrusive into the use of a system such as a server.
Let me install stuff and then let me run some scans/checks on the stuff I have installed. If this detects some trojan/visrus/whatever then isolate the offending stuff. Then I can make an informed decision about the stuff it has QT'd. Please M$ let me decide what I want to run or not especially when it comes to installing stuff on Server O/S's
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
one big fat Microsoft Fanboy/Salesman argument isn't true for Vista: "Windows has more applications..."
That lie has been dead for a long time. Debian has 18,733 packages now. I doubt they will ever be obsoleted the way non free software is and Debian, while huge, is only a part of the free software world. You have to go back 20 year to be in a world where non free software outnumbers free. Today, you can easily run systems that are completely free.
The M$ fanboys will say silly things now about how those 1,000 Vista ready applications you don't have to fiddle with too much are the ones that matter and are better in some way than others. That too is a lie and the difference is only going to become more obvious.
Developers left the non free world long ago when it was clear that only M$ and friends got anything out of it. The non free software world collapsed more than ten years ago as M$ crushed rivals like Netscape, OS/2, Word Perfect and others. Everything since then has been a desperate struggle by M$ to stop or steal free software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't mean this as a flame, but I'm sure it will be mod'ed as such, but this needs to be said.
I used to really worry about trusting business, especially MY business, on Linux. "Who" would support me? What about my data? What if it breaks, etc.
After spending more than a decade using Linux as my OS of choice, my worries about Linux are almost gone, but I have realized that there are bigger worries that people don't even realize they have to deal with with Windows.
Microsoft is a single company, and if not an out right monopoly, certainly a virtual one. They are in the position to make autocratic decisions regardless of customer demands. DRM? Discontinuing Windows XP? If my company had a product that people wanted, I wouldn't be able to, responsibly, stop shipping it.
The average office is held hostage to Microsoft's whims. Vista is a perfect example. It breaks existing applications, it needs far more resources to run. It has a much more draconian set of licensing restrictions and obligations. Yet, Microsoft can STILL stop Windows XP regardless of the customer need.
Linux is better. If the company you have decides to change and break your applications, you don't have to upgrade. You can, more or less, add the "cool" new features of the new release without breaking your system.
The average home user goes it alone, they either do it themselves, have a nerd-buddy, or use something like geek squad. Medium to large size offices typically have IT management services, and the Linux model is typically better for them, if it were not for vendor.
If ODF takes off enough to the point where "Microsoft Office" is optional, you'll see a lot of companies switching users to Linux just for the TCO. (M$ TCO FUD not withstanding)
Pre-XP to XP: Whine, whine, gripe, complain, make funny Linux reference, gripe XP to Vista: Whine, whine, gripe, complain, make funny Linux reference, gripe
But the thing that we are striving to be compatible with is CLOSED.
Which means?
That once an application works, it IS compatible. There is no other reference implementation to try it against.
If there are multiple implementations (in Windows case, 98, 2000, XP, Vista), once it works on the platforms that are feature compatible, the application works, and again it IS compatible. There is no reference authority OTHER THAN THE IMPLEMENTATION. (and look at the Microsoft Word submissions for additional hedges).
Because of this, it becomes Microsofts issue -- to either properly document the API, -or- to provide OS patches to keep applications operational. If the API were properly documented, clean-room implementations would be possible (more specifically, WINE would be done). So it is not in Microsofts platform interest to do this.
Which leaves OS patches to keep applications running. Which, in turn, further complicates the API description (hypothetical example: APIduJour(HANDLE aHandle,...) description: does this function. If called from an application named "FOOBAR" does this secondary processing as well. If called from "XYZZY" can fail with this result, else this other result.).
There is a direct benefit to Microsoft -- if a clean room implementation is attempted, either the OS needs reverse engineering (limited by the license) or a VAST number of test cases need to be run. Either is very difficult (and witness that WINE is NOT done yet).
At some point it becomes a nightmare to maintain for Microsoft, but my bet is that there will be upgrades supplied to Vista in increase its back-compatibility.
Just sayin'
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
The thing is, the changes required in Linux world to be compatible with new versions of key libraries are generally minor, well-documented, reasonable, and relatively quick to implement.
In Windows world, that isn't the case, because Windows development is a mess. That is mostly Microsoft's fault. There isn't any good way out of this situation for them now, but they could have seen this coming a decade ago, and they chose to ignore it in the interests of making more profits earlier. Now, having made their bed, they are forced to lie in it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
People are tricked every day into installing spyware and trojans. I'm glad about any additional protection that stops people installing that stuff, even if the side effect is a slight PITA when installing legit software.
Proper user permissions makes it both easy to install software and stop trojans. People complain because M$ has yet to implement the simple read write execute and user flags common and effective in Unix since the 1970s. Instead they use annoying warnings that cry wolf and make the user think it's their fault when they turn those off.
Vista proves that compatibility with previous applications is not the reason they have not adopted a sane user model. Vista is all driven by digital restrictions for media companies. Where those restrictions break applications they were only too happy to do it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If MS stops XP sales and forces a Vista change over then just waiting for other muppets to sort things is not a workable strategy.
These incompatabilities run deep. Even some Microsoft stuff does not work with Vista. eg. Platform Builder (used for Windows CE development) is XP only.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is really simple... don't use Vista. I didn't switch from Win98 to XP until years after the fact. And I still am sorry I installed XP64 - it's not ready for prime time either. I'm not going to be one of Microsoft's monkeys. They can iron out the kinks using someone else's gray hairs.
It is true that the apps should be programmed in a way that they are compatible from one version of the OS to another. If the OS adheres to its own rules & structures!
...
Look at all the HTML crap programmers have done: Abusing bugs in IE's implementation to get a certain look. Which then leads to the next version of IE implementing those exact bugs again in the form of "features", otherwise all sort of high-profile web pages would be broken.
This is part of what happened (and still does) with Windows. M$ sticking to design errors, undocumented features, just to warrant their claim of the large program base.
M$ should have dropped all 3.1 compatibility in 95, and they should have dropped all the 16 bit crap in 2000. THAT would have been the right moves.
As always. Too little, too late.
Anyway - at the moment, it's probably not all the applications' fault -- seeing all the trouble that the OS itself still has, there are quite a few design- and programming-errors to be corrected
First we bought a low-end Everex which was perfectly sufficient for email, IM, web browsing, and accounting software. Vista kept the processor at 80% on average, at idle. I installed XP and it was just fine, but we couldn't get XP drivers for the wifi adapter. Apparently Vista has a few high-demand services that you can disable to work around the problem, but you lose various features as a result.
So we returned that model for an Acer, and it handles Vista nicely. Sims 2 works, Aero works, it's all very pretty. Turns out Peachtree 2005 doesn't work, though, and 2005 is the only version my girlfriend can use for her accounting class. She's still using her old laptop, which this was supposed to replace, for the rest of the semester!
The problem is and this is the problem with most broken applications is that many developers do not use the API correctly. Maybe it could be better documented. But as was brought out above, Raymond Chen give many examples of Apps (even some written by other MS divisions) that bypass the API in the name of "performance" or access to the hidden kernel API, in most cases the problem applications are those that have done this.
The other class of applications that get broken are those that are broke in XP if you run in a Limited User Account, these expect administration rights even for games. If security is improved and the user account is protected, these applications are broken because of bad design, this would be the case for any OS. Imagine any app written for Linux r OSX the insisted that it needed root access. This is the problem with a lot of Windows software, and I will admit that Microsoft has to bear some of the blame, but we developers do as well.
The problem is that most of the commercial software companies won't do this for a lot of their existing products. Instead, they'll tell you to pay an assload of money and upgrade to the new version of the software, which doesn't do anything except add compatibility with Vista, instead of actually fixing their existing software.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Yes, MSFT can take the stand that it is the job of application to keep up with the OS as you say. Then the millions of users with applications already installed have to buy updated versions from their vendors, costing money, or they will choose not to upgrade the OS costing MS money. If in one stroke MSFT makes millions of instances of installed applications useless, then suddenly people might get the idea to try other OSs. MSFT does not want such things to happen. The OS upgrade could be very painful but should not be enough to push them over to Linux of Mac. That is how MSFT wants it. Then the applications update will happen over the next three to five years as old computers die and new computers start with applications written for the current OS. Then the cycle starts all over again. The boatloads of money MSFT is wasting in application compatibility is just the cost of doing business to keep Linux at bay.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I have installed Office 2000 on at least 2 dozen Vista boxes. I have yet to have any issues with them. Either you are trying to use 3rd party applications with Office or you don't know how to install office (always copy the files to the hard drive before installing or install from a network share).
Funny how they never even address issues of copyright violation when they mention rewriting code, or using 3rd party tools to crack applications. I doubt that Microsoft would take kindly to me rewriting portions of Visio to run on Linux.
The authors of the fine article should start looking for good attorneys, because they've just greenlighted rewriting proprietary code for better compatability.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Microsoft is going to reverse-engineer and patch my old copy of Paintshop Pro 5? Proxomitron? Winamp 2.7? Thousands of other "good, old" programs that are no longer maintained or supported, yet you'll have to pry from peoples' cold, dead hands?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I didn't actually mean to replace Windows XP with Vista, but Vista setup tossed aside my entire XP install, program files, and everything else when I opted not to do an upgrade.
Overall, even though I've had to find upgrade versions for a lot of software, most things do run allright. If you have AGP, beware, you might have issues. But it works.
It works a lot more slow, though. While most apps and stuff would still run find on a 1Ghz machine on Windows XP, and thus run fine on Vista on a much more powerful machine, games really do run like shit compared to Windows XP. I mean, it's pretty bad when WINE under Linux can run Guild Wars, not a new game, better then Windows Vista.
Because I don't play a lot of games, it's allright, but I'm not a happy Vista user. There's too many little anomalies and things that are "what the shit were they thinking?" issues.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Great post! I appreciate that you took your time to write it. I find the way DRM is described and talked about to often lack understanding of what it really is and what its purpose is. The term seems often to be used as a mere way of slandering something without any intellectual backing (aka FUD).
The subject is absolutely worthy of discussing, such as why do we have DRM? What should be DRM'd and what shouldn't? How should it work? etc. It's quite clear that the subject touches on some deeper ethical questions for some. It's sad that you constantly have to face these misconceptions and crazy ideas about what DRM is, often from people who have no experience of it what so ever.
Enough for me, I hope you get a couple of moderation points because what you say isn't heard as often as you would like in these types of discussions.
Microsoft Windows 2048 won't run Lotus 1-2-3!
I guess Installing from the Install CD is the wrong thing to do even though it works just find when installing Office 2000, 2002 (XP) & 2003 in Windows 2000 and XP. In fact, we ended up removing Office 2000 and installing Office 2003, from the Install CD and it worked just fine, thank-you very much.
I take it you have Vista at your Job were you can customize its configuration to let you do these things that I couldn't on a friends pre-installed consumer version of Vista.
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
Oh, no they won't. Several large parts of the US Federal Government have already implemented blanket bans on the use of Vista. It is highly likely that several very large businesses will do similarly, along with other government departments in the US and elsewhere, for exactly the same reasons. There is no way Microsoft is going to turn down thousands and thousands of future XP sales to customers of that scale just because its new toy isn't selling well.
If you don't believe me, take a look at Microsoft's rhetoric around this time after XP was released, and then take a look at how many major customers were still able to get Win2K years later, and indeed how many still run it. They might say they're going to stop, but they're firing blanks and both they and their major customers know it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's very simple: A book obviously shouldn't be rendered obsolete, and neither should software. If Microsoft is going to adopt new standards, every effort should be made to keep them compatible with previous applications, because they are a valuable part of our history.
Sometimes people make a good app, and then go on to do something else with their lives. MS controls the standard, MS should make the standard flexible.
BTW, I write software apps that run on top of video drivers. I am terrified of what I will find when I am finally forced to make the jump.
So you're saying that MS should get to decide which apps are safe to install and which aren't? I'm guessing that most users would disagree with you -- particularly those who frequent slashdot.
dom
I love the fact (in a sarcastic sort of way) that they break compatibility with the tools you need for everyday use, but on the other hand keep "edlin" as part of the code base. I kid you not - go to the command line and type 'edlin'. Incredible..
Insert
I agree on this. For example, Nvidia had literally a year and a half with a stable driver API and they are still working on getting a decent driver for Vista. We knew this thing was coming, some companies just didn't feel customer satisfaction was a good enough reason to put in the work. Don't give me the crap that its because Vista is so different/hard that no one can they shouldn't need to make drivers for it. It's just an issue of business not prioritizing customer satisfaction.
It's easy to say 'ignore' Vista, but if you have software currently on the market, trying to split resources to maintain a version for older versions of windows, and ALSO develop a 'vista compatible' version is a major issue...
This is particularly difficult for smaller developers such as us...and since we're game developers, we have the whole 'DirectX10 versus OpenGL / DirectX9' issue to deal with on top of everything else...
Oh, and then there's the whole new 'Games for Windows' issues that are thrown into the mix...
Gekido's Lair
An AC, who should remain anonymous, asks:
And how many of those are real apps you could use on the desktop of a large enterprise organisation and how many of them are competeing implementations of libdosomethingmundanetheuserneversees and its separate -devel packages?
Library reuse is the reason a GNU/Linux desktop takes less than 2GB while others ask for 10 before you start adding applications. Each package, however, requires a lot of effort so there's really not that much duplication.
Not that I'm knocking Linux, I'm just saying comparing 'applications' to 'packages' is bogus.
No, what you are knocking it the quality of Debian packages. That's only something that can be done in ignorance or malice.
The numbers might be fuzzy, but they are firmly in favor of Debian and GNU/Linux. Every one of the Debian packages does something that someone was interested enough in to write a program for and every one of them works. As is obvious, not every "application" ever written survives the M$ upgrade cycle. Like I said, the fanboys would come out and say silly things like, "the Windoze packages are the ones that matter."
I've been Microsoft application free since 2001 because everything I've ever needed was in Debian.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I fix Windows PCs for a living, and I run my company on QuickBooks 2006. When Vista came out, I stuck a new drive in my main laptop, built it out with Vista Ultimate, and installed all the applications I need... including QuickBooks. QB worked fine, but I unfortunately failed to disable its Automatic Update feature.
About a month later, QuickBooks downloaded an update that included this splash screen, with its dire warnings about application incompatibility and system instability.
I resent the fact that Intuit is trying to frighten QuickBooks users into upgrading, and I will never buy any of their products again... even if I'm forced to keep my books in, um, actual books. I also turned off Automatic Updates, because I'm afraid Intuit will deliberately destabilize the software if they don't sell enough copies of the 2007 & 2008 versions.
Moving to Vista is easy, Let me tell you about my last reinstall to vista (some months ago) I put the disk in and followed the installation instructions. I validated it with WGA, I let the account popup, windows update installed every single driver (excluding my Creative Webcam which has no x64 driver vista or xp) then I changed the Aero bar colour and personnalised some of it (including switch to 5.1 speakers.) Installed all normal software and espeacially PowerDVD XP so I could watch DVD Movies (Creatives Drivers don't yet support DTS and Dolby) and my current selection of games. From expearence I can't get Visual 2003.net to work properly and it seems microsoft have no intention of making it work. Visual Studio 2005's patch actually appeared in windows update as soon as I installed VS2005. Had no problems, heard about the Direct sound issue so went through game library turns out any of my games pre quake 3 either won't install or have no sound, I was very miffed until I released to get at these games I'd gone into the loft and opened a sealed cardboard box.
My list of non functioning stuff on vista after two months:
Gametap (they admit theres no x64 version of the software and refuse to let the prog install on x64)
Audigy SE drivers need more work (sound is basic promised driver is Q2)
Creative Vista IM Webcam (ironic theres no x64 VISTA driver in the works for it)
Visual Studio 2003.net (a pain since I became attatched to this but the uni gives away 2005 as well so....)
Every other XP application I have thrown at it (excluding those games) has worked perfectly on it from Visual Studio 2005 (since patched) to Proteus ISIS software.
No, not the developers are the problem, the users are.
YOu cannot run a program that never had Virutlisation in mind uder different users. (And the "U no Adminstrator Chrash" makes it even more complicated to explain to user ho to hand things you need administrator rights for.
Of course this can be fixed by using some API calls that are only available on vista.... making you applicaltion not runnign on win98 (!)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA! HAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHA!!!!!!!!!!
You really think people are this stupid? For any passing moderators, Erris = twitter = Erris = twitter. They're one and the same. Hence my raucous e-laughter. I bet you'll follow up with a nice long post (under your twitter alias) where you rant about me, dedazo, Macthorpe, Keith Russell and various other people about 1,000,000 times less unhinged than you are.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
People keep putting vista down for the DRM, but it doesn't add DRM to anything other current OS's already do.
It doesn't enforce DRM on programs you already use.
As far as I can make out the only difference is it supports DRM for new technology.
At the moment, you have no alternative, as in, without that DRM being supported, you cannot even PLAY media from those new technologies (hd-dvd, bluray).
so, what's the problem? To playback these new media formats at all *nix and other OS users will have wait until someone breaks break the DRM, or legit DRM inclusive players are available (unlikely except at a cost, or possibly never, due to AACS licensing), to backup media on vista users will have to wait for someone to break the DRM, but at least they can use the media in the first place.
I bet you'll follow up with a nice long post (under your twitter alias) where you rant about me, dedazo, Macthorpe, Keith Russell and various other people about 1,000,000 times less unhinged than you are.
Why are you wasting so much of your time harassing Twitter and now me?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The two biggest problems I had with Vista have been fixed:
(a) Vista got rid of winhlp32, so the help was broken in many third party application (e.g, CorelDraw 10, if you want a specific example). winhlp32 now available as a download.
(b) OpenGL no longer provided by the basic O/S, and ATI's implementation was somewhat broken. Effect: games that worked on XP didn't work on Vista, or only worked if you had an nVidia graphics card. (e.g. SecondLife, if you want a concrete example. Why anyone would ever *want* to run SecondLife is an issue for another thread...) Version 7.3 of the catalyst drivers makes things better.
Still broken
- No driver support for lots of my peripherals. Looks like I'm going to have to buy a new scanner. (Yes, I tried the XP driver with Vista. The O/S died horribly - power cycle and reboot into safe mode time...)
===================
I can see Vista being a major expense for many organizations. The UI is very different, so you're going to have to retrain your staff (or else, suffer days/weeks of them not getting their real job done because they're trying to figure out how to do things in Vista). Maybe you'll need to buy new PC's for everyone, due to driver issues. Probably you'll need to buy new scanners. And so on.
Why does Wine not run 16-bit Windows programs? At least this API is stable. And it used to be such a hassle to write all these programs. And there are many old programs running on 16-bit Windows that I still like. E.g. Amipro.
So, is there any emulator, like dosbox for dos, that just emulates the good old 16-bit environment under Windows?
Plus the fact that a branch of it can now be used to run VST audio effects programs that would normally only run under windows. Now I can use my VSTs with a cheap soundcard and still get under 40ms latency.
Who do you think has to support that muppet?
The summary stated, "x64 Vista versions don't support legacy 16-bit code". That means Win 3.x or MS-DOS era stuff (of which there is still a depressingly large amount in use). The summary is correct in that Vista does not support running such code. But the summary is misleading in that the reason Vista doesn't support it is that nothing supports it: When in "long mode" (64-bit mode), x86-64 processors cannot execute 16-bit code. It's a hardware limitation, not a software thing.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
So here's Vista; the same old turd polished up with a big upgrade price to make Bill even richer. So where's the benefit? It runs FEWER Windows programs than XP does, has higher hardware requirements, and it gives you what? A fancier interface? If that's what you want, try installing a new theme on XP. Vista is certainly not faster, nor does it have fewer bugs. No benefit; I'm not buying.
So I'm going to pass this one up too. If Microsoft forces the issue, then I'll bite the bullet and move to Linux full time. If I'm going to be required to buy more powerful hardware, then it's going to be a Mac.
Let's see if the people that Microsoft wrote Vista for (the "content producers") will fund Bill's big dream. Us consumers have had enough of this nonsense.
What utter FUD! How does Vista make it harder to do that?
Mmmm.. Donuts
Windows ME? Even the people I knew who couldn't know how bad it was knew how bad it was. It didn't take a rocket scientist. From there you devolve into pirate hysteria/name-calling and finish with the flourish on your one provided reason for the upgrade (wow, thank GOD MS provided encryption...I don't know what I would have...).
I'm all for counter-points. I brought the first Vista system into our workplace. I disabled UAC and aside from some of the old/trollish employees not liking it (I did make them use it, they just like to complain) its been pretty good. Lots of non-supported software has worked just as I'd have expected it to. The UI isn't really impressing me, but this is Microsoft and that kind of design isn't something they are known for.
A good reason to have upgraded to it? Not yet. Bitlocker could be done just as well or better with any number of applications. Maybe after the large scale public beta ends at SP1 they have enough quirks worked out that people will start discovering some of the benifits. Maybe not. But no matter how you dice it, right now the biggest benefit to Vista is Microsoft's dominance and decision to push this operating system so aggressively.
In the future please don't formulate arguments based on the assumption someone doesn't like something because their pirates. We hear more then enough of that kind of corporate dribble already. A lot of people won't like X for a lot of legitimate reasons. Claiming Y randomly doesn't provide a logical argument. Just hyperbole.
Have a great Sunday. Just had to speak my piece.
Quack, quack.
I've been running Windows Vista since beta. When the release came out on MSDN, I ran the upgrade from XP to business edition on one of our client computers (we have approximately 100 apps that we support for users, all installed). The only thing that broke was McAfee and one other very minor app. I was extremely impressed. The problems with Vista are highly exaggerated. I bet that less than 5% of the posters to this thread have ever run Vista.
Speaking as a Win32 and a Linux developer, this is generally not true. Usually the stupid problems that apps make are extremely minor; its just as easy to misuse Win32 as it is to misuse GTK+. The difference is that in the OSS world, the apps that one depends on are usually open source, whereas in the Windows world, the equivalent apps are closed source.
In some ways, its worse in the OSS world. When Microsoft creates an API, you can be effectively guaranteed that it will live forever if you don't misuse the API. And if your application is popular enough, you can get away with abusing the Win32 API (sometimes in extremely gross ways), because Raymond Chen is watching out for you. If I create a Linux app, can I be guaranteed that it will always run on every subsequent version of Red Hat without modification? Its arguable that isn't important for either Red Hat or the OSS community. But the lesson that Microsoft has learned says otherwise.
It was way past time to get rid of the 16-bit subsystem. It's been 12 years since Windows 95, after all.
NT 3.51 let you install without the 16-bit subsystem and the OS/2 subsystem. Even back in 1997, you could run without the 16-bit subsystem. I used to install NT 3.51 that way, for greater security. A decade ago, the major commercial applications worked without the 16-bit subsystem.
Most of the applications people that don't run under Vista for security reasons are just broken. It's useful to flush out all those old programs that do things they shouldn't.
The article suggests a number of ways to modify product installations so that they work on Vista. It failed to mention that most commercial software EULAs do not allow you to modify the product in any way. Modifying the installation would be breaking the EULA in most cases.
I personally don't have a problem with the idea that you have to be administrator to write to anywhere other than c:\users\$username\. It is radical idea for Windows, but other operating systems have done that for a lot longer. Slashdotters criticised MS for not having this policy. Now it appears they are criticising them for listening to their complaints.
Applications written with the assumption that the user will be running with administrator privelages experienced problems in earlier versions of Windows when run from limited user accounts; often because they attempted to write to machine-wide or system directories (such as Program Files) or registry keys (notably HKLM)[1]. UAC attempts to alleviate this using File and Registry Virtualization, which redirects writes (and subsequent reads) to a per-user location within the users profile. For example, if an application attempts to write to C:\program files\appname\settings.ini and the user doesnt have permissions to write to that directory, the write will get redirected to C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Prog
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
(UNinformed, I daresay) People here keep saying things along the lines of "The irony is that I'm not even sure why home users would move"
/informed/ (not neccesarily geek, could be joe-average, just informed) home-user, this is a HUGE advantage. Yes, it has a learning curve, yes, he will need to get a simple explanation of what the greyout means and to "Just Say NO" when he's not sure (or ALWAYS SAY NO, if he's a dumbass, and let his neighbourhood tech do the adminning), and it will save him mountains of time, money and pain paying said tech even more to clean out the malware from his computer every 3 months.
One acronym, three letters.
U.A.C.
Corps (already serious about their desktop security, using access-regulated policies and usually domains) gain almost nothing from the new User Access Control model in Vista. It's all for the home user who doesn't have a sysadmin to disallow him to touch anything in C:\WINDOWS and C:\PROGRAM FILES. The underlying ability to have user access policies on the computer has been there since NT4, effectively since forever.
It's the bolting it into a homeuser-centric UI and turning it into what is, for all intents and purposes, "sudo", integrated into every nook and cranny that requires straying into privileged space that's new.
For an
For all of you who are overfed with FUD, or haven't bothered looking at anything since you've looked an the unfinished (RC) product:
NO, YOU DO NOT NEED TO HANDLE ANNOYING POPUPS WHEN BROWSING ALL THE TIME. I keep getting that a lot, and it just doesn't happen anywhere except in people's anti-MS imaginations.
You need to handle annoying popups when you go to places you shouldn't be. Routine tasks VERY RARELY involve doing that (and if you're one of the elite few who do need open access to the system, just disable UAC altogether, it's got a big ON/OFF switch).
We've all been beating M$ with a stick for 20 years about the inherent lack of security of all OS's up to XP where the user effectively works as root. IMHO, we were RIGHT. Well, they finally fixed it. I am NOT saying windows and/or UAC is unhackable or unexploitable or mature or some such. IT IS NONE OF THESE.
However, they finally introduced a seatbelt, and when lining it up against pre-vista seatbeltless windows where the user belongs to Administrators - just about 99.99999% of the world's home installbase - (in an otherwise seatbelt-equipped world - macos, linux, etc), that's a fundamentally major change WHICH IS A GOOD REASON TO NOT RESIST CHANGING OVER (if, say, you get a new computer, or are reinstalling an old one anyway and don't mind forking out some coin - say, 100$, for some RAM if you're sub-1GB).
UAC is a major homeuser-targeted change that I think non-fanboy professionals should embrace. It'll annoy people at first (seatbelts annoyed people at first too), until they get into the habit of using the system the way it's meant (minimal straying outside userspace), at which point annoyance factor becomes minimal and people accept the extra hassle, because it's a hell of a lot better than what they had before.
In other news, some UI improvements are more than welcome, and as a poweruser, I put value on intuitive UI that makes my work more efficient. Enter Katapult-on-steroids - a SEARCH integrated into the start menu that searches the start menu and the program files. Sidebar is also a welcome UI improvement, as is a revised resource-monitor that breaks down diskIO etc. by process.
In yet other news, compatibility suffers. My vista lappie can't connect to the office Wifi network, something between its 802.11x and the radius goes bust. Same config exactly on XP works like charm.
Still, I run a LOT of stuff on it, including a cygwin environment, retro DOS games, productivity software etc, and this would be the only compatibility issue I've encountered. Had I not, I'd be sitting here saying compatibility at all.
Bottom line: Security-wise, big step up. Maturity-wise, probbably still crap, bu
-
I kept 2000 on my machines; I'd try XP every once in a while but always switch back. I finally succumbed to XP-ization as newer drivers and hardware are going for it. I'm not happy one bit with it, especially the product activation. I don't see any reason why Vista will be different. What I really wanted was 2000 with 64 bit support and newer drivers, but that's just a dream. I have a copy of XP-64 around here somewhere, it'll make a nice coaster as support for it has practically stopped.
I have run Ubuntu for a month as my main OS, it's made great strides from the days of Redhat 5; the first Linux distro I tried. However it still needs work as an update can screw up a perfectly good system, but then we've that with Windows for years. I'm hearing a lot of good stuff about 7.04, when it's been about a few weeks and the worst of the teething troubles are through I think I'll have another go at it.
As for why I haven't just left it all behind and gone to Linux already, it's DAM--Drivers, Apps, and Maintenance. Windows is easier for me to figure out and I have a few apps I haven't gotten working in Wine. One in particular has it's own !?!?@ activation, so I can't play around and experiment seeing what will work. However, I quit Microsoft Office and Explorer years ago for Firefox and Open Office, going completely to Linux is looking more appealing.
Exactly. Never bother with Microsoft software until Service Pack 2. Maybe experiencing a lot of pain will earn you a higher place in heaven, but you would have to die to take advantage of that.
Bill Gates is software's Dr. Death.
--
Remarkable Occurrences Involving the Bush Family
I was talking to my boss about "ain't no Vista of no view" and he informed me that our primary product running SCO and XP is switched to Linux form the vendor and Vista ain't no matter no mo'. It seems he was all too taken aback by his heroes in Redmond when they released the pig shit bomb that is Vista. Then he asked if I was upgrading at home, I said no I was working on porting everything to Linux now. That pretty much sealed the fate of Vista for our highest grossing ($$$) product line. There does 100 servers, no chance of Windows Servers and app. servers of one kind or another there now, and 900 desktops which are moving from NT and XP to Linux of some kind.
Thanks for the info, that is almost certainly the reason. (You mean, Microsoft planned something and actually got it RIGHT?)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
One strange bug (or should that be 'feature') I've noticed with Vista is with its granting of admin privileges. It's well known that Vista runs apps without admin privileges by default, which is a good thing, that happens to break a few apps. But somehow there's a difference between:
- Running with UAC off (ie. always running as Admin)
- Right clicking and selecting run as Administrator
- Setting "run with Admin privileges" in the shortcut's properties
and
- Settings "run with Admin privileges" on the compatibility tab in the shortcut's properties
The difference? Who knows, but the Sony Ericsson Update Service refuses to run under Vista if you grant it admin privileges via the first three methods. The last method, strangely enough, works perfectly.
If Microsoft wants to tell me what the difference is between admin privileges and "compatible" admin privileges, I'd love to hear it.
Time for another Windows vs. Linux Total Cost of Ownership Study.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Anyone notice the article was about how Vista 'automatically' works around most incompatibilities even for badly written software?
Instead everyone here replying is going from the out of context pull quote or not even reading the article.
Almost everything mentioned in the article talks about what is different in Vista, and then goes on to explain how Vista tries to work around 99% of these incompatibilities - AUTOMATICALLY.
Sure Vista changed a lot in comparison to XP, so the fact that people think Vista isn't different than XP or applications run as well as they is quite remarkable.
Just a short list of major rewritten portions: Video subsystem, Printing subsystem, inter process communications, new intelligent audio stack, network stack, xaml based language from application to screen to printer, etc etc..
In our labs we have very few applications that break under Vista or require Admin Rights to run at all. And this is a number like 10 out of a few thousand we have tested.
Out of the thousands of applications we run and have tested for our environments, half of the ones that did have compatibility problems MS itself released Vista updates to allow the 3rd party applications to run properly, even though they were coded improperly, had bugs, or have no concept of security.
I dare any OS to support as many applications as Vista and not break a few bad applications along the way from the XP upgrade. When facing this challenge, remember Vista has a full BSD subsystem and can run 99% of all the *nix apps in addition to the DOS and Windows base.
XP allowed applications to do stuff MS should never have allowed that created performance and security risks, and Vista finally draws the line in the sand for developers so they have to learn about security and writing applications properly.
For every broken application, I give MS a kudos for finally stopping crap from doing stuff it shouldn't.
PS - Anyone running Windows, run a free anti-virus application, Norton and McAfee cause more performance problems and dig into the OS in areas they should never touch. If your XP or Vista installation on a computer made in the last 5 years takes more than 30secs to boot, you have hardware problems or crap like Norton or McAfee installed.
After reading all the Slashdot comments about how Vista is a catastrophy, breaks compatability et al, and getting a new laptop from Hp when they were running some pretty good discounts on Vista Ultimate and Intel hardware (at somepoint I was going to have to use vista anyway, i was considering either fighting linux onto it nVidia card, or rolling back to 2k). Well a funny thing happened. I fell in love with Vista. Soooo now I'm in a position where I really want to get along, haven't had any kind of problem, and even sorta started to like Office 2007 (trial use OO 2.2), but I still read all this about poor compatability. So I've started going back to my not so stable games library. Randomly, they've been more stable on Vista than they were out of the box the first time around. What's really bizaar is some under the compatibility modes start to pick up behaviors that I used to hate. Now they don't necessarily work perfectly (one doesn't quit nicely), but they do seem to work better.
Yeah, I agree 100%. I thought MS should offer to help update major software for free just to get out versions to customers so they do update to vista. Maybe they could afford it, maybe not. Time will tell.
Ben
damn... a "loose-loose" situations? sounds like my ex-wife!
1. The install procedure went fine. None of my storage devices required external drivers (for the record, they didn't in Windows XP either). The system was up, running and basically functional after I got to my desktop. First problem: SoundBlaster Live! is not officially supported. Fortunately, I had been using kX Project drivers before, so I installed those. Remember to find the latest version on the forums, as the site pages haven't been updated in a while (and thus link to older drivers that don't work in Windows Vista).
2. I haven't had an opportunity to test wireless out a whole lot yet, because, well...Windows Vista does not include drivers for my old Linksys WUSB11 adapter. Neither does Linksys, it seems. Can't blame 'em, though. I installed the Windows XP drivers, and it still didn't work correctly. A workaround I stumbled upon: setting up the SSID and related information in Device Manager in the Properties for that specific device made it work. Sure I can't scan for networks, but it's not like a laptop.
3. When starting up X-chat for the first time, it didn't run. Why? MSVCR70.dll was not found. A few minutes of research told me that this was a VisualStudio runtime. I installed the appropriate runtime package from Microsoft.com and all was well.
4. I went to try out some of my games to perform a cursory observation to see whether or not Windows Vista actually slowed games down or not, I went to start up Fable (before you cry "cop-out," I ran Half-Life 2 later). I was greeted with a missing DLL box. I can't remember what it was, but I knew it had to do with DirectX. After thinking about it for a minute, I remembered that DirectX 10 was packaged with Windows Vista. After some more research (and by that I mean Wikipedia), I dug up some information on an add-on for DirectX 10 that allows DirectX 9 (and presumably lower) programs to function. The best part is the fact that it was installable right from the DirectX web installer. Click-click, next, wiat, done.
Ok, so it was a short list. Some of the problems aren't even worth mentioning since A) they're cosmetic or B) they solved themselves after a short time. Every single one of my programs that wasn't explicitly designed for Windows XP and only Windows XP (an older copy of the ClearType Tuner installer comes to mind) worked right "out of the box," so to speak, sans any listed above. Note, however, that it's a small set of programs (Mozilla Firefox, Steam, Last.fm, Alcohol 120%, Winamp, VLC, X-chat, Synergy, Gaim, WinRAR, uTorrent, PeerGuardian 2, NOD32 and TrueCrypt), yet all of them work perfectly well. Now to address some concerns.
Yes, because I start it up, open Winamp and all of my MP3s disappeared. The FBI was at my door and...wait, none of that happened. This has to be the number one thing I hear from anti-Microsoft folks (and a number of Windows users who don't like to admit they can't figure out how to use Linux), and yet I've still yet to see anything in Windows Vista that resembles DRM that is noticably absent from Windows XP.
While I have no experience in the corporate world yet, my father works at TRW (now Northrop-Grumman). Guess how long it took them just to roll out Service Pack 2 for Windows XP? Hell, a couple of years ago, one of the company laptops my father was using at the time still had Windows 2000 on it.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I wish I could get that as a patch for XP or 2000. I've been manually doing this for years by carefully editing ACLs.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
I've heard interesting (aka not pleasant) things about running Office 2k on Vista... apparently there aren't any patches to fix those issues yet (other than forking out more money to buy office 2007).
Hell, I remember the same deal with XP. My *MICROSOFT* sidewinder gamepad (gameport variety) was not supported. Many other similar pieces of hardware (gameport joysticks etc) worked.
So if even Microsoft can't get their shit to work on their own newer OS's... how is anyone else supposed to manage?
My co-worker has a high-end gaming rig (dual-core processor, shitloads of RAM, dual PCI-Express video cards, etc). He can't get his games to work on Vista nearly as well as on XP. Even new ones, such as the new Command and Conquer, althought I'm not sure if the issue is that it outright don't work or that it doesn't work well enough to bother.
One, and on a side-note, I too had the evil issues with SBLive drivers, which is why I moved over to using Linux/Wine rather than XP for the most-part. However, I later found that the Open-Source XP drivers fixed that issue... although I'm happy to continue using a linux desktop as many other things are just less of a headache.
I was one of those suckers that went and upgraded to Vista Ultimate. One small thing was not mentioned however. Unlike Shakespeare's, "A rose by any other name...". Vista is not vista. Software that is "vista" ready is most likely vista 32 ready NOT 64bit ready. I upgraded to the 64bit version. In fact, I purchased an alienware AMD64x2 laptop a YEAR ago in anticipation of this 64 bit OS. Now I have an inoperable wireless card, a Digital Video converter than is inoperable until march... mmm april .... mmm who knows when the drivers will be released, 32bit apps that are broken and 64 bit apps that crash. Vista is not vista. So, if I'm not mistaken M$ is now got: XPHome, XPPro, XPPro64, vistaHomeBasic32, VistaBusiness32, VistahomePremium32, VistaEnterprise32, vistaHomeBasic64, VistaBusiness64, VistahomePremium64, VistaEnterprise64 + legacy and only real support for the Vista32 OS versions. Vista ready software? which version? This has got to be one of the most bungled launches I've seen from M$. Sure you expect bugs and drivers to lag a little but the "automatic" updates.... Security fixes! Not drivers or optimizers. Please, please please! make my life simpler not more confusing! Sometimes "choice" is not good. sometimes different names and logos are better when dealing with 32 vs. 64 bit OS. The name "Vista" is essentially meaningless. Pure marketing. Software Vista ready? Hah! Maybe M$ should have marketed the new OS as Macular degeneration, an OS for the ages.
Rant? No. Frustration? Yes
DNA, the splice of life.
That might not a bad idea. I could never figure out why MS couldn't build a VM or perhaps an intermediary layer of sorts to work with backwards compatability. Heck, if I can run windows programs on linux (Wine), or run a windows VM on linux/mac/whatever - or even a 32-bit environment under 63-bit OS... WTF Is preventing MS from making something similar to handle the legacy apps?
People have got to really stop quoting this guy as if he is speaking biblical truth.
He read some pre-release technical documentation, made some assumptions about how those would be implemented in the real world, then made some large logical leaps about how this hypothetical implementation would affect other tertiary industries/populations, and then wrote it all up as if it were fact.
It is not. Zero of his assertions are actually based on Vista. They are based on some technical documents that were written long before Vista was released, mostly targeted at external IHVs.
So he's never been bothered to go to the trouble to actually see if any of his hypothetical problems exist in the actual product.
So he's basically built up this huge mythical straw-man, which may or may not reflect reality, and then is trying to use it as an anti-clue-stick to beat people with.
... and i'm about to go back to XP today.
Why?
My Hardware is not supported and valuable software does not work.
Hardware:
I own a HP compaq nc6220 laptop with 2ghz cpu, 1GB memory and intel 915 graphics.
No WDDM Drivers for my graphics card, No Aero - No WoW effect.
Strangely, Sleep doesn't work either, so i've gotten used to hibernating all the time.
Bluetooth is acting strangely, canceling transfers etc..
Software:
I never got Rational License server running,
so i can't use Rose and other Rational software, because i can't get my licenses to work.
Also, we use IPSEC VPN at work, and damn it took a while to get a client working.
I think that the biggest problem for me is big HDD usage. Vista constantly touches something on HDD.
My laptop has a slow hard-drive and it really slows Vista down to crawl... XP feels twice as responsive.
And, as an extra quirk, more HDD and CPU usage means Less battery time.
But it's not all bad.
I love that all Copy progress windows have speed indicators.
I love that when i click the clock i get a calendar! Finally!
I also love that My Computer has HDD capacity indicators as Bars.
Voice Recognition was fun to play around, but it's only useful when you are alone and your hands are tied.
Just my 2 cents
PS: I've used Vista for 2 months straight now...
Now windows takes the simple owner/group/world + RWX much farther, and lets you set very powerful file/folder permissions for an arbitrary number of users/groups, rather than just the three.
But if you want to just use RWX on Owner and a single group, you're more than welcome to do that, its pretty trivial.
Fortunately I installed Vista Ultimate on a spare HD, and tested it in dual boot mode. I didn't enter the license because I planed on reinstalling in on the main HD once I was satisfied. I let the 30 days go, and haven't reinstalled it. The main reason is that they made it so that their OWN software, Active sync will not install on Vista. They want everyone to switch to a new product Windows Mobile Device Center(WMDC). Unfortunately, they made it so that WMDC will not work with Microsoft OS PDAs(PPCs) running any OS before 2003. So after I got Vista Ultimate, 1GB extra of ram, and need a new video card to get the new features to work, they want me to replace my PDA. I can't believe that MS Active sync, which the last version released Feb 2007 wasn't coded up to specs. What really makes makes MS look bad is that I have heard that PalmOS PDAs will all work with Vista. There is another thing to consider. It doesn't even matter if you get the newest Mobile OS that they will be releasing, OR get a phone with it. Since they have shown that they will cut off their old mobile OS's, who knows if they will work with the OS after Vista. Since I can't sync my MS OS PDA in Vista, I have stopped using it. It doesn't make me want to go to Vista, AND it makes me worried to get ANY PDA, or phone with an MS OS running on it.
They've implemented a half-assed attempt at security. The entire concept of the Program Files and the Windows Registry negates any kind of protections on writing to the disk that they may have, because so much depends on the almighty Registry, and the almighty Program Files.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
n/t
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
So your argument is that although theoretically Vista has all these weaknesses, the guy who wrote this paper hadn't actually observed them yet at the time, therefore they aren't there?
Wow, that's a pretty far stretch, particularly considering the number of people who do have a release version of Vista now and are seeing exactly the sorts of problems he predicted with performance, interoperability, etc.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Just two things.
In my heterogeneous home LAN, Vista betas up to RC2 broke SMB sharing (unable to connect to shares of some non-windows machines, something in SMB authentication must have changed). While issues with those non-windows machines may well be having a hand in it, the case seems to be no singularity as there were quite a couple of similar problems reported in conjunction with NAS boxes. (I don't think there were big changes there for the release version, or were they?)
Another thing is that they simply and completely dropped the messenger service ("net send"). While relying on it may never have exactly been a brilliant idea for the app developer in the first place, I'm running at least two important apps relying on it with no easy way out. (They didn't put it back in for the final release, did they?)
I won't talk about the fact that Vista up to RC2 was unbearably slow on all machines I tried it on, all of them not really new, but none having any problems with other systems including but not restricted to XP and the latest flavors of Linux, or with any of the apps I run.
There were lots of other at-least-annoying compatibility issues with legacy apps I did not investigate into too much. I simply hope I'll find ways to get along without Vista for the foreseeable future.
Quit whining. Slashdot is a site for people on the cutting edge compiling the latest source for obscure drivers and inconsistent quasi-working desktop apps. For this crowd to complain about Vista because of the quantity of certified apps that run on it is ridiculous. I've been running it since November, and while the developer issues are annoying, it's not that big a deal. Microsoft can do no right in the eyes of the slashdot crowd and that's sad. The only thing I've found that I have a problem with about Vista and the XBox360 is that they won't play divx movies out of the box and transcode 360 fucked up my shit.
Codeweavers' Crossover Office works great for running Microsoft Office and a number of other apps under Linux. I've got Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, all running under Linux without virtualizing Windows. However, I also have to say that the OpenOffice apps are excellent and I am moving more and more over to them instead of the Microsoft offerings.
Getting off the Microsoft treadmill can be done - quite well.
Microsoft has been wasting boatloads of resources on just maintaining backward compatibility with bugs and misbehaving applications
Is that really true? It's been accepted as conventional wisdom for quite a long time, but it's starting to sound more and more like something you'd like to put on snopes.com.
I'm sure they've been asked on more than one occasion to maintain retarded backwards compatibility with some things, but it sounds like a drop in the ocean quite frankly. It doesn't really explain the massive amounts of screw-ups and undocumented nonsense that for instance the WINE project has uncovered. Blaming backwards compatibility for all their ills seems to be just a lame excuse by now, because every new iteration of windows has broken an awful lot of programs and where exactly is the benefit?
Perhaps most damningly to MS is the fact that when they do completely break backwards compatibility, the end result is not very impressive. We certainly don't gain any security or stability from it, I think Vista has already proved that quite convincingly. So I'm no longer willing to take their word for it when they say that compatibility is to blame.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity. -Isaac Asimov
Ubuntu, Fedora or Mac OS X
Don't install Vista.
Hmmm, if it is completely gone, try WinPopup from win 9x. There is a chance that it will work again.
Of course games expect AT LEAST administrative access. This follows from the design of DirectX subsystems. When Microsoft asked game developers "What do you need to produce games for Windows", the developers responded with "driver support, and then GET OUT OF THE WAY".
Microsoft delivered. And this is NOW a problem. The answer was predicated by the hardware systems of the day. It may now be an issue. But, once more, the platform is closed, and compatibility is Microsofts issue (I won't repeat my previous argument). Microsoft should have provided "administrator minus" mode for these applications.
It is not the fault of the developers for writing applications that meet "best practices" of the day. If the systems were open, these could be updated. But if closed systems are used, other ways of continuing to run these applications is needed.
Personally, I sandbox Windows in VMware containers. I consider that "current best practice". But then, I don't run games. Current best practice for that is a separate machine.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Yeah, I got a deal breaker for Vista. I'm a network administrator and we have Exchange server. The mmc snap-in (admin tools) that allow me to change exchange settings on mailbox doesn't work in vista. I can't administrate Microsoft server software on vista, which is absolutely ridiculous! The only solution they have at preseant time is quote: "Work on exchange through Terminal Service" and the rumor is it won't be fixed to SP1 for Vista. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931903/en-us
I'm sorry, but that's just plain wrong. In order to execute 16-bit code, Win32 puts the i386 processor into virtual 8086 mode, which provides some virtualized hardware support. It's only available when the CPU is already running in protected mode. V86 is not a full native virtualization (i.e., it doesn't provide i386 on i386 virtualization), but it's enough to provide a virtual environment to run 16-bit code. This has to be done because most 16-bit code violates the requirements needed to execute under the i386 protected mode model.
Virtual 8086 mode is not supported under long mode ("64-bit mode"), so it just isn't possible with a native 64-bit OS. You need a 32-bit OS running in i386 protected mode to get V86 mode.
Please have some idea of what you're talking about before posting.
References:
Intel 80386 Reference Programmer's Manual
Chapter 15 - Virtual 8086 Mode
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2006/readings/i38
Virtual 8086 Mode
by Tim Robinson
http://osdev.berlios.de/v86.html
An Introduction to 64-bit Computing and x86-64
by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes for ArsTechnica
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-4.h
http://foldoc.org/index.cgi?virtual+86+mode
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
and the copyrights, too.
So why should they get away with taking your property? Why should they tell you "no, you can't recompile for the new OS because we can't be arsed".
Why do you have such low reading comprehension?
--- Just say no to negativity.
to use Vista. Nothing like M$ shooting themselves in the foot. Did they really think people would want a home version of warmed over 2k3, when are they going to stop retreading? Might as well learn Linux folks, its getting easier to use and more reliable than Windhose by the day. =D
Will Linux ever mature? I hope so because I really don't want a Mac. =l
I hear that a lot. I almost never hear what pieces.
Umm, I guess it's shiny. As if I care. There's UAC, which is both terrible for security (Pavlov himself couldn't have devised a better way to train people to mindlessly click "Allow") and highly inconvenient. Yeah, you can turn it off. That makes it approximately one iota better, lovely.
Bitlocker? Funny that, but TrueCrypt has been out for ages. And free. Oh, and it's going to make it hard to use any backup program other than Microsoft's. But I'm sure that will be more convenient, right?
Stability? XP is doing just fine. Vista barfs on almost every application that isn't brand new and written with Vista in mind. Installing iTunes will probably hose the system. Given all the Comes v. Microsoft documents I've seen, including where they talk about creating deliberate incompatibilities, I can no longer dismiss any problems with competitors' flagship products as indeliberate.
So where's the compelling reason to upgrade? Other than the fact that we'll eventually be forced into it artificially? Yes, I know there will come a time when the Vista-ized apps won't work on XP any more. I'm not dumb enough to think that it will be by anything but design (DX 10 is already doing that for games). You can get the business apps over by converting office documents to new, incompatible formats that no longer work on XP, too. Yeah, smart governments are going for ODF, but we've seen how Microsoft is fighting that tooth and nail. God forbid anyone want an open standard that's implementable by anyone other than Microsoft (you do NOT put backwards compatibility into the first version of a NEW standard, period; conversion applications handle that, NEVER file formats).
Now answer me this: Why all the sudden Vista fanboyishness? Last story, you hardly heard a peep. Now they're out in force. Maybe I'm paranoid, but as someone who HAS suffered the hell that is Vista, I'm having a hard time believing that everyone here just happened to have an easy upgrade when I'm seeing built-for-Vista machines choking at every turn.
As for fair disclosure, I do not work for Microsoft or any of their competitors. I'm not saying you do, but I have this sneaking feeling that not all of those who have suddenly seen the light about Vista can say the same.
Thanks for the suggestion, but it won't work, as it's simply a GUI frontend for the messenger service API, which isn't there anymore (which is what said apps are relying on as well)...
"I am sure there are many small application makers out there who are really struggling to get the mess of Vista Security sorted out. I guess these guys are too small to even register on M$ radar but I try to support them when they have the sort of app I use regularly." - by RotateLeftByte (797477) on Sunday April 15, @01:15PM (#18742377)
v ermakesgooglehappy.html
.NET & Visual Studio in Mr. Anders Heijelsberg now of MS, formerly of Borland in fact), because nowadays I am concentrating solely on .NET (VB.NET &/or ASP.NET solely because "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" & today, replace IBM with Microsoft imo & experience thusfar in this field (since 1994 as a pro)).
Ha! I recently went thru that which you speak of in that quote of your words above myself & with an app I designed back from the Win9x days, that functioned as it was designed on 9x & just fine, on all iterations of the NT-based OS series by MS!
(NT 4.0 -> 2000 -> XP -> Server 2003, & thru each of their services packs, application security protection notwithstanding (Data Execution Prevention for ALL files, vs. ONLY protecting key Windows processes only, etc. et al))
It happened on VISTA recently with this app:
"APK REGISTRY CLEANING ENGINE 2002++ SR-7"
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/389/foowhate
Like "Wayne & Garth" said (UNIX book in garth's hand iirc) in their film? "WE FEAR CHANGE!" & I don't know about other coders, but @ times, I actually do. It means learning time & turn-around time as well as new toolsets & api calls. Iirc, VISTA has like 7000 new APIs in total sum to master... I may be off on the number, but the point's there!
(See, I quit developing shareware/freeware over 4 years now, nearly 5, moving solely to dedicating my time to work related tasks, & learning more about this field. Freeware/Shareware was a good route to learning, but not exactly the way to monies we need to survive in & of itself... the doing of it was for me, to learn more than IS/IT/MIS info. systems doing database app type work & scripting coding (as you doubtless know, used in networking mostly on the latter).
Anyhow, I was NOT looking forward to having to load Delphi 7.0 again (love it, great stuff, same designer as
Turns out that MS has tools built into the OS to make it work just fine, and I needed NO recompile for VISTA, great news to me!
Anyways, in summation in regard to your words I quoted?
Believe it or not, Microsoft HAD "little ole' me" me on their "radar" for this app, since I had Windows in the name and as part of a suite of freewares I did no less, not even shareware when they hassled me on it...
(and I am not a major name in this field, just a journeyman coder really, trying to keep up & learning all the time really & I think I can 'get the job done' but at times it IS a struggle for me, I am NOT a 'natural' @ this field as I feel others I know are)
ALL in all? I was a BIT surprised, but it was no big deal, because I like MS and admire what they have accomplished is why (a baby hercules of an OS in the NT-based family is out there raising hell on UNIX's & its derivants, as well as BigIron IBM stuff like Os400 & z-OS series too, & I admire that greatly, since this OS family only has 1/3'rd the time & refinement those have had roughly iirc).
Ms gave me a toolset to learn on, to earn with, so how the heck could I get angry about it? They changed my life, for the better largely (except that I am a major workaholic & learnaholic... you have to be to compete & stay current nowadays I feel & especially in this field (computer sciences)).
APK
...and more reliable than Windows by the day. Nothing like a Linux geek to make an ignorant comment. Did you really think people would believe Vista is a warmed-over version of 2k3, when almost all of the code was re-written from ground up? Might as well stop being ignorant dude, you Microsoft-bashers ae running out of excuses and lame annd ignorant arguments and getting more ridiculous by the day. =D