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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.
Damn, beaten to it... :-)
Seriously, why would any organisation upgrade to Windows Vista if it wasn't pretty sure all of its key software would work? It's amazing how many people seem to think there's some sort of obligation on people to upgrade. In fact, if you look at recent history, the big corporations are usually the last people to move on major upgrades like XP->Vista, often taking several years to do it. This is why.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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
You mean like the muppet who wrote this article?
I picked up Vista because i'm an upgrade whore, and after running it for a month or so, I'm generally disappointed. I gained some flashy visual effects (my Macbook is still prettier) but I'm really sick of all the incompatibilities. I'd tend to blame the 3rd parties, but hell; even Visual Studio 2005 had issues that were only recently fixed. I'm still waiting for my logitech keyboard app to stop tanking on bootup (new drivers due end of April? WTF?).
Basically I'm using it now as a media center host for my 360... which media center 2005 was doing just fine. I think this whole experience is just pushing me farther towards dumping windows altogether when I'm at home.
Jeremy
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.
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.
"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/
- 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%.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.
Don't bother with Vista at the moment. Let some other muppet sort out the pain.
One problem is for software developers, even hobbyest software developers. Without Vista, it's difficult to make sure an application works properly on Vista...so we're eventually forced to upgrade to Vista because users will have Vista, and as the number of Vista users grows, that will become more and more of a problem...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
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)
You go ahead and hunker for me.
I'm sticking with XP until Ubuntu Studio works for me, or Microsoft relents and makes an OS I can use. Or I can run OSX on the machine I build.
I've decided my days of hunkering down for Microsoft, Apple, telcos or the RIAA are over. If more consumers got wise, it might be their turn to hunker down and serve our needs instead of the other way around.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hi there twitter! Let's play Debunk The Zealot!
Disable your old media? That article relates to Zune, not Vista. Try again.
Keep you from modifying your kernel? Well, the first response would be "well, it's closed source, what the hell do you expect?" But playing along, those protections would be ideal for keeping rootkits out of home PCs...but of course, Microsoft is between a rock and a hard place with you. They're insecure and buggy, but if they do something about it, they're trampling on your rights. Let's ignore that you can, on boot, disable disabling unsigned drivers for a second.
You didn't even cite anything for your trip bits stuff, so moving on to your last thing...you linked to a Zune article again. Not Vista, Zune. This is like me slagging off Fedora munching my data and then linking to an article about Ubuntu munching my data. Which I'm sure you'd be against.
Then, apropos of nothing, you link to a Slashdot article entitled "What Vista Is Really Like" (which at first glance appears to be another "OMG VISTA SUX" Slashdot circle jerk) and another classic link to your new favourite article, the "nobody wants Vista" article (which consists of a notoriously-unreliable online poll with a tiny sample size...do you realise how many Windows users there are, and how small a percentage of them 2223 people is?) Finishing up with a classic twitter "Let me tell it like it is" paragraph, complete with M$ (nothing about "greed heads" though-I love it when you say that, it makes you sound like a hippie.) Wonderful.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
From a business prospective there is zero reason to plan any moves to Vista in the near future. What gains will they get? NONE.
You mis-use that word. Vista has a modest slew of bits and pieces that really are worthwhile. When I was using the beta, I went through a two-week period when every tech problem I ran into immediately made me think of a vista feature that would make it easier.
Vista really does do things that Windows did not do previously -- if it didn't, there wouldn't be the incompatibilities that are so rampant. Saying that there is NO benefit is just plain old FUD, and lets a proprietary-software shill get the client to dismiss OSS out of hand.
"It's amazing how many people seem to think there's some sort of obligation on people to upgrade."
There's no obligation to upgrade to the latest version of Windows in much the same way that there's no obligation to pay any money to the nice gentleman visiting who would very much like your store to not accidentally burn down next weekend.
You can hold out from upgrading, and in return you can be guaranteed the following services:
* your documents will slowly stop being able to be read by other people since you don't have a current MS Office
* the software you use will slowly not be supported by the manufacturer since you don't have a current OS
* your OS will stop getting security patches and thus will become infested by worms and trojans, possibly making you criminally liable
* your hardware, when it fails and needs replacing (and the warranty probably only lasts for three years) quite possibly won't work on your current OS - and if it does, OEM licensing may make it illegal for you to continue to run your current OS
Yep, absolutely zero obligation.
Nice merchandise you have here, by the way. Shame if bit-rot were to set in, ain't it?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
(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
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