Internet Explorer 10 Drops Vista Support

Pigskin-Referee writes "This week at Microsoft's MIX11 Web developer conference, the company surprised many by making a pre-release version of Internet Explorer 10 available — less than a month after IE9 came out in its final form. But another surprise was uncovered by Computerworld's Gregg Keizer: the next IE won't run on any OS before Windows 7, including Vista. Microsoft took some heat when it came out that Internet Explorer 9 would leave millions of Windows XP users in the lurch, as the new browser would only run on Windows 7 and Vista. But the company confirmed that IE10 won't even run on Vista."

Comments

This is the best thing they can do.

[Mage Powers]

Great marketing for alternative browsers :^)

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[PsychoSlashDot]

Great marketing for alternative browsers :^)

There's an implication beyond "Vista support is dropped", which considering the number of companies that avoided Vista on the desktop itself isn't a big deal... Server 2008 support is also dropped. R2 is the Win7 kernel so that's still valid, but my users on Terminal Servers as little as three years old won't have access to the next IE version.

Think beyond your desktop and consider that much of the corporate ecosystem "supports" IE. I've got clients who need - through no choice of their own - to access partner sites that are only officially supported on IE. For many of them, alternative browsers aren't something I can recommend, sadly. Now we're also being told our future with IE is... "OS upgrades".

Thanks Microsoft. Dropping XP is understandable. Vista/2k8 is too soon.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[rbrausse]

afaik Ubuntu - like Windows Vista - is not a supported platform for IE10. Why should Microsoft's decision push the usage of alternative OS?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[gcnaddict]

That's not a valid implication.The installer would and does do SKU checks, not just kernel version checks, so it's easily possible that it can still be installed on Server 2008 and that it can be tweaked to be installed on Vista as well.

What Microsoft is announcing is effectively a lack of support for Vista, so even if it can be tweaked to be installed on Vista, Microsoft wouldn't offer any support for it.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[clang_jangle]

In seriousness, this is the best thing they could do. The debacle that has been backwards compatibility of windows and ie in there various combinations has been horrible. Best thing to do is get all those grotty old windows/ie users upgraded. They are like people who drive around on modern rounds in clapped out unsafe jalopies. (oblig car analogy)

Yes, with their turn signal on!

I think it's encouraging news that they're finally going to let go of legacy stuff, that really is the root of so many issues. They really have to draw the line sometime.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[derGoldstein]

Except that Vista is extremely close to Win7 in terms of infrastructure. Win7 is basically a polished, non-glacial-speed Vista. Even MS admits that (or at least they did a few months after Win7 was out). So you've got one of the worst windows releases in the history of the company, and now people who've paid for it get left behind because *now* MS decides to be backwards-compatible?

It's like screwing people who've paid for Vista all over again -- "look, we gave you a break with IE9, but let's face it, that PC deserves a better OS than that piece of crap... Here, we'll make IE10 a Win7-and-up and really drive home how stupid you were for buying that OS... From US".

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[cyber-vandal]

Not for those of us who will now need to add a Vista VM to our 3 XP VMs to make sure that our websites look right in IE6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Technician]

That is exactly what I was thinking. They are not left in the lurch. IE 10 is likely to get left behind when it becomes an also ran in distant 3rd behind Firefox and Chrome. Maybe a 4th behind Safari, but that is pushing it.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[MightyMartian]

I'm a little confused as to the limitation at all. Under the hood, Vista and Windows 7 are pretty damned close to each other. I can't really think of an architectural reason for this limitation. At least I'm unaware of any vast difference under the hood between the two operating systems, mainly some UI differences, some speeding up (although Vista with SP2 isn't too bad) and some extra goodies like VM tacked on to some of the editions. They pretty much can run on the same hardware, and I've heard some reports that Windows 7 is less resource intensive than Vista.

Other than perhaps trying to egg people still running Vista to bump up I don't see the point. We've got a ton of Vista machines, many of them the Business Edition, and I'm sure not paying a couple of hundred bucks a pop just to run IE10.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[clang_jangle]

No, you watch. Two years tops and win7 will be "legacy". That's obviously what they want, and who can blame them? They've long had the potential to make an OS competent enough to far surpass their commercial offerings thus far. The bugaboo holding them back has always been backward compatibility. Now that we're probably about to enter an era where most CPUs will have four or more cores the time is right for them to drop the legacy support, in spite of the inevitable kicking and screaming. This users won't be happy with machines old enough to run XP or Vista for much longer anyway.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[wmbetts]

Because 2011 is the year of the Linux desktop!

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that. There are now 3 newer versions of IE out - supporting 10 year old browser technology on any site is a waste of time and effort.

Users can be educated to upgrade their browsers - there is simply no excuse anymore. At all.

This is exactly what I tell my clients - no the site will not look good in IE 6. I will not support it.

Know what? I haven't lost any clients because I could prove with analytics that IE 6 is dying.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[peragrin]

screwing users over with Vista is like screwing over users with windows ME.

if you feel guilty you should go see a shrink. If they complain they should go see one.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[maugle]

That's not a valid implication.The installer would and does do SKU checks, not just kernel version checks, so it's easily possible that it can still be installed on Server 2008 and that it can be tweaked to be installed on Vista as well. What Microsoft is announcing is effectively a lack of support for Vista, so even if it can be tweaked to be installed on Vista, Microsoft wouldn't offer any support for it.

Oh yeah. Running tweaked, unsupported applications. That's the sort of thing businesses love.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[rbrausse]

we need a more generic approach, I'm tired of relearning the slogan every couple of hundred days.

what about "2000, the millenium of the Linux desktop!"?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[derGoldstein]

Erm.... I meant to write "NON-backwards-compatible" up there.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Local ID10T]

I take it you have never written bad code?

Vista sucked. They learned a lot from it, and built something MUCH better (Win 7). MS doesn't want to waste the dev time to make their new browser work correctly with Vista -so they decided not to.

Gert over it, and move on.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Vectormatic]

hell, you might even argue that anyone currently still running vista is somehwat of a masochist, who WANTS to be screwed by MS..

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[cyber-vandal]

Know what. Your clients are not representative of all Windows users, some of whom are trapped on IE6 due to corporate reliance on apps that will only run on that terrible POS. In any case even if you're right I will still need to support IE7, IE8, IE9 and IE10 for similar reasons.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[hairyfeet]

Oh please! You think they wish to commit suicide? What do you think keeps people locked into Windows? It is all the time and money they have invested in legacy applications that's what! If I can't run my old Windows apps, what is to keep me from buying that new iShiny or even that cheaper Linux box? Why not a thing!

After all they can ALL surf the web, only the Apple has more style and intuitiveness, while the Linux box is cheaper. So the ONLY thing MSFT has going for them is the billions of dollars in programs that run ONLY on Windows.

Now if you were to say "they are gonna figure out a seamless way to VM all those apps" I might agree with you, except so far we haven't seen anything of the sort. But to kill the golden goose that is backwards compatibility? Never!

As for TFA, I think this is a sign MSFT will soon be giving up the "browser wars". After all they aren't making any money on IE, being locked in to IE has been gone since Firefox, and with the exception of corporate IE has become "that thing you use to download Firefox/Chrome". By tying specific versions to specific OSes they have made sure IE will be so fragmented nobody will write for it anyway, so they might as well say "This is what you use to download Chrome/Firefox, we'll plug any glaring obvious holes, but other than that tough luck, its a tech demo for MSR".

Because last I checked while Win 7 has passed XP in the USA, the world map still has XP at nearly 50%, and another 17% for Vista. That is 67% of the world market that can't use your product but can use your competitors and if that isn't giving up I don't know what is. Unless there is someone over at MSFT so stoned they actually think they can get people to spend $100+ on a new OS just by dangling a new IE? If so can I have some, that must be some good shit.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Belial6]

Within 12 months of buying VirtualPC, "backward compatibility" was no longer a valid excuse for MS.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Chris Mattern]

Why? IE 9 runs fine on 7. IE 8 runs fine on 7 *and* XP. If your only concern is being able to run all the browsers, you don't need Vista.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[saleenS281]

Screwing them over? When purchasing windows Vista, I don't recall getting a disclaimer stating that I would get free browser updates from Microsoft for a set number of years. Since when are you entitled to new versions of IE, just because you bought their OS?

Try downloading Safari 5 for OSX 10.4. Let me know how that goes for you.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Belial6]

Honestly, dropping XP is even questionable. You don't start counting an OS's death from the date it was first introduced, you do it from the date that it was last sold. MS was still selling new copies of XP in 2009. This is only 2 years ago. Combined with the fact that Vista was basically still born and MS knew it (making it not a real option for many), dropping XP support in IE is basically telling their customers that they don't really support their OS for more than 2 years.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[tomhudson]

Microsoft is doing everything they can to force businesses to upgrade before April 8th, 2014. That's when they finally pull the plug - again - on XP. Not that the magic bits on disk will suddenly stop working, but they know their market-sheeple.

They want you to upgrade asap, because the longer businesses delay, the more likely that other devices - tablets in particular - will replace an increasing share of desktops.

Desktop sales are down in absolute numbers, and this has Microsoft scared. Every seat that discards a Windows license for an iPad, for example, is one more MS-Office license lost as well, not just this round, but probably forever.

Given that next year, there will be more devices shipped with linux variants (eg, Android) than either iOS, OSX, or Windows, it might not be the year of the linux desktop, but it WILL be the year linux. Anyone they don't lock in over the next year or two is a lost cause.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[ilsaloving]

Considering that you can have only one version of IE installed on a system at once, you were going to have to do that anyway.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[SpryGuy]

I disagree. "corporate users" are the only ones trapped on IE6, and so they can just find some way to use that on their coporate LANs. There is no requirement they use IE6 at home or anywhere else. If it's such an issue, the corporation can either pay to upgrade the sites, or pay for their customers to have VMs that run IE6 to access their legacy sites. Or you can just install FireFox or Chrome next to IE6 and use one for legacy sites, and the other for everything else.

The vast majority of people have no NEED to use IE6, and the vast majority of web developers have no need to support IE6. In fact, I's say there is ZERO requirement for ANY web developer to EVER support IE6 at this point. Anyone who says otherwise is making excuses or lying.

And there's no need to support IE7 either. Because it's such an easy, pain-free upgrade from that to IE8, and there aren't any sites out there that REQUIRE IE7 in the way that some coporate sites require IE6. IE8's "compatability mode" is "good enough".

So you're just wrong here. You only need to suppot IE8 and IE9 right now. Period. Once IE10 comes out, you will only NEED to support IE9 and IE10 (IE 9's compatibility mode is "good enough" for any site quirky enough to run only in IE8).

Every web developer just needs to put their foot down on IE6 support (and now IE7). Period. Even MS wants developers to do this. Nobody should code to, or test on IE6 any more, period. It's a complete waste of time and money and effort. Just stop it.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[0123456]

No, you watch. Two years tops and win7 will be "legacy". That's obviously what they want, and who can blame them?

I'm sure software developers will just love having to develop software that runs on four different versions of Windows.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[clang_jangle]

A lot of the function of windows "legacy apps" have been migrated to online services -- Windows Live -- heard of it? There are fewer reasons every month for them to continue legacy support. The unspoken reason a lot of windows geeks will be upset is that XP is *much* easier to keep running cracked. There are lots of win7 cracks, but most of them are botnet schemes and microsoft does catch the unauthorized copies and then you need a different crack. So windows "pirates" will be very unhappy because the actual, practical end is in sight, and it will roughly sync with microsoft's EOL for XP. I'll bet microsoft even studied the Mac Classic to OS X transition and learned the lessons.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[jonbryce]

There is a disclaimer about how many years you get Windows updates for, and Windows updates includes Internet Explorer as it is supposed to be an integral part of the operating system.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[The End Of Days]

Actually, Microsoft makes the rules about how long support for their products last. I'm not sure where your rules even came from, but they have no applicability to this situation... or I suspect anything.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[clang_jangle]

Oh, and I forgot to mention -- for the consumer market all they need to do is make IE10 the only browser that works with netflix and pay a few game developers to provide some exclusive win8 titles and practically overnight most people will upgrade.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[westlake]

Great marketing for alternative browsers :^)

"Runs well on Windows XP." (RTM August 2001)
"Runs well on Windows Vista." (RTM November 2006)

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[arth1]

And there's no need to support IE7 either. Because it's such an easy, pain-free upgrade from that to IE8

Except for on Vista. IE8 and 9 have broken high DPI support. This becomes a real problem in Vista, where the Sidebar doesn't use DPI scaling like it does in W7. The end result is that if you have high DPI in Vista, you can't upgrade to IE8 (or 9) without even the standard gadgets freaking out -- the easiest to spot symptom is a magenta border around some of the gadgets, but a more severe one is Explorer crashing.

What boggles the mind is how Microsoft went out with a call to developers to be high DPI aware, and how to avoid problems. And then they completely ignored their own advice when going from IE7 to IE8.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

Yeah - if they gave windows 7 away FOR FREE to make up for the crime of making people pay for those "unsafe jalopies" then you might have a point. This sounds sorta like extortion.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[SpryGuy]

I did not know that. It's not something I ever experienced (I ran IE8 on Vista for years without any issue, so I guess my standard displays, though big and high-resolutioney) weren't "high DPI".

But then again, upgrading Vista to Win7 is pretty fast and easy... the only pain point being the cost (just over a hundred bucks)... and I've upgraded all my systems to Win7 at this point.

Perhaps this is a reason that they're dropping Vista for IE10?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[lulwhut]

I agree with this post.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[nabsltd]

I ran IE8 on Vista for years without any issue, so I guess my standard displays, though big and high-resolutioney weren't "high DPI".

It's the "small but high resolution" that are "high DPI". I have a laptop with a 16" 1920x1080 screen, which works out to 137 DPI.

Standard desktop displays (even large ones) are around 100 DPI. So, what happens on the smaller display is that text of the same point size uses more pixels, and many developers don't account for that. For example, dialog boxes that are fixed in size at 600x400 will have the text run off the edges, because text that takes up 500 pixels wide at 100 DPI will require 685 pixels at 137 DPI. This is caused because text size in Windows is defined in terms of inches (actually, units of 1/1440 of an inch), not pixels.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[kevinmenzel]

And the way that Windows knows the pixels per inch calculation is a user setting. I suppose it is possible that some laptop manufacturers have released their systems in such a way that they assume the user would automatically want to specify a different DPI setting than the default assumed what 72? 96? dpi that has no actual relevance to real world, and is just a basic assumption that "kind of works", and really matters mostly if you want to ensure that 100% zoom in your programs is precisely relevant to a real world 100% size of some thing that you are designing. Obviously very small interface elements on very high resolution screens will be unusable based on this default assumption. But just because the display physically is high dpi doesn't mean that windows cares about that, or will automatically adjust everything based on that, or that you can't turn that off. You might wish to not turn that off because it is of benefit to your situation to have some DPI aware scaling applied, but it is not the general use case - at the moment - for Windows, as much as we might wish that it were. Oh and yes, Microsoft should be doing things to make their internal applications work properly in various scenarios.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[marcello_dl]

All right, vista vs. its post-beta release called 7 has a so different API that porting a browser raises significant issues of backward compatibility... or maybe leaving customers of older version with older browsers makes a LOT of sense from a marketing point of view for MS and for hardware makers?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[marcello_dl]

But defining font size using pixels in CSS, doesn't that work? That would be disappointing.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blog.hishamrana.com/2009/07/30/windows-7-activation-spoofed-not-cracked-via-slic-2-1-and-oem-master-key

So you have a manufacturer's signed SLIC table in the BIOS. Inside Windows you install a certificate to validate that table (e.g. from Acer or Toshiba). Then you use the appropriate serial key for your SKU version (not tied to mfgr).

This is why OEM machines can be wiped and reinstalled and have no activation problems. The OEM's custom install disc runs a batch file installing the cert and serial. It was identical in Windows Vista and the non-morons have been doing it since 2007.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/20810-Activation-solution-comparison
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/5952-Win-7-amp-Server-08-R2-SLIC-2.1-Bin-Collection
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/10370-Windows-7-OEM-SLP-Key-Collection

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[jimicus]

Because you can't run have than one version of IE installed simultaneously. So as a web dev, you'd spend much of your time upgrading and downgrading browsers rather than actually developing for the web.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[mario_grgic]

There isn't much left any more that runs only on Windows these days. Mac OS X runs everything from Adobe, it has great driver support, Camera manufacturers make RAW image software for it, and there are apps for pretty much anything. If you are a student or like tinkering with programming all tools are available out of the box, and things are so much simpler to get and get going (wget, uzip, make, make install). Really the only think keeping users locked into Windows is ignorance these days

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Dachannien]

What really keeps people locked into Windows is that it comes pre-installed on virtually all the cheap machines out there.

Linux could theoretically compete, relying on Ubuntu's ease of use, except that Canonical seems hell-bent on breaking everything that they haven't broken yet about Ubuntu. Oh, and there aren't dozens of crapware makers willing to pay computer vendors to have their crippled trial crapware pre-installed on Linux boxes.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[mabhatter654]

we all know they bought VirtualPC to move Xbox games to Xbox360... the Windows team has probably never touched it.

Microsoft's Windows is decidedly un-modular in the way needed to use visualization like that so essentially they have to run a full copy of the older OS. Good on Quad Core machines, but wasteful of resources. Now that Apple is pushing forward, Microsoft has a little room to just drop older versions.. at the point IE10 comes out Vista will be 5 years old, plenty old enough to drop support... and for somebody else to pick it up. Of course that leaves a LOT of perfectly good hardware unsupported and abandon. I still regularly use computers from before Vista was released and they're just fine for everything except high end games. Of course the fact that Intel's low end atom chips are are actually lower performing than a medium end chip 5 years old doesn't really help Microsoft's case.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Sporkinum]

Getting rid of IE7 is a noble thought, but it keeps me from using Win 7 for my desktop at work. The tools I need to support the new system I will manage will not run on anything higher than IE7. It's because they built that system using another vendor's database and have no control over that portion of their system. They are working on a new version using a different database, but it won't be out for a year.

Not only that, their client software doesn't work reliably on Win 7 64 bit.

We have had to delay implementation due to those issues.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[shutdown -p now]

Except for on Vista. IE8 and 9 have broken high DPI support.

Can you clarify? I googled for "IE8 high DPI", and the very first thing I hit is MSDN doc page which says the exact opposite - that IE8 is DPI-aware - and even gives screenshots where both browser chrome and the webpage rendering scale.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[guruevi]

I rather support HTML Strict and recommend whatever browser renders it best. I know IE doesn't always render HTML Strict correctly but that's not my problem really, there is no reason to rely on IE for anyone period. If you still rely on ActiveX not only is ActiveX your problem but most likely the app you're supporting requires you to run it on an equally ancient platform that is a security nightmare, you're doing it wrong. If you think you need to secure your browser through an LDAP attribute instead of relying on the system to be secure, you're doing it wrong. If you think you can rely on your directory system to enforce users' behavior, you already lost, your users are doing whatever they want already on unregistered, unprotected personal systems.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[jez9999]

So, I guess their support timeline for Vista must've been about a month?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[DeathFromSomewhere]

There is this wonderful technology called virtual machines. You should try it out.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[jez9999]

Because the browsers generally recommended for newcomers to Ubuntu won't stop being supported on that OS in a year or two?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[arth1]

Set DPI to a high value, like 140 (which is what my laptop has).
Add the standard weather sidebar gadget.
Upgrade from IE7 to IE8
Watch it get a magenta border around it.

The problem is that the sidebar uses IE for rendering, and the sidebar is marked high DPI aware and does not scale. Yet IE8 does, with disregard for what the calling app wants. So it provides a rendering area for the graphics that is scaled up, and doesn't match the area that the app needs.

In W7 the problem was "solved" by forcing the sidebar to always DPI scale (which makes everything blurry). Presumably an easier fix than fixing IE8.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[cyber-vandal]

I have just (in the last three months) upgraded one of my clients from IE6 to IE8 and they still need to run it in IE7 mode as plenty of their intranet stuff doesn't work on IE8. So I'm not wrong and as for ditching IE7 anytime soon - good luck with that. Both your 'solutions' cost money - 'just' virtualize (how much will that cost), 'just' upgrade to IE8 (how much will it cost to rewrite all the stuff that breaks) and as for IE9's compatibility mode just shut the fuck up.

The whole tone of your argument is hilarious. People don't support IE6 and 7 for fun we do it because we have no choice. You obviously don't do any corporate intranet work otherwise you wouldn't be talking such bollocks.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[shutdown -p now]

Ah, I see. So the real bug is that:

1) MSHTML does not respect the DPI-awareness of the hosting app.
2) Sidebar is not properly DPI-aware (even in Win7 - a properly DPI-aware app is the one that scales without using the blurry bitmap upscaling).

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[realityimpaired]

Actualy, my Win7-based laptop has IE8 and IE6 installed on it at the same time. There's this wonderful feature called Windows XP Mode, which is just a fancy name for a virtual machine running within a VirtualPC installation. It does wonders.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[judeancodersfront]

What is stopping those clients from using Firefox or Chrome for external sites?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Belial6]

No one is arguing that MS makes the rules on how long they will support their process. That doesn't mean that they are not treating their customers badly with the rules they choose. I am not talking about rules, so the ones I came up with don't exist. I didn't come up with any. I am just stating what is actually happening. No "rules" needed.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Belial6]

No, they are not. They are not "VERY" up front about support time-lines. I would venture to guess that the vast majority of MS customers do not know anything about the timelines that MS offers support. Most people that bought XP in 2009 did not know exactly what they were doing. No rational person would make their software incompatible with their own OS in 2 years. Of course, now we know they will, and businesses should keep that in mind if and when they have a choice in what software they run.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[zephvark]

I think it's encouraging news that they're finally going to let go of legacy stuff, that really is the root of so many issues. They really have to draw the line sometime.

New kid, eh? I take it you don't yet have any programs that have been forced into retirement by Microsoft's latest and greatest marketing visions. You'll learn.

64-bit Windows doesn't support 16-bit programs. Odd. On Linux, you can run almost any old DOS program using DosEmu. On Windows, you can get part of the way there with DosBox. It's not like you can't get there from here. It is like, if you make it easy for people to keep using their existing software, you can't get them to pay for a shiny new version of the same old thing.

Backwards compatibility should be assumed, automatic. You can emulate a 1985 IBM PC entirely in software, these days, with trivial costs in memory and processing power. So... why isn't it just there in 64-bit Windows?

Virtual machines are going to wreak havoc with Microsoft's captive market. Enforced incompatibility? No problem. Add an XP VM, add a Linux VM, add a DOS VM. The OS is increasingly just another piece of installable software. It doesn't have to own your machine.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[nabsltd]

Maybe, in that browsers already have "zoom" functions, so that the page gets scaled, but everything should scale relatively and the page should look right, but an element that CSS says should be 50 pixels wide may or may not be that size after final rendering.

In the same way, I don't know if any browsers respect OS settings like DPI, so you really can't rely on anything being exactly as you request.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[kiddygrinder]

Other than perhaps trying to egg people still running Vista to bump up I don't see the point.

Exactly this. next they'll say dx 12(?) will be windows 8 only as well the new versions of messenger etc and just hope that people eventually have enough reasons to upgrade.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Urkki]

There's an implication beyond "Vista support is dropped", which considering the number of companies that avoided Vista on the desktop itself isn't a big deal... Server 2008 support is also dropped. R2 is the Win7 kernel so that's still valid, but my users on Terminal Servers as little as three years old won't have access to the next IE version.

That's only going to be problem when IE9 support is dropped, and/or IE9 becomes too outdated. And with the types of sites that require IE, I don't see the "outdated" problem, and support should last as long as Vista support too (for obvious reasons).

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[hairyfeet]

I'd also add there is a "Windows 7 Eng All Edition 32+64 bit pre Activated" out there that...well it works like a charm. Hell it is easier to use than XP, as XP needs a key and this thing pre inserts the key. You can't run Windows Updates but it isn't like there aren't other ways to get those. Just does the batch file trick and that's it, instant 7 in ANY flavor.

So if they are doing this to cut down on piracy they are retarded, hell Win 7 is EASIER than XP. the bitch is they had the solution to piracy and they cocked it up. It was the Win 7 HP $50 upgrade. I saw more pirates go legit on that than I had EVER seen before. It was the "sweet spot" when it came to switching pirates.

But no, instead of doing the smart move and using HP as a foot in the door to switch pirates and then try to upsell them to Pro or Ultimate they canceled it. Just further proof IMHO Ballmer needs a good firing. At $100 Win 7 HP simply isn't worth it to most people, their money would be better spent on hardware. for $50 it is the same price as your average game and both the pirates and many that were sitting on the fence were willing to switch. I know that I only run legit but at $100 my Nettop will keep XP, $100 would be better spent on hardware than 7.

And if they think dangling IE of all things will get people to switch? it isn't 2002 anymore, nobody outside of corporate uses IE. Just more proof in my eyes how MSFT can snatch failure from success, instead of getting the fence sitters off of XP and at the same time turning pirates into customers they just cocked it all up. typical.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[geminidomino]

There's this wonderful comment called "reading," you should try it out.

GP was answering the question "Why would you need separate VMs".

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Penguinoflight]

I see you've never had to use an unsigned driver. Unless you're a bootloader or certificate authority guru (yeah, neither of the related tasks are simple), you're going to have trouble.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[yuhong]

I have just (in the last three months) upgraded one of my clients from IE6 to IE8 and they still need to run it in IE7 mode as plenty of their intranet stuff doesn't work on IE8.

Yes, that kind of thing is what IE7 mode is for. In fact they default intranet sites to IE7 mode for that reason. And note that IE8/IE9's compatiblity mode IS IE7 mode.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[toddestan]

Why? There actually isn't much different in 7 than Vista nowadays. Vista is on SP2 now, the actual problems with the OS are for the most part, fixed. The rest of the problems, mainly the lack of proper drivers, isn't really an issue nowadays either unless you're running hardware that's pretty out of date by 2011 standards. What's left is pretty much just a bunch of UI tweaks in Windows 7 that I really don't care for anyway, though the desktop slideshow thing is kind of spiffy.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[dhavleak]

2k8 is a server OS -- why are you using it for web-browsing?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[sg_oneill]

2k8 is a server OS -- why are you using it for web-browsing?

Terminal server. Plus its actually a superior desktop OS to vista, or at least was earlier in vistas life.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[cavebison]

In fact, I's say there is ZERO requirement for ANY web developer to EVER support IE6 at this point. Anyone who says otherwise is making excuses or lying.

Anyone who makes sweeping statements without adequate information is either making excuses or lying.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[adolf]

Virtual PC is the back end of Vista/7's "XP Mode." I doubt that this integration is the product of their gaming division....

That said, you're right: There's plenty of old hardware that still works just fine. I don't currently see any reason to replace my 7 year old Dell laptop, as it's paltry 1.83GHz Pentium M is still well beyond adequate for the stuff that I need a portable computer for, and its barely-supported ATI x300 runs Windows 7 (with eye candy) just fine. It's stable, and it works. (And its 1920x1200 15.4" display is still rather awesome to use...)

It doesn't play new games anymore, but I gave up on laptop gaming forever about a year after I got that machine...and lately I find myself with a PSP and an iPod Touch and a Droid, so I don't care. (If I'm going on a trip and want entertainment, I'm likely to become bored with playing video games in general long before I become bored with the choices I have available to me.)

That said, it is likely that Windows 8 will be 64-bit only, which might mean that software will increasingly become 64-bit, and so the old laptop may finally get replaced sometime around then. Which means that MS will get another OEM license sale by default, from me.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[drsmithy]

They've long had the potential to make an OS competent enough to far surpass their commercial offerings thus far. The bugaboo holding them back has always been backward compatibility.

Really ? What do they need to change ? What changes are prevented by maintaining legacy support ?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[drsmithy]

Really the only think keeping users locked into Windows is ignorance these days

The ~$1000 minimum buy-in point for a Mac probably plays a non-trivial part as well.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[matthewv789]

Dropping XP support in IE9 is not understandable; it is even more idiotic than dropping Win2K/98/Me support in IE7 was (a big reason for there being more IE6 users today than IE7 users), or than dropping Vista/Server 2008 support in IE10 will be.

My prediction: neither IE9 nor IE10 will ever pass 10% market share globally.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[hairyfeet]

Oh it'll probably work, the pirates just got so used to WGA their standard answer is just to get the patches from WSUS Offline or Autopatcher. Hell both of those solutions give you a MUCH better experience than WU any day of the week, so why would anyone even bother to test WU? Hell I only run legit and I haven't touched WU in years.

Autopatcher comes with ALL the extras like Adobe Air and all the reg tweaks, which makes it the bomb if you are only using one version or two of Windows, and for guys like me that have to update multiple versions WSUS offline not only lets you have ALL the updates automated, including service packs, but ALSO gives you the option of having the whole thing run from a thumbdrive or a single DVD for x86 and a single DVD for x64. And that is for ALL Windows from WinXP through Windows 7 X64! All on a disc ready to go! I mean all my machines and my customers are legit, but why waste time and bandwidth with WU? It sucks!

So while I'm sure it would work, frankly from what I read nobody bothered with WU anymore and who could blame them. And like I said they ROYALLY screwed the pooch when they got rid of Win 7 HP for $50. I saw guys that had NEVER paid for Windows suddenly running legit. Hell some were even jumping on the $100 Win 7 pro or the $120 HP family pack and going legit across the board. But the SECOND that price went up to $100 for HP? That's when you suddenly started seeing all these "Win 7 Ultimate" boxes and laptops everywhere.

It is just like how you almost never saw XP Home, because all the pirates said "if I'm gonna snatch anyway, why not pro?". So like I said, snatching defeat from victory. They could have almost completely wiped out piracy in the west AND gotten rid of all those XP users like me that still have boxes not worth spending $100 for an upgrade AND had a captive audience for both the latest IE AND been able to try to upsell them to Pro or Ultimate. But no, that would have been smart, and one thing Ballmer has proven is he is a classic middle management dumbass.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Bungie]

There have been a few hacks like this one which leverage things like DLL/COM redirection to allow you to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer in the same Windows installation. Someone has also written an installer which allows you to run Internet Explorer 7 and all previous versions side by side in Windows XP.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Eskarel]

Is there actually anyone out there who was willing to move to Vista but hasn't moved to Windows 7?

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[mounthood]

A win for MS is killing or fragmenting the free, open, standards-based web. They promote native apps by emphasizing IE9 is "native" and HTML5 is "native", while leaving a disaster of browser versions for web based apps to deal with. IE6 became popular by adding lots of non-standard features, then IE was ignored for 5+ years, and now different IE versions will run on different versions of Windows, making it hard on the web and thus better for MS.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Voyager529]

Nero, Acid, Sound Forge, Vegas, Mixmeister (new versions have lots of stability issues on OSX), Mediashout (Again, OSX versions are unstable), Anything by Acronis, Cyberlink, or Corel, lots of non-Valve games (Mass Effect, Crysis, Unreal series). My copy of Adobe Production Studio CS4 for Windows doesn't magically run on OSX, and Adobe has been pretty stingy about cross-platform licensing. Microsoft has, to my knowledge, never offered cross platform licensing for Office, and the business grade licenses can cost a couple hundred bucks a clip. This doesn't account for niche applications, like financial recordkeeping (for businesses with finance departments for whom Quickbooks doesn't cut the mustard), proprietary software that compliments specialized hardware (a client of mine has a printer that cuts sign paper using EPS files as inputs), or any number of other software titles that I can't even think of.

The world runs on a whole lot more than software made by Adobe.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Puppet Master]

A fucking piece of paper and a pencil is superior to Vista.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[eugene ts wong]

I agree. Corporations and government organizations [e.g. Canadian Forces] are passive slow pokes. When they can no longer use the web with IE 6, then they'll gladly upgrade, otherwise they'll just keep wasting our time.

We should have no sympathy for them.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[arth1]

In the same way, I don't know if any browsers respect OS settings like DPI,

IE7 does. IE8 and 9 does, but forces bitmap scaling instead of adjusting the font size.

Firefox has a setting for DPI in about:config, which it blithely ignores and assumes that the user has 96 DPI (even in Linux, where the "standard" bitmap font sizes are 75 and 100).
So if you have a 140 DPI display and want a 10 pt font in Firefox, you have to set the font to 10*140/96 = ~15. Worse, you have to do that for each and every character encoding you might possibly use. Firefox really has the least friendly font engine of them all.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Lanteran]

Hardly. I know on slashdot, it's cool to bash vista and all, but vista wasn't even close to ME in terms of quality (or lack thereof). I use it fairly often, all my computers run various linux distros, but I use a vista laptop on a regular basis. It's not too bad on terms of speed considering the highly modest hardware, but don't let facts get in the way of your rant. ME though... But yeah, I think dropping vista support is quite ridiculous.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Sheepy]

The vast majority of people have no NEED to use IE6, and the vast majority of web developers have no need to support IE6. In fact, I's say there is ZERO requirement for ANY web developer to EVER support IE6 at this point. Anyone who says otherwise is making excuses or lying.

That's nice, but back in the real world many of my client's clients* use IE6. I'm currently enhancing their web-based application and dropping IE6 support is not an option.

* Including one particularly large client.

(did I just feed a troll?)

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[VTBlue]

No, they are not. They are not "VERY" up front about support time-lines. I would venture to guess that the vast majority of MS customers do not know anything about the timelines that MS offers support. Most people that bought XP in 2009 did not know exactly what they were doing. No rational person would make their software incompatible with their own OS in 2 years. Of course, now we know they will, and businesses should keep that in mind if and when they have a choice in what software they run.

Yes because not supporting something as simple and commoditized as a browser is indicative of all "all software"...man get your head out of your ass. OEM machines are only supported for a year anyway, people who bought netbooks in 2009 knew they were piece of shit machines. Consumers have plenty of choices for browsers that support XP. You Are conflating consumer issues with enterprise support issues. No windows IT admin who bought XP licenses in 2009 was oblivious to the exact support timeline, if they were then they really shouldn't have been admins. There is not a another major software company that offers the lifecycle support for an OS that Microsoft does. You bitch an complain about all you want but your comments just go to show you can't fix stupid.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[Belial6]

A) We are talking about Windows. That mean consumer as well as enterprise.

B) A good many of consumers don't know anything about the support cycles on particular programs.

C) We are talking about MS abandoning a platform that they were still selling 2 years ago. The length of warranty on the OEM machines is irrelevant.

D) The support time line you are referring to is for bug fixes to the OS, not the abandonment of offering software on that platform.

E) The machines bought in 2009 were not 'pieces of shit'. They were perfectly fine for the tasks they were designed for.

Obviously, you look at your environments and assume that everyone needs a fast machine and it gets replaced every couple years. You then assume that is the only market, or the only one that counts. Maybe if you stepped out of your hole every once in a while, you would find out that being aware of the world around you isn't synonymous with stupid.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[alexchorny]

Usually if only IE is supported, it is IE6. And even IE7 is not IE6-compatible.

Re:This is the best thing they can do.

[PsychoSlashDot]

Usually if only IE is supported, it is IE6. And even IE7 is not IE6-compatible.

Might as well reply though the discussion is long dead. We've found a lot of "portal" sites in the insurance industry that really, "support" is a word only. Firefox and the like probably work, but the insurance carriers or business partners simply won't endorse anything but IE. They often don't specify a version. Also, we can seemingly always get away with IE7 or IE8 in compatibility mode.

It isn't the end of the world that I can't get the next IE wedged on existing Terminal Servers, but the point remains that the life cycle for Server 2008 is absurdly short, purely because it's on the Vista kernel while R2 is on the Win7 kernel. Microsoft has been making decisions recently regarding support based on desktop OS that has impact on servers. Remote Desktop Client 7 works on WinXP SP3 but won't install on Server 2003 Just Because. Amusingly I regularly hack it in (it's only an EXE a couple DLLs and a few support files) and it works fine (excepting CredsSP support). MS arbitrarily decided that though Server 2003 is newer, demand for RDC 7 wasn't worth configuring the MSI so it could install on it. Thanks. Here we are again only with IE, on a five year newer server platform.

I get it. Nobody runs Vista, so nothing of value was lost. On the other hand, the new features for RDS in Server 2008 are huge, which prompted mass movement off Server 2003 to Server 2008. This sucks.

That's ok

[countertrolling]

I don't run on any OS before System 7.5

Re:That's ok

[BrokenHalo]

I expected the first comments to pick up on the line saying

But the company confirmed that IE10 won't even run on Vista

...with some remark along the lines of "if it runs at all".

Wow

[dmomo]

If this browser is unable to run on even Windows XP, all it says to me is "Hi, I have to interact with your computer in a way no browser should need to."

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the times of Netscape, they wanted the browser to replace the OS (the user-visible parts of it, of course, not the kernel/drivers/etc.). The company failed to achieve it, but its brainchild -- Firefox -- managed to push Microsoft and Google close to that point.

The more `rich content' (3D graphics and whatnot) runs in browser, the closer it needs to be to extra hardware (3D accelerator) and OS software (security provider, data store etc.)

Re:Wow

[TheCycoONE]

Most modern browsers are or will be interacting with those same parts of Windows (Direct 2D) for hardware acceleration. The difference is that most other browser manufacturers include fallbacks for legacy OSes and hardware. Strangely IE9 has fallbacks for legacy hardware, but not for a lack of DirectX 10.

Re:Wow

[dmomo]

While true, it I'm still dubious that it cannot be sufficiently achieved to run on the older, and still fairly Modern OSs. Especially as I expect tHe other leading browsers will certainly be able to do so.

Re:Wow

[Bogtha]

I'm sorry, as much as I loathe Microsoft, what you are saying is nonsense. Newer operating systems offer greater functionality. It's entirely possible for an application - browser or otherwise - to require features that older operating systems don't have without nefarious "interaction".

Just recently, I've stopped supporting iOS 3 because iOS 4 offers features that cut down development time significantly. My applications are sandboxed away from the operating system just like any other, much more separate than any typical application running on a desktop machine. There's nothing sinister about it, it's simply more cost-effective that way.

Re:Wow

[LordLimecat]

Firefox 3 cant run on any windows earlier than 2000, IIRC. Sometimes dependencies just arent there.

Re:Wow

[alostpacket]

So is that a good thing? Just an honest question. Personally, I think there is a value in thin clients actually being thin and limited.

Re:Wow

[bk2204]

Actually, Windows Vista supports condition variables where earlier versions didn't. It's possible to emulate them, but it's very difficult to get right. It's totally possible that the IE team wanted to take advantage of features that made the code much cleaner or run faster. What's the point of having those new features built into the operating system if they can't be used?

Re:Wow

[dingen]

FYI, IE9 already doesn't run on Windows XP.

Re:Wow

[catmistake]

There's nothing sinister about it, it's simply more cost-effective that way.

While it appears in this particular instance that you are correct, there are other instances of breaking stuff or offering new releases that do seem nefarious. Vista, itself, seemed like it was not so much a new OS as it was a placeholder. As much as 7 is adored by everyone, I can't think of any good reason for a company with 10K installs of XP and Office 2003, Server 2003 (that they already own licenses for, that the IT dept. knows how to immediately fix ANYTHING that breaks) to update to 7 (and Office 2010, etc), even if all support and updates for that software disappears. And I'm not saying there is anything wrong with 7 and the new Office/Server, other than it doesn't really give the actual office user any new functionality that they're likely to need (before you start making a list of how great 7/Office 2010 is, try listing the essential things a user needs that can't be done in XP). Considering that new machines will come preinstalled with 7 and include a license with the purchase of the hardware, that is the way I would migrate... one new machine at a time, as hardware is replaced.

Maybe 7 isn't the best example (because by all accounts it is small, stable... and pretty). But look at the Adobe releases of Creative Suite. Every two years they want their pound of flesh from their install base, and while some will claim the new features are essential, I believe that is an enormous exaggeration... what it looks like is a company has saturated the market, already sold all they can... and now needs to recycle their customers.

Apple appears to be guilty of this kind of thing too, as they often drop support for relatively new hardware as incentive to buy today's new thing, or as they update their software the older hardware, which was working great before the updates, with each new update becomes more and more sluggish (I'd consider this Apple rot, the more you update, the more your user experience begins to suck, the more you want to get the new hardware). Apple seems better at this game than Microsoft or Adobe, as the decline of user experience is subtle and incremental.

Re:Wow

[foobsr]

Interestingly, it seems that newer releases of wetware apps are missing the feature to give examples.

CC.

Re:Wow

[Belial6]

MS was still selling XP in 2009. It is perfectly reasonable for users to expect MS's applications to run on the brand new computer that they bought that is running the brand new copy of MS's OS. Basically MS is saying "Hey, you know that cool new Windows computer you got the Xmas before last? Yeah, you can't run an new MS software on it."

I agree that support cannot last forever, and eventually people either have to upgrade or accept that they are running on a retro system. I don't expect MS to fix bugs in my C64's Basic interpreter. (Yes, the Basic in the C64 was a MS product.) But cutting off users from a critical MS product if they are running a 2 year old version of a MS OS isn't reasonable.

Re:Wow

[SpryGuy]

It's not that it can't be done. The question is, is it worth it to expend the development costs in order to achieve it, and at what price? The drop in performance of having to use abstraction libraries, and the cost to develop separate code-bases that behave identically (and the additional factors of increasted/required testing) are not things Microsoft apparently wants to pay. Their whole goal here is to make IE the 'fastest' browser, and they're doing pretty good on that front. Their secondary goal is to get people off XP and give them an excuse to finally upgrade. Given that... why wouldn't they drop XP? And given that by the time IE10 is released, Vista will represent at most 7% of the market (and will be rapidly shrinking), why bother to expend so much energy to support it? Especially given the update from Vista to Win7 is pretty fast, easy, and painless?

For all we know, they might do an upgrade push, with a big sale on upgrades from Vista to Win7. I imagine that, as they ready Windows.Next, it would make perfect marketing and financial sense to offer a Vista->Win7 upgrade for $29 or something. Who knows? It's what I would do.

Re:Wow

[KiloByte]

There's a massive architectural difference between NT-based and DOS-based Windows.

For example, all system library calls that pass a string need to use a different API on Win95/98/ME and NT+. Using SomeFunctionA will mysteriously break the moment someone tries to input a string with a letter that happens to be not present in a legacy locale-dependent "code page", or access a file with such a character in its name. Supporting both APIs is possible but is a major chore, even with wrappers like MSLU.

And this is just a tip of an iceberg. What if you want to write some persistent data? Can't use C:\Program Files\YourProgram\ since it is not writeable without elevation. Easy -- SHGetFolderPath(). But, that function is not present on Win98 that did not have a specific Internet Explorer (???) update. So you need to fall back to that fixed location in C:\Program Files\YourProgram\. And so on...

On the other hand, there are no significant changes between 2000 and Win7 where user mode programs are concerned. New API has been added, but it gives little advantage, you can do about everything the old way with no functionality loss. I think the only actual goodie are filesystem transactions.

There was a large change for kernel drivers between XP and Vista, but a program like Firefox has no valid reason to touch that. Not any program which doesn't touch debugging, hardware or virtualization -- ie, any game which installs a kernel driver has a rootkit like SecuROM included.

Re:Wow

[SpryGuy]

I would say Apple is the worst at this. The iPhone 3G is all but useless right now (can't run iOS4 on it at all, it slows to such a crawl as to be useless... it's not even very usable with the latest iOS 3 version on it). Apple pretty much forces everyone to upgrade with every wave of new hardware or OS. They change entire architectures and just cast away the old stuff after very short times. It's just that their user base is used to this and even expects it. Count the number of people who buy new iPhones every year, even though the contract is two years long... it's a significant percentage of the base.

I wouldn't say the decline is subtle or incremental at all. A friend of mine with an iPhone 3G simply cannot function. Opening the maps application takes MINUTES, during which the phone is utterly unusable (frozen). Things like that. He's currently saving up for the iPhone 4 or 5, depending on what's available once he gets the money.

And he's not an isolated case either.

Re:Wow

[TheLink]

Because Windows 7 is still worse than XP in some areas.

1) I (and my colleague) still haven't got Windows 7 search to work. It regularly doesn't find stuff in _text_ files, even if you click search in file contents, or jump through all the hoops people suggest on Google.

Having to resort to 3rd party tools in Windows 7 is ridiculous, because Windows XP's search works even though it is slow.

2) Windows 7 also has lots of useless clutter on many configuration screens (e.g. network config). Icons that mean nothing to anyone. They don't help the normal users, nor do they help the expert users who now have to click more to do stuff that was easier in Windows XP.

What would help the normal users would be config screens designed for phone support, so that tech support can guide them over the phone more easily ;). e.g. "click on A1 and type 10.1.1.1".

Most normal users don't care about understanding what is going on. They just want stuff to work. So having some icon to tell them stuff is useless. Because if stuff seems to work, they won't notice it, if stuff doesn't work the icon is useless/redundant to them. They're going to call someone and ask for help. It is harder to describe an icon over the phone.

3) The UAC security stuff is just one more way to shove blame to the users. It doesn't help them at all. How are users (expert or not) to know whether to give an application admin access or not? That's harder in practice to solve than the halting problem (no access to source code, no idea of the program's full inputs). After nearly a decade Microsoft could have done better than that.

What I do like about Windows 7 is the grouping of task buttons by application. And the ability to control sound volume on a per app basis (but it's still a bit clumsy).

Re:Wow

[asa]

Vista and 7 both "require" a GPU powerful enough to do that, so MS can get away with not keeping a software renderer in the browser.

Um, no. Microsoft cannot get away without a software render in the browser even on Windows 7. There are far too many GPUs on Win7 systems that they don't support or don't support them. There are also plenty of places that the "renderer" doesn't use the GPU.

I know it's a common thing on /. to take a little bit of knowledge about things and pretend it's a lot of knowledge, but when you get this far away from what you actually understand and start making completely false claims, you hurt more than help. Please be more careful in the future.

- A

Re:Wow

[catmistake]

I wouldn't say the decline is subtle or incremental at all.

No, it really is. Your friend didn't buy the 3G, then after the first update everything was shit. But at each update, it worked a little worse, a little less responsive, than it did before the update, so that by 6 months after a new iPhone was released, the 3G user really starts to notice that things have slowed down from the original iOS version their phone came with. That's what I meant by incremental. What is really annoying is the only real solution to feature creep and slowness, downgrading firmware, if possible at all, is a true pain. If we were free to downgrade the system I don't think people would be as annoyed, but each update kills the ability to go back (short of extreme measures and complicated instructions). btw the 3G is identical in platform to the original iPhone (merely has a new baseband radio), which in tech years is ancient by now. I don't think many will sympathize with your friend... but I grant that if downgrading were easy, that 3G would be fine. Lesson learned... once Apple releases new hardware, ignore the temptation of new features... lock it in to the firmware that runs well, and stop upgrading.

Re:Wow

[cbhacking]

Exactly. In this particular case, it's the video driver interface. IE9 and up use your video hardware to accelerate their rendering. This gives them excellent speed on all those flash Canvas and SVG demos. Technically it can be done in software instead, but the resulting performance is pretty bad (think wose than Firefox 3.6, which had pretty good compatibility but relatively slow rendering compared to IE9 and FF4).

The catch is that the way IE9 gets this great performance is by using features exposed by WDDM, the new Windows Display Driver Model that was introduced in NT6 (Vista). Devices using this model for their drivers are required to have certain capabilities that the older spec didn't require, and new APIs were made available that take advantage of this. There's nothing wrong with doing this; using a published API (even one that didn't exist in the last version of the OS) hardly counts as "interact[ing] with your computer in a way no browser should need to."

Now, technically, Microsoft could have made IE9 work on XP, and even gotten some hardware acceleration by using the legacy interface. However, this would have dramatically increased the development and test costs, since in effect they'd have been adding a third, entirely new rendering mode: software, WDDM, and now legacy-hardware-accelerated. Even just forcing XP to use software rendering wuld have added a lot to the test requirements, and those users wouldn't have gotten the "native speed" experience that they're making such a big deal out of in that case.

As for IE10, I'm pretty sure the idea behind dropping Vista support is just to reduce the test requirements. It's not like there are going to be enough Vista users left in the world next year* for this to be a big deal. Besides, Vista can't do the much-vaunted "pin a website to the taskbar" trick nearly so well as Win7.

* I have no info on when it's coming out beyond what has been publicly announced, but this seems like a reasonable estimate for the soonest that could be.

Re:Wow

[shutdown -p now]

"Require", no. "Make easier to write", yes.

Stock 2D graphics APIs on Windows have historically been in an abominable state for a long time. For example. GDI was designed in early 90s and correspond to the state of graphics hardware back at the time - blitting directly to screen buffer as efficiently as possible. As such, it has a lot of stuff that's very useful if you want to render extremely fast in 16-color or 256-color modes, but it lacks many modern features - such as antialiasing, gradients and other complex brushes for all primitives etc - and is not compositing-friendly.

GDI+ was an attempt to rectify it, but it was too much of what the name says - same model as GDI, only more features. Ultimately it failed because no-one bothered to accelerate it in hardware, and so it was horribly slow.

In practice, for a long time, if you wanted fast 2D graphics on Windows, you used DirectDraw (and later Direct3D) to get you a rendering surface, and your own library for primitives. Most, of course, would use some stable and high-perf third-party library, but the OS itself had none.

Direct2D is the first real attempt to provide a decent modern 2D API as a stock library on Windows. As such, it is very handy for any application that has to paint a lot of stuff in 2D - such as, well, a browser - as you get the complete set of primitives and hardware acceleration for those. The only catch is that it's only available on Vista and above.

Re:Wow

[shutdown -p now]

On the other hand, there are no significant changes between 2000 and Win7 where user mode programs are concerned. New API has been added, but it gives little advantage, you can do about everything the old way with no functionality loss.

Um, have you actually looked at what Direct2D does?

How would you paint, say, an anti-aliased rotated gradient rectangle in Win2K (where you only had GDI)? Aside from writing all the code for that yourself?

Re:Wow

[SpryGuy]

The update from iOS 2.x to iOS 3.x was sudden shit. That step wasn't incremental at all.

Re:Wow

[man_of_mr_e]

I haven't had any trouble with WIndows 7 search, but if you have.. my guess is that you have a permissions issue that search isn't able to look in some locations.

I'm not sure what you mean about the useless clutter. Every option in the network config has text links, some have icons next to them but the actual controls themselves are text.

UAC is essentially the same as that used by OSX and Linux... At some point, a user has to have some knowledge. If they don't, then they need to contact someone that does before clicking Yes willy nilly. There is no magic bullet that tells users when it's ok to give a program access and when it's not. THEY have to make that decision for themselves.

Re:Wow

[LordLimecat]

IIRC the real issue was lack of support for Cairo, which became the backend of Firefox's graphics in V3. It has nothing to do with APIs like SHGetFolderPath; if firefox wants to write data, it writes it to the users firefox cache folder, which is defined in part by system variables.

And to say that theres "no significant changes between 2000 and Win7" is not correct. Programs trying to write data to Program Files may end up with it written to ProgramData; programs trying to write to %userprofile%\Application Data might run into problems (it appears theyve set up a symbolic link from those folders to the proper places, but Ive seen "access denied" issues trying to open those links).

There was a large change for kernel drivers between XP and Vista, but a program like Firefox has no valid reason to touch that.

I imagine it would have an impact on hardware acceleration of rendering, between Vista and XP...

Re:Wow

[uglyduckling]

To counter your anecdote with anecdote, my wife's iPhone 3G (second-hand from me when I got an iPhone 4) is on the latest firmware, and works just fine. It's definitely slower than it was with its original firmware, but it's also more stable and more feature-rich. The 1-2 second delay on switching apps would drive me mad, but she's totally OK with it and has so far not been bothered when I've offered to upgrade it. I'm sure she'll get my iPhone 4 when I get a 5. If it's taking minutes to open an app on your friend's iPhone then it's broken, or the app is broken. If he has Applecare he should take it in for repair.

Re:Wow

[Urkki]

Eehhhh.... OS does not have user-visible parts. OS have only API/ABI interfaces what other software use so they do not need to include code how to move HDD head or anything else.

That's not what "operating system" normally means. "Operating system" most commonly means the software thingy you can get, for example, by buying a "retail version" box from a shop, or downloading an ISO image. Kernel and drivers are kernel and drivers, they're not the whole operating system. Even embedded operating systems usually have a shell as "user visible part", and not just "any shell", but the specific shell of the operating system (such as dash as /bin/sh for Debian-based Linux variants, which I believe is quite popular choice for certain type of embedded applications).

Re:Wow

[yuhong]

That fallback is actually built into the updated DirectX that is shipped with Win7 and Platform Update for Vista. It is called WRAP, and it basically software emulated Direct3D/Direct2D/DirectWrite calls.

Re:Wow

[yuhong]

Easy -- SHGetFolderPath(). But, that function is not present on Win98 that did not have a specific Internet Explorer (???) update.

MS shipped shfolder.dll as a redist for older OSes to provide this API.

Re:Wow

[yuhong]

FYI, the software renderer used by IE9 is actually built into the updated DirectX that is shipped with Win7 and Platform Update for Vista that is required by IE9. It is called WRAP, and it basically software emulates Direct3D/Direct2D/DirectWrite calls.

Re:Wow

[Billly Gates]

A year ago a leaked Microsoft memo mentioned that IE would no longer have version numbers and would be tied to Windows was mentioned on slashdot. That way webmasters would just say use Windows X for this site. It would also raise FUD for MacOSX and Linux clients as people would assume Windows would be required to browse a website.

That plan was scrapped, but I sense the same managers are doing the same thing with this release.

Sadly, this will make many I.T. departments want to stick with IE 6 since too many browsers coming in so quick with different standards make them nervous. Sharepoint needs to stop requiring IE 6 and use features of these new browsers if Microsoft expects the corporate world to upgrade. Either way does anyone even use IE 9? Those who don't need activeX corporate cr*p have switched to Firefox or Chrome.

Re:Wow

[TheLink]

I've no idea why it doesn't work, and from the Google searches I've seen, I'm not the only one. For example I have many text files in a directory and subdirectories, and I'm looking for a word, that I know is in some of them. Windows 7 doesn't find any of them. The insidious thing is it works for some stuff! Maybe one day I'll figure it out, or I may think I've figured it out but it has started working for some other reason ;).

As for useless clutter, take a look at this:
http://img.techtalkz.com/Network%20and%20Sharing_Win7_2.jpg

The park bench, and globe help very few people in the world. The top half of that page is pretty much useless and wasted space.

Normal users will want to be able to see a list of wireless networks, and be able to select one to connect to, and be prompted for a password (or username and password) if necessary.

They just need a simple way to share a folder (can already do that with explorer), and access a folder on a remote machine. They already can do that with "Network Neighborhood".

The homegroup stuff? As far as I know, once you have many PCs, the normal users either make do with the simple stuff or find someone who knows some stuff.

As for helping the expert users, I've seen someone using a 3rd party tool to more quickly reconfigure default routes and ip addresses on interfaces quickly. That should not be necessary, stuff like that should be built in.

FWIW I don't like Ubuntu's "Network Manager" either - it doesn't seem to work reliably or predictably (DHCP sometimes doesn't get an IP). I often resort to "ifconfig".

Re:Wow

[TangoMargarine]

If we were free to downgrade the system I don't think people would be as annoyed, but each update kills the ability to go back

Then don't upgrade? Or is it one of those forced updates?

Re:Wow

[man_of_mr_e]

I still really don't get your point. Your image demonstrates exactly what I said, all the information is available textually. If the icons don't mean anything to you, then look at the text. Big deal. Next to the park bench it says "public network", which is all the information you need.

For a list of wireless networks, you just click once on the icon in the lower right corner, all the wireless networks pop up. Or click the "connect or disconnect" link on the page you linked to. Very easy to do.

That dialog isn't used for file sharing, although it is used to configure file sharing options. Homegroup is used mostly as a means of setting up file sharing simply. This is why it's called "homegroup", not "businessgroup". It's for people that have a couple of computers in their home and want to share files or printers.

I'm also confused about your "wasted space" comment. Wasted space is the opposite of cluttered space. Which is it? Cluttered? Or Wasted? I don't find the top half useless at all, as it tells me if i have a connection to the internet or not, it allows me to see a map of my local network (by clicking full map), and it lets me see how the network connection is configured (locked down firewall settings for public, more open for business, etc..)

Re:Wow

[Bill Dog]

Windows' "find in files" functionality has been unreliable for years. Typically only developers notice this, so we just use our code editor's instead. Maybe MS assumes this and that's why they've never fixed it. I assume it's the Windows indexing service that causes it. I turned mine off, as it thrashes the disk periodically and I don't want to listen to it, and I basically never search for a filename or part of one, and when I do I can wait while it traverses things at that time.

Re:Wow

[Bogtha]

Sharepoint needs to stop requiring IE 6 and use features of these new browsers if Microsoft expects the corporate world to upgrade.

They dropped support in the last version, released a year ago.

Obligatory "It ain't half hot mum" reference

[der_joachim]

Oh dear! How sad! Never mind!

Re:Obligatory "It ain't half hot mum" reference

[BrokenHalo]

Although I echo the sentiment, I'm not so sure that reference to a 1970s BBCTV show counts as "obligatory" here, however much we may have liked it at the time.

And nothing of value was lost

[dotHectate]

Doesn't bother me. While I'm sure someone will do something to prove that it can operate just fine on "Vista-or-less-than" OS, do we really care when we've got better options in Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and many more? Oh, I forgot, I need it to run a "Native HTML5 experience", darn them.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[SpryGuy]

You understand the "native" here means native OS interaction, as opposed to being layered on top of abstraction libraries, right?

It's amazing to me how the smart people at Slashdot so completely (and likely willfully) misunderstand what MS was saying with the "Native" stuff. To get IE9 (or 10) to run on XP, they'd have to build a whole bunch of abstraction layers and software emulations and such... which would slow IE9 down. And for what? XP is rapidly dying. It's a waste of time, development effort, and testing effort to continue supporting such an OS indefinitely. And the fact is, IE9 is pretty damn fast compared to all the competition out there. And that, clearly, is their goal with IE... to be the fastest running browser out there. And they've decided it's worth it to jettison XP (and Vista for IE10) to meet that goal.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[shutdown -p now]

How much is a cost of an abstraction layer in native code, really? A well-designed abstraction layer would pretty much always just call directly into the underlying API where the latter provides all the necessary functionality. And modern C++ compilers are exceedingly good at inlining, even across translation unit boundaries (with link-time code generation, which VC++ supports), which puts the cost squarely at zero.

Even where the features are available but semantics are sufficiently different where translation would be required on one of the platforms, it is reasonable to designate one platform as primary, and design the abstraction layer such that it maps directly, with no translation, to the API provided by that platform. On other platforms, you pay the price of translation, but at least they're supported. In case of IE9+, the primary platform would then be 7 (and API would be D2D), and secondary platform would be XP.

So it's a weak argument from a technological point of view. Now, from a managerial one, implementing the layer where there was none before is extra cost. If it can't be justified, then why do it? But that's a different matter entirely, and has nothing to do with "native HTML5" and similar marketing silliness.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[man_of_mr_e]

I think you misunderstand the point. The point was that they would have to basically build D2D and other support libraries for XP just to support a single app. The abstraction layers are easy, it's supplying the emulation for the OS's that don't support it that is the pain in the ass.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[shutdown -p now]

No, I didn't misunderstand his point. To sum up my post, I agree with this part of his post (and therefore also with you):

To get IE9 (or 10) to run on XP, they'd have to build a whole bunch of abstraction layers and software emulations and such

But do not agree with this:

Which would slow IE9 down ... And that, clearly, is their goal with IE... to be the fastest running browser out there.

i.e. it's purely a matter of team not willing to spend the effort to get it running on XP, but it's not about "being the fastest browser out there". As such, it's not some kind of feature to be touted to end users (I mean - "our browser is so cool, we don't even have an abstraction layer" - WTF?). But that's precisely what "native HTML5" is, when you get down to it. That's why it doesn't make any sense.

Fixed that for you....

[ZosX]

"Windows Vista customers have a great browsing experience with IE9, but in building IE10 we are focused on continuing to drive the kind of innovation that only happens when you take advantage of screwing customers into buying modern operating systems and modern hardware for no good reason other than greed.""

I fail to see why IE 10 would not run on vista which is like 98% the same as Windows 7. What could there possibly be in Windows 7 that Vista lacks? It even has DX11. So hardware acceleration is not the issue.... I mean seriously. There is probably some mere flag in the installer that forces it to only work on Windows 7 and that is likely the only thing preventing it from running on Vista.

I mean google chrome runs on ancient P4s running XP. Give me a break.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[Mouldy]

I'd guess they're dropping Vista support to speed along their release cycle. IE is still very integrated with the operating system. Windows gets all of it's code that deals with internet communication from whatever IE version is installed. Therefore, updating IE is not the same as just updating a standalone browser like FF or Chrome - it's also making changes to a lot of stuff behind the scenes.

There probably is no technical reason why IE 10 couldn't work (to some degree) on Windows as far back as XP. But, given the timeframe (which is short due to the new release cycle), MS cannot develop and test OS-level code across so many platforms.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[magamiako1]

Oh no! You have to use Windows 7! The horror!

Re:Fixed that for you....

[bunratty]

What could there possibly be in Windows 7 that Vista lacks?

More money for Microsoft from people who upgrade. This is how MS makes money from IE -- people need to upgrade Windows to get the new version of IE. The other major browsers all run on Windows and Mac, and most run on Linux and other operating systems as well.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[mmcxii]

I mean google chrome runs on ancient P4s running XP.

I'm running Win7 on a 2 different P4s. A 7 year old ThinkPad and an 8 year old HP desktop. I have no reason to think that either machine will have any problems with IE10 either. So I'm failing to see your point about Chrome.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[cyber-vandal]

Since you value £100 so little please send it to me.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[cratermoon]

And me! Except as $163.08, please!

Re:Fixed that for you....

[bananaquackmoo]

Honestly thank you for that reminder! I do tend to forget that IE does more in a Windows system than just browse the internet. I've been wondering why they would do something so silly.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[sltd]

Maybe, but who would pay for Windows 7 just to get the latest version of IE? Aside from IT departments that use business applications, the people who are most likely to care or know about installing the latest version of IE could just as easily get something else.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[ZosX]

yeah and how much ram do they have? most people running machines that old are lucky to have 512-1gig of RAM. Something tells me XP would be faster on such machines. Even so my point is that chrome runs on Windows XP which is something that even IE9 cannot do. I don't necessarily understand why this is necessary. Even firefox runs on nearly anything, though they finally dropped PPC Mac OS support with version 4.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[Wiiboy1]

I fail to see why IE 10 would not run on vista which is like 98% the same as Windows 7.

Did you know that 72% of statistics are made up on the spot?

But even if that is accurate, I think the answer is clear: the 2% that is different must be significant in some way when it comes to what they're doing with IE10. We don't even know what they plan to change in IE10. It could very well be a "Gazelle"-like project, totally different than IE9, in which case the need for the new development features of Windows 7 would be obvious.

Very few people, I would imagine, would upgrade their whole OS just to get a newer version of a browser (something many consumers don't even understand anyway). So there must be some good reason for MS to not support Vista.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Well, they told the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission that IE is integral part of Windows. Then they worked hard to intermingle to code so much that that statement would become true. Now they are stuck with the spaghetti code that can not be cleanly unraveled.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Most windows non-corporate users do not upgrade. They use the machine as it came out of the box. It accumulates crud, toolbars, mangled registry due to partially installed and uninstalled code, may be viruses too and eventually becomes unusable. They would throw the whole machine in garbage and buy a shiny new machine and start over.

Among the corporate customers, people who are still clinging to XP are doing so to get their brain dead intra corporation applications that needs IE6. In an earlier era they bought the kool-aid "IE is going to be the front end for all corporate application". So they developed inventory control systems or customer relations database on IE6. Now the original contractors who developed it are gone. The developers are gone. Mostly the original owners are also gone. The company has been sold and bought couple of times. These guys will never upgrade as long as they need IE6.

Corporate customers not needing IE6, usually work in mixed systems, and they dont upgrade old machines. They just buy newer machines with whatever is the latest. Many of them are going to virtualized solutions and they might never ever upgrade.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[Arlet]

I guess they could follow the same model as Firefox. One browser that works on many different OSes, and still has a decent release cycle.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Win7 on a 2 different P4s. A 7 year old ThinkPad and an 8 year old HP desktop.

Why.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[cyber-vandal]

Yeh like that's a good idea. Yarrrr install me genuine Winderrs no scurvy vairuses gaaaaaranteed.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[jez9999]

No, you have to BUY Windows 7, perhaps 2 years after being told Windows Vista was the latest and greatest when you parted with your cash and a year before Vista's *mainstream* support runs out. The horror.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[select*fromnull]

... it's not like Apple would ever do that...

Re:Fixed that for you....

[melikamp]

I fail to see why IE 10 would not run on vista which is like 98% the same as Windows 7. What could there possibly be in Windows 7 that Vista lacks?

It's a mystery to me too why Microsoft is so adamant in its conviction that a Web browser should be an integrated OS component. For a general-purpose OS this makes no sense at all. May be they no longer want to be a general purpose OS? It definitely looks like Apple and Google are mostly interested in "toy" OSes. That is, OSes designed from the ground up primarily for entertainment. I hope this is the future of all proprietary software.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[mmcxii]

Yeah, the Thinkpad has a gig of RAM. I haven't run a PC in nearly a decade without a gig of RAM. What of it? And no, I've run XP on this machine as well and it really wasn't any faster.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[flappinbooger]

>I fail to see why IE 10 would not run on vista which is like 98% the same as Windows 7. What could there possibly be in Windows 7 that Vista lacks? It even has DX11. So hardware acceleration is not the issue.... I mean seriously. There is probably some mere flag in the installer that forces it to only work on Windows 7 and that is likely the only thing preventing it from running on Vista.

Lets say vista and 7 are actually 98% the same. Aren't primates and humans DNA supposedly like 90-some percent the same? Yet there are some major differences between humans and monkeys.

MS bashers say how similar vista and 7 are supposed to be under the hood. I've heard stuff like "they just tweaked UAC and put in some tricks to fool the user regarding speed" but they are NOT the same.

I was fortunate enough to avoid vista on my main machines, went right from XP to 7. But I just recently am doing some work where I have to use vista all day every day. IT IS NOT THE SAME AS WIN7. NOT THE SAME. And this is a 3.2 GHZ xeon with 8 gigs of ram, with vista 64. It is a newer install of vista, less than 6 months. And IT IS A TURD. Give me an old C2D with 2 gigs of ram with win7 over ANYTHING with vista.

I don't know what it is, something is just wrong with vista. This proves it, when they can and/or have to differentiate between 7 and vista even at the browser level, there are fundamental differences.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[sjames]

So I guess that means they need to quit being so dane brammaged and seperate the browser and the OS. All the other browsers work just fine without modifying the OS.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[mikechant]

Yeh like that's a good idea. Yarrrr install me genuine Winderrs no scurvy vairuses gaaaaaranteed.

[Disclaimer: I have not attempted to pirate windows personally]
Actually, popular software torrents on TPB are *very* unlikely to contain malware due to "community validation".

Re:Fixed that for you....

[Captain.Abrecan]

Yeah except IE is free....so good luck with that greed theory.

Re:Fixed that for you....

[MHolmesIV]

I fail to see why we can't interbreed with chimps, which are 98% the same as us.

Sometimes that 2% can be significant.

Christmas time

[Volntyr]

Why do I have a feeling there will be an announcement for Internet Explorer 204634?

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[ZosX]

What's the deal with Slashdot still using the Bill Gates Borg icon to represent Microsoft? That icon is so dated on both levels these days. Bill Gates hasn't worked at Microsoft in years, and the Borg reference just is no longer current or relevant. Anyone under 25 would hardly get the references.

You guys just had a redesign, and you still can't deign to use the real Microsoft icon? For gods sake you have the real ones for Facebook and Twitter, it's not like its that hard. If anything, it makes slashdot just look so horribly unfunny and irrelevant.

This is an on-topic meta comment.

I don't think you get it.

wild speculation

[v1]

I suppose this is related to IE being tied into the operating system. That was initially used in a lame attempt to make an excuse why MS had to force IE on their windows users. But now it's becoming a problem. Their current, most secure browser won't run even ONE version of OS behind? wow.

Not that any serious person really wants to continue using vista if they have any choice in the matter. Besides getting another OS upgrade sale under their belt I'm sure this was one of the driving factors.

Re:wild speculation

[Jeff Carr]

Have you upgraded to IE9 in Windows 7? It closes Windows Explorer in order to install. That wouldn't be necessary if it wasn't tied to the OS. You could try to make the argument that Explorer isn't tied to the OS, but as it's the way that people interact with the OS, that wouldn't hold much weight.

Re:wild speculation

[hedwards]

Pretty soon it's going to be so secure that Windows 8 won't run it.

Re:wild speculation

[man_of_mr_e]

That's funny, Firefox needs to be closed in order to upgrade over the top of it as well. That must mean Firefox is part of the OS. Oh noes!

Re:wild speculation

[Jeff Carr]

Windows Explorer is not the same as Internet Explorer.

What does it matter....

[DiSKiLLeR]

Everyone is still using IE6 anyway.

(If they're using IE at all that is. Everyone else is on Firefox, Chrome, etc..)

Re:What does it matter....

[hedwards]

Isn't that what UniBrows is for?

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think too highly of your own opinion to push onto others with questions. You should be more direct like, "Bill Gates is not in the top position of Microsoft, so he should not be used for the icon!" Bill Gates still has face value and is still associated with Microsoft even it is in name only. I have not effectively watched any science fiction series in the past 10 years or so, that would qualify as popular culture. Is there an alternative neo-borg race? Or would you prefer a Steve Ballmer-esque beholder with tentacles like the Controllers from the Matrix? On second thought, that would be a funny icon to use, albeit The Matrix was released in 1999, so even that is dated.

Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Uh... Internet Explorer? Oh yeah - that thing I use to load Chrome, Firefox and Opera on a new PC?

Why? Does it do something else i'm unaware of?

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[Anonymous Coward]

lol relly? this is slashdot man not micro$ develeper blog! we do not give in to the MAN here and it is open source all the way #1!!! the borgs are the worst enemy in star trek and m$ is the wrst enmy in computers (embrace extinguish PROFIT hello!) , so it makes perfect sense to us. gess you need a different site now dont you

Finally! This is Great!

[czmax]

Microsoft has been letting "backwards compatibility" restrict their innovations for too long. Sounds like they learned a lesson with the Vista fiasco and are finally willing to move forward without continuously coddling all those customers that won't upgrade anyway. You all are scoffing but this is their turn around in action.

Either that or internally they can't convince any developers to install Vista for compatibility testing & development.

Re:Finally! This is Great!

[QuietLagoon]

-1 mod points, you used "Microsoft" and "innovation" in the same sentence.

Re:Finally! This is Great!

[erroneus]

That's certainly one way of spinning it. On the other hand, the way I see it is they are once again, illegally using one product to affect the users of another product. In this case, they are trying to use MSIE to draw people away from Windows XP and to buy Windows 7.

I'm waiting for someone to package MSIE9 for Windows XP. Maybe it has already been done....

Re:Finally! This is Great!

[cratermoon]

Possibly. Because we're discussing the web browser and Microsoft has a known history of leveraging its monopoly position (remember the company IS a convicted monopolist, even if the current regulatory environment makes it possible to forget that ever happened) by tying browser and OS together, it's reasonable to be concerned.

I've hated Microsoft at least since the Windows 95/DR-DOS fiasco, but I still consider any moves the company can make away from the crippling insistence on remaining backward-compatible back to DOS 3.0 a Good Thing.

I'm not talking just about the technical mess that results from so much code and infrastructure propping up the moldy oldies, I'm also speaking from experience how this badly warps business IT planning and support. It's one thing for a company to continue running a crufty server or two for some decades-old system in the data center, multiplying that across the entire desktop personal computer brings an enormous cost, not the least of which is the fact that malware written last millennium will still run and turn your work day into a Bad Day.

Re:Finally! This is Great!

[eric_brissette]

I'm going to disagree. This is not great, at least for me.

The only thing a decision like this accomplishes is drawing out the time I have to keep supporting old versions. Old versions that even on the day they were released were behind in standards compliance in comparison to their competition.

What would be REALLY GREAT is if Microsoft would at least continue to provide basic updates to the rendering engine for IE8 and IE9 after IE10 is released. Even if they're just fixing and providing support for popular CSS properties.

Why does Microsoft hate web developers/designers? What did we do to deserve this kind of punishment?

Re:Finally! This is Great!

[nstlgc]

There's nothing illegal about it.

Re:Finally! This is Great!

[mikechant]

On the other hand, the way I see it is they are once again, illegally using one product to affect the users of another product.

It's probably not illegal for them to do this when the product they are 'drawing people away from' (XP) is produced by them rather than another company.

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[erroneus]

I'd vote for a chair flying through a broken window!

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[DNS-and-BIND]

What are you talking about? It's some guy with an oversize bluetooth headset. Isn't this story about mobile devices? It's on-topic. STFU.

Re:Compatiwhat?

[BrokenHalo]

Yes.

native HTML5?

[wooptoo]

But will it have native HTML5?

Firefox & XP

[bradgoodman]

Just another reason for me to stick with Firefox on all my Windows machines - (which all run XP)!

Vista

[QuietLagoon]

Microsoft probably wishes that Windows Vista had never occurred.

.
But not nearly as much as some of Microsoft's customers wish that Windows Vista had never occurred.

Re:Vista

[Just Brew It!]

Yup, that was my first thought too. Microsoft is essentially saying, "Vista? Oh yeah... that thing we released between XP and Win7... *ahem*... we'd really like to pretend that it doesn't exist."

IE won't run on Vista?

[damn_registrars]

That's OK, nothing else runs on Vista, either.

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[WizardFusion]

+1

Re:Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[tepples]

You need four browsers on a system?

A developer or tester of a web site needs each browser.

The owner of a PC used by multiple people in a household might need to approve installation of multiple browsers. One needs IE for work, someone else prefers Chrome, someone else needs a specific Firefox extension, etc.

King of Kings

[Doc Ruby]

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- From Ozymandias, by Percy Shelley

Best use for IE

[shatfield]

The best use for IE is to download another browser after installing Windows.

Re:Best use for IE

[rsborg]

The best use for IE is to download another browser after installing Windows.

You forget microsoftupdate.com... that and getfirefox.com are the only two sites allowed on my IE installs.

Re:Best use for IE

[dbcad7]

Here's how to do it without..
on Win 7.. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19494-firefox-3-5-1-download-without-browser.html
on XP & Vista.. http://www.ronsilvoza.com/download-firefox-without-a-web-browser/

If you have ever had a working Internet connection, but a borked up IE that won't repair.. It's kind of like having a full pack of cigs with no lighter or matches.

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[derGoldstein]

"Developers" x 4

Slashdot = any excuse to bash M$

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe the comments I am reading. This is the best thing that could happen.

I support Vista and XP computers, and it's a nightmare. The more incentive to get people on Windows 7, the better. I have never been more impressed with an operating system from Microsoft, I encourage EVERYONE to upgrade as soon as they have the funds, seriously. And the emulation for older OS's that come with the Professional/Ultimate versions of Windows means that they can STILL RUN their weird math/engineering/xp-only applications. (yes, I've heard of VirtualBox, that's not the point)

The more people using 7, the better the world will be. I am happy Microsoft has given the middle finger to Vista and XP with Internet Explorer 10.

Oh, and to the people who say "YAY PEOPLE WILL USE ALTERNATE BROWSERS!" --- you're smoking crack. 80% of users won't even know Internet Explorer 10 is released, and most will continue to use an older, security hole ridden version of IE6/7/8

/rant

Horror barely describes it...

[fox171171]

Oh no! You have to use Windows 7! The horror!

My wife's new laptop came with Win7, and so far "I hate it" barely scratches the surface about my feelings for it. Can't seem to customize it in any way that makes it more convenient. I just cringe every time I have to do something on it.

Her brother wanted her to get an Apple. She wanted to stick with something she was familiar with. She may as well have gotten an Apple.

Re:Horror barely describes it...

[magamiako1]

That's fine, but the security benefits provided for win7 are great. The technical benefits, also great.

OS customization seems to me like painting racing stripes on your car--you may think it's cool, everyone else doesn't care and thinks you're an idiot.

Re:Horror barely describes it...

[ZosX]

Huh? How is windows 7 less customizable than say XP? If anything once you get used to the new layout of certain things (explorer comes to mind) its a lot more customizable and convenient than XP ever was. If you think Windows 7 isn't very customizable you would utterly hate MacOS X where it is Jobs way or the highway. I mean there is very little you can actually customize in MacOS. You can tweak the dock a little and change the bar colors but that's really about it.

For maximum tweakage there is always Linux.......

Re:Horror barely describes it...

[Arlet]

I don't want it to be customizable. I'm more than happy if it looks exactly the same as XP, and everything would be in the same place.

Re:Horror barely describes it...

[Urkki]

I don't want it to be customizable. I'm more than happy if it looks exactly the same as XP, and everything would be in the same place.

About everything being the same place... Are you aware that with Win7 (and Vista, I think), you can just hit windows key and start typing whatever you want to do, and it'll find the right action for you? In Win7, I have no idea where anything is, because I don't browse menus and windows and whatnot to get there. Which is a problem when I use XP, and suddenly have to find everything "manually" again. I mean, it'll even find things like modifying environment variables, when you type "path", which was a pain to navigate to in XP, IIRC.

Re:Horror barely describes it...

[TangoMargarine]

Because you know, god forbid if something like a computer interface changes. If we followed that logic, we would still be using command line interfaces.

Realistically, we wouldn't be using Windows, as the whole point of it to begin with was a GUI change to said command line. So in a way, it would be better inasmuch as perhaps the PC world would be based on something more UNIX-y and better :-)

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[mevets]

Your right. How about an angry gorilla?

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[Eggplant62]

If you must have it explained, you'll never understand.

Safari is similar...

[Aphrika]

Doesn't run on anything less than OSX Leopard. Make no bones about it; an OSX point update is really a major OS version update akin to Vista or 7, but all hiding within the OSX moniker.

Interestingly, they do build it for XP, Vista and 7. so in effect, they're supporting rival operating systems that are older than their own. That's interesting as it enables them to fragment the opposition more; giving the older OS users less of a reason to upgrade to 7...

I'll be honest though, I'd like to see IE10 on other platforms. It won't happen, but I think the underlying changes and the direction that a current Microsoft are taking are good. Crap marketing speak not withstanding, IE9 is a good browser, whatever the past history for the name.

Re:Safari is similar...

[TheLink]

Microsoft and Apple serve different markets.

The Apple fanatics will gratefully suck up whatever Apple releases or excretes.

Microsoft's users aren't the same - which is why millions are still on Windows XP.

Re:Safari is similar...

[arse maker]

Apple has had a Windows version of Safari for some time.

Though Safari is based on webkit and so is chrome its not that amazing.

Why they can't have IE10 run on vista makes no sense. Its just marketing. If IE was so fast using the latest tech to be in the lead. You could make that argument. But its the slowest of the major browsers now.

Re:Safari is similar...

[mabhatter654]

but Snow Leopard will run on every Intel Mac. Apple priced it very cheaply to get everybody up to speed so there's really no reason to complain and there's no reason NOT to be running it as Intel Macs have only been out 5 years or so.

Re:Safari is similar...

[toddestan]

Why don't you throw some more ram into them? If they are only 5 years old you should be able to take them up to 1-2GB, possibly more. Then they'd likely be just fine with Vista or 7. Besides XP has grown over the years with all the patches. The initial release runs pretty decently on a P3 with 256MB, but XP + SP3 + IE8 is pretty unhappy on P4 with 512 MB too.

Re:Safari is similar...

[nine-times]

Doesn't run on anything less than OSX Leopard. Make no bones about it; an OSX point update is really a major OS version update akin to Vista or 7, but all hiding within the OSX moniker.

Yeah-- it is worth noting, though, that one of the reasons Apple has not pushed into the enterprise world is that they often fail to offer long-term support for anything. Apple has as much as said (and maybe even explicitly said, at some point) that they consider the iPhone's lifecycle to be 2 years, and once a model is 3 years old, it may not be supported by iOS updates. Apple also tends to be relatively quick to drop software features and push ahead with new hardware more quickly than others are willing to. Dell may sometimes have the newest Intel processor earlier than Apple does, but most Dell computers still come with VGA ports.

So I think the real question isn't just about whether Apple or Windows are offering support for a long enough period, but it's also about what we perceive their motives to be. In each case, is it that the developer is covertly trying to push people toward buying new products, or is it that they're trying to push technology ahead and don't want to invest in legacy support?

Re:Safari is similar...

[garethjrowlands]

...But its the slowest of the major browsers now.

Got any references to back up that assertion? I'm not saying you're wrong but IE9 has credible performance - I can't tell the difference between Chrome 10, IE9 and Firefox 4 performance-wise at the moment. If IE9 is slowest, it's not by much and not on everything (unlike IE6/7/8 which are in a different, slower, league).

Screwing your customers is not a good thing

[pavon]

No, the best thing that Microsoft could do is offer Vista users a free upgrade to Windows 7. It's bad enough that early adopters had to deal with shitty driver support, an unpolished security system, and rough edges all around. Now they cant even use new software from the same damn company that wrote the OS. On computers as new as 18 months old. Many people were avoiding Vista like the plague but a few trusted Microsoft (or were oblivious), and now the thanks they get is a big middle finger. If Microsoft is going to treat Window 7 as a mandatory service pack for Vista then they should price it as such.

Just because you don't know what you're doing

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't mean an Operating System is "the horror". Windows 7 is a BIG improvement on VISTA (which is (now, finally) a slight "improvement" over Windows Server 2003, which in turn, was an improvement on XP, which also was an improvement on Windows 2000, which was a DEFINITE improvement on Windows NT 4.x, which was an improvement on Windows NT 3.51, which HUGELY improved upon Windows NT 3.5, which ABSOLUTELY improved on Windows NT 3.1, by far. So you can keep your Apple MacOS X "p.r." to yourself if you're going to spout absolute bullshit around here that way about a competing OS that runs a lot more software (Windows 7 does vs. MacOS X) and, on a lot more hardware variations than MacOS X does or can, & for 1/3 the price of a Mac!

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[thomasdz]

Your right. How about an angry gorilla?

The problem is, that many people don't have the instant Steve Ballmer face recognition that they had with Bill Gates

Vista's dead Jim

[kstahmer]

Vista was pronounced dead in 2009. It's official now. Microsoft concurs.

Continued OS integration

[nurb432]

This just goes to show you they have not learned yet that tying your client ( browser ) into your OS at that level is bad thing for security.

Who on earth

[Flipao]

Would spend hundreds of dollars buying Windows just to run the newest version of IE?, it has to be the ultimate act of masochism.

Re:Who on earth

[cbhacking]

I take it you have no experience with the latest IE version? IE9 is faster than Firefox on Slashdot, and I has features I can't really get on Chrome (automated blocking of third-party content, for example). Security-wise, it has held up quite well. I also have Opera installed, but it gets very little use since IE9 came out.

On Linux, I use Konqueror and Firefox, but neither one is as good an experience.

Re:Who on earth

[ScentCone]

Yeah, they should install one of the following: Firefox, Chrome or Opera

Yeah, or IE 10. Or they could choose not to. What's your point?

Business as usual

[Kaleidomorph]

Yet another reason I'm glad that I switched to Linux.

Re:Business as usual

[Just Brew It!]

Yup, same here. Been running Ubuntu on my primary desktops (home and work) since shortly after 8.04 LTS came out, and haven't looked back. Also got my youngest daughter (who is in high school) to switch a couple of months ago, and she's a satisfied Linux convert as well.

Amusing side story: Friends and co-workers who have previously relied on me for advice on troubleshooting their Windows-related problems are discovering that I'm not as reliable of a source any more, since my Windows expertise tapers off pretty drastically after Windows XP. I still haven't decided whether this is a good thing or a bad thing overall, but I'm leaning towards the former! ;-)

Vista only sucked until SP1

[judeancodersfront]

But I guess no one bothers to look at benchmarks.

Um, it's just a web browser ya know....

[rsilvergun]

If Opera, Mozilla and Google can all make their browsers run just fine on Windows XP/Vista, why the heck can't Microsoft? Or did you really buy into that 'native HTML5' stuff?

Re:Not surprised at all

[Kaleidomorph]

What do you expect? This is Mircosoft we are talking about. Profit comes before everything else. As long as the money keeps flowing in they will continue to make crappy products. All they have to do is lock people into systems. They play as dirty as they can. They want you to be forced into using nothing but Microsoft products and force you to upgrade to their newest products so they make you pay money you don't have all over again. Take away people's freedom to choose. Microsoft does it. Apple does it. Even Google isn't the white knight they proclaim to be. It won't last forever though. This may be the way things are but everything changes. As hard as these companies are trying to fight it they will eventually fail as change is inevitable.

Vista = favorite excuse to bash M$

[judeancodersfront]

You'd think it would have gotten old after Vista was fixed with updates but to Slashdot it is endless entertainment.

Re:Vista = favorite excuse to bash M$

[judeancodersfront]

Win7 improvements over Vista are minor. Releasing Win7 fixed their image problem and allowed them to make more cash. Vista was fixed with updates, there are plenty of benchmarks on the web that show this. But I realize most Slashdotters enjoy bashing M$ more than objectively measuring software.

Re:Vista = favorite excuse to bash M$

[Just Brew It!]

If the improvements of Win7 over Vista are indeed minor, then I think we are entitled to bash them for dropping support for Vista in future versions of IE in an attempt to pressure people to upgrade to Win7. But I realize most Microsoft apologists enjoy making excuses for their behavior more than objectively evaluating the value of their software to the end user.

Yes, I realize that they are ultimately answerable to their shareholders, not their customers... and in this light, their behavior probably makes sense. But just because it might make sense for them as an overall business strategy doesn't mean I need to like it, or continue to buy their products.

Re:Vista = favorite excuse to bash M$

[judeancodersfront]

I don't care if you bash them for that, I was just explaining in another post how D2D and DX10 could have been backported to XP. Some of us use what works and don't take sides as if the software world is some epic star wars battle.

Re:Vista = favorite excuse to bash M$

[Just Brew It!]

I don't see it as an "epic battle" either. I've simply reached the conclusion that I don't want to pay for something that -- given what I currently use my computers for -- does not provide any added value. Other people, with different requirements, may have perfectly rational reasons for believing otherwise.

This is easy to answer.

[bhpaddock]

What could there possibly be in Windows 7 that Vista lacks?

Just look at the public IDL files in the Windows SDK and look at what's inside #ifdef NTDDI_WIN7 blocks.

Hint: It's not a small list.

Re:This is easy to answer.

[shutdown -p now]

Isn't that only for driver developers, though? Since we're talking about browsers here, a list of changes relevant to userspace applications would be more interesting.

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[jones_supa]

What's the deal with Slashdot still using the Bill Gates Borg icon to represent Microsoft? That icon is so dated on both levels these days.

Well, it's from when Microsoft started. Imagine if there was an icon for aviation - a picture of Wright brothers' early gear would suit fine.

Re:Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

You need four browsers on a system?

A developer or tester of a web site needs each browser.

Bingo! Congratulations, you win a no-prize.

What a load of bull

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yet all this backward compatibility is NOT hurting, Chrome, Opera, Firefox and yes, even Safari.

How come ALL these can support older windows versions without problems but MS somehow runs into issues supporting its own OS that they are STILL selling?

Yes, I want to get rid of old Windows as well but mostly because of IE. If MS actually released some decent upgrades to its old crap they could help people who can't afford to upgrade their PC constantly. If IE9/10 was available XP (as other browsers more capable browsers are) then IE6 would be dead and buried. Clearly MS doesn't want IE6 gone badly enough, or are their browser developers not as capable as EVERY other browser make out there?

Re:What a load of bull

[SpryGuy]

I think the issue goes back to this "native" support MS was talking about (and most of Slashdot completely misinterpreted).

IE9 (and presumably IE10) talks directly to the OS, without translation and abstraction layers that other browsers need to use in order to run across OS's. This presumably gives IE9 (and soon 10) an advatage over the competition in browse speed, deep integration with OS features, and more nimbleness in that they have less code to maintain and don't have to worry about how to implement something that has to differ on each platform (making it cheaper for them to develop). Of course, MS won't exploit much of the "nibleness" aspect (Google is all over them on that), but will certainly appreciate the cost savings, and will certainly push the performance advantages and feature integrations.

And frankly, I think other browsers are wasting time and money developing new code that still runs "exactly the same" on older OSs like XP. It's over a decade old. Time to move on. XP needs to die, if only for security reasons. Never mind it's becoming less and less compatable with newer generations of hardware. It's a dying audience, consistently shrinking. There's no need to target it any more.

And it's quite likely that IE10 will be released around the same time as Windows.Next, so IE10 will still run on the "current OS plus one version back" anyway, just like IE9. It's not like IE10 is coming out this year. (or at least, I'd be shocked if it did)

Re:What a load of bull

[Rinnon]

If MS actually released some decent upgrades to its old crap they could help people who can't afford to upgrade their PC constantly. If IE9/10 was available XP (as other browsers more capable browsers are) then IE6 would be dead and buried. Clearly MS doesn't want IE6 gone badly enough, or are their browser developers not as capable as EVERY other browser make out there?

Not sure what you're basing this on. IE 7 has been out for ages, and is available for XP. Lots of people still use IE 6. IE 8 is also available for XP, still there are people on IE 6. Why on earth would IE 9 or IE 10 Make a difference to the IE 6 market share?

Re:What a load of bull

[shutdown -p now]

Yet all this backward compatibility is NOT hurting, Chrome, Opera, Firefox and yes, even Safari.
How come ALL these can support older windows versions without problems but MS somehow runs into issues supporting its own OS that they are STILL selling?

All the browsers you've listed are cross-platform. As such, they necessarily have some OS abstraction layer already - especially for graphics.

IE is the only one which is not cross-platform. Consequently, it is highly likely that it does not have any abstraction layer, and talks to the OS directly. When the choice was made to use Direct2D for the rendering API in IE9, the lack of such abstraction layer meant that XP wouldn't be supported, as it doesn't have D2D. For IE10, this is something else.

Can an abstraction layer be added? Sure, but it's extra expense that has to be justified.

ly. If IE9/10 was available XP (as other browsers more capable browsers are) then IE6 would be dead and buried. Clearly MS doesn't want IE6 gone badly enough

It's perfectly reasonable if one wants both IE6 and XP gone.

Re:What a load of bull

[mabhatter654]

of course "deep integration" is EXACTLY the problem with Microsoft's browsers. Browsers should treat any "OS integration" requested by web pages as HOSTILE intent. Microsoft still hasn't figured that out, neither has Adobe. The OS should be as sandboxed as possible because the Internet is a hostile place.

Re:What a load of bull

[SpryGuy]

I think you misinterpret deep integration. Having the rendering engine call native APIs that go directly to the hardware, instead of calling abstraction layers, isn't dangerous. Neither is providing the ability to pin pages to the task bar (a user-initiated task that I cannot personally fathom as being any sort of major security risk). You can have deep integration without opening up huge security holes... and it need not have anything at all to do with sandboxing runing scripts (i.e. you can do both).

Re:What a load of bull

[UnknownSoldier]

> And frankly, I think other browsers are wasting time and money developing new code that still runs "exactly the same" on older OSs like XP. It's over a decade old. Time to move on. XP needs to die, if only for security reasons. Never mind it's becoming less and less compatable with newer generations of hardware. It's a dying audience, consistently shrinking. There's no need to target it any more.

And you're offering to pay to have all those old machines upgraded to Win7 ? The Corporate world is still using WinXP. It works. With a decent firewall there are no major security issues so stop with the FUD. Name _one_ technical reason why Win 7 is required?

Engineering the decline of their own market share

[WaffleMonster]

Installed IE9..saw there was no way to configure a separate search bar or disable blurry type and uninstalled it after 10 minutes.

IE10 may be a good browser in its own right but with millions still on XP and Vista they are basically forcing those users to other browsers while pissing off content developers in the process.

Can't get customers? Force them!

[TheCeltic]

Typical.. can't get customers to use your product? Stop supporting other versions and FORCE them to buy your product if they want support. Great business plan... not very moral, but if you can't innovate and get users by producing a superior product.....

Re:Engineering the decline of their own market sha

[Just Brew It!]

IMO this is a non-event in terms of pissing off content developers. That's water under the bridge, since MS has already been dragged (kicking and screaming) in the direction of standards compliance. IE6 (universally loathed by content developers) has already been EOLed (it is not supported on Vista AFAIK).

This is definitely a customer-hostile move though.

Re:Vista User Base

[Rising Ape]

As a remaining Vista user, I can't see the point in forking out £80 for Windows 7, and my existing PC is more than powerful enough for what I need. I doubt I'm the only one.

You know..

[mozumder]

you don't HAVE to make your website look right in IE6, 7, or 8.

Just make the website for IE9 or 10 and new browsers.

Trying to satisfy IE6/7/8 users is like trying to satisfy people without computers.

Re:You know..

[judeancodersfront]

I agree with 6 and maybe 7 depending on the type of website but IE8 is the most common browser. Only non-commercial websites can get away with not supporting it.

Re:Compatiwhat?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Actually that's forwards compatibility.

Re:3 years of coding on Win7

[MightyMartian]

I don't see how what I wrote demonstrates a lot of difference. I've yet to see any Windows 7-specific drivers out there for any hardware I have.seen.

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[oliverthered]

I think oldschool is better, maybe a picture of Judas or the Which Finder General or something like that, maybe a snake or something... or is that an Apple?

Aww...

[Richard Bannister]

And both users of Vista will be horribly disappointed by that...

Re:2004 called

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You jerk!. Why I called you a jerk?

Re:Vista User Base

[MLease]

Where I work, I use 2 identical computers, from a hardware perspective, toggling between them via a KVM switch. One is running Vista, the other Windows 7. The Windows 7 one is much faster and more reliable (it can take literally 15 minutes to log off of the Vista computer and log the next user on; on the Win7 one, it takes only a couple of minutes to do the same thing). I was hearing all sorts of bad press about Vista, but I didn't know what the fuss was about before we "upgraded" from Win2K. "Switch User" doesn't work right (it usually reverts from 1268x1024 screen resolution to 800x600 for the second user, and nothing can be done to set it back, short of a reboot) and the "User Profile Service" takes for-fucking-ever to complete, whether logging on or off.

We only got an exception from our corporate overlords to get the Win7 computer because we were having incredible problems with a critical application (our visitor registration system), and one fine day, several VIPs had to wait for several minutes before we could check them in, because they happened to arrive moments after I'd logged off and my relief was waiting to log on. We still have to use the Vista computer for email, etc.; we are only allowed to use the Win7 computer for the visitor registration app (although when I happen to "accidentally" use the Win7 one for those other apps during off hours, it is much, much faster for them too, so my perception doesn't have anything to do with one machine being more heavily loaded than the other). Switch User works fine on Win7; I've seen it with 4 or 5 different users logged on, and no ill effects. This would bring our Vista system to its knees; 2 logged on users is bad enough.

I decided shortly after we got the Vista computers that Vista's motto was "Please Wait".

Re:Vista User Base

[Stephen Chadfield]

I am also running Vista. I see no reason to spend money and time upgrading to Window 7. I was pleased to dump XP - I always found Luna unbearably ugly.

Not that I care about IE, of course. I am more than happy running Firefox.

Re:3 years of coding on Win7

[nabsltd]

I don't see how what I wrote demonstrates a lot of difference. I've yet to see any Windows 7-specific drivers out there for any hardware I have.seen.

I've used Vista and Windows 7 64-bit drivers on Windows XP x64, too, so there's definitely not that much real difference under the hood over an even longer span.

I suspect it's like the "DirectX 10 only for Vista and newer". There's no reason XP can't have that software installed, it's just that Microsoft doesn't want it to happen.

Re:Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[jdwoods]

Why? Does it do something else i'm unaware of?

Only IE can download (patches, drivers, etc.) via WindowsUpdate and MicrosoftUpdate.

Re:Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Ugh. Slashdot has become a place for kiddies to feel 1337 about themselves by recycling cans of snide.

Aw - thanks. I haven't been called a kiddie since I was programming a GE Multics via teletype.

Re:IE 6 76 8 9 10

[TaoPhoenix]

I'll reply to you though there are some points below you,

MS designed a lockin strategy in some 2004 designed to take care of 2004-2008 .

It Worked.

Now they just have to resolve the artifacts created by such a strategy 4 years after its useful life.

I pointed out a week ago that IE 10 discarded Vista, to which was met mostly "so what".

I say now, that such a fast dropping of Vista is quite a corp statement.

Re:IE6

[TaoPhoenix]

Again I'll reply to you though there are points downstream.

Soon Corp USA will have to upgrade. It will be painful, but they'll have to deal with it say within 3 years.

They will have to migrate from IE 6 to IE11.

They hope that will buy them another 4 years of peace. (They missed the extra fast dev cycles.)

Still, I'd rather Corp USA was not SEVEN copies of IE behind.

Re:Who cares?

[jimicus]

Had to deal with one only the other day. I don't think they had any performance issues, but to be fair it was a core 2 quad with 4GB RAM ;)

Re:Somebody still uses IE?

[jimicus]

You'd be surprised. It's not just large organisations, some smaller companies interact with applications provided by larger organisations and that interaction demands IE.

API differences are minimal

[judeancodersfront]

I've gone over them so go ahead and cite the ones you think would cause problems.

Cost is certainly a factor but I somehow think they could afford it with billions in the bank.

They want to encourage upgrades which shouldn't be a surprise. IE is not a product that they sell.

Re:API differences are minimal

[MightyMartian]

But it does keep people in the Microsoft ecosystem. By basically doing a version check on two OS's with near-identical APIs and architecture simply because you want to get Vista users up to Win7 seems to defy that logic.

Re:API differences are minimal

[judeancodersfront]

It will be more than a version check, they'll make use of the .01% difference. But they could easily do a version check to rem out the Win7 features.

They're trying to encourage OS upgrades since that is where the money is. I'm not saying it is a good strategy, I can understand not wanting to support XP but with Vista they are going to piss a lot of customers off. I doubt it will be worth the negative PR.

DX10 could have been backported to XP

[judeancodersfront]

Win7 and Vista have nearly identical APIs, we're talking a .01% difference. XP at least has some significant differences but DX10 still could have been backported along with D2D.

IE6 users haven't upgraded to 7 or 8

[judeancodersfront]

IE9 on XP wouldn't reduce IE6 usage by 1%.

Re:Engineering the decline of their own market sha

[shutdown -p now]

disable blurry type

Internet Options -> Advanced -> Use software rendering

Of course, you won't be able to run the Aquarium HTML5 demo at 120fps then - what a loss!

ftfy

[drb226]

Microsoft took some heat when it came out that Internet Explorer 9 would leave millions of Windows XP pirates in the lurch

If you're not upgrading your OS (at least to a newer Linux) then can you really complain about not being able to upgrade your browser?

Re:ftfy

[matthewv789]

If OS upgrades were free (and didn't involve re-installing all your software), I might be inclined to agree with you. As it is, no, I can't agree with you at all. I think people can complain all they want, though I'd much rather they just switch to Firefox or Chrome than complain. (And I expect that those that would complain will do exactly that.)

civil war???

[Yiannis Miliatsis]

Sure looks like a civil war inside MS when there is no support for older windows. All the other browsers support older windows!!! Its like there trying to monopolize a market of browsers by denying support to older versions and the're doing it to themselves!!!

Would Vista Users Even Care?

[Sarusa]

Every person I know who's still running Vista and hasn't bothered to upgrade to Win7 is only running Vista because that's what came on the new PC/Laptop and they didn't know any better. They certainly don't care whether they're using IE9 or IE10.

Everyone who'd actually care upgraded to Win7 so fast you could hear the sonic booms.

Okay, so we're not really using IE at all either... ... who's IE10 for again?

Re:Would Vista Users Even Care?

[MightyMartian]

And then there are those that don't feel like slamming down a hundred bucks or more for an OS that, other than for some eye candy changes, is pretty much the same beast. Is there any substantial difference in speed between Win7 and Vista SP2?

In my case, it's even more, because we'd be upgrading most of our machines from Vista Business to Win7 Pro, about twenty or thirty times over.

In other words, Vista will remain on these machines until they're retired.

Re:Would Vista Users Even Care?

[Sarusa]

I don't know about much faster. There are some speed increases since the kernel locking is much better, especially with multicore, but that's not really a raw speed thing, just a hitching thing. It's mostly just that Win7 is a polished product and Vista was Win7 alpha, booted out the door because they ran out of time. It's much more pleasant to work with, which was easily worth $100 over 2-3 years or whatever the lifetime will be since I have to use it hours per day, day in day out.

More to the point, I think if you were the person who actually cared about IE10 vs IE9, you'd be the sort of person to pay the $100 to alt least upgrade your personal machine. The big improvements in IE10 so far are the better CSS3 compliance and that it runs on ARM, both of which mean nothing to most people. It's nothing like the jump from IE8 to IE9 was.

And I completely agree - if you have business machines that are stuck on Vista, they're stuck there till they're dead. And I wouldn't expect IT to ever upgrade anything on them, including IE. Hell, our workplace still rolls out XP with IE6 by default. Because that's the Image by gawd.

Re:IE6

[cyber-vandal]

It's not just Corp USA it's Corp World and Public Sector World. IE6 and 7 are still heavily used all over the place internally. It may be dying on the internet but on the intranet it's still alive and kicking, and since you can't have two versions of IE on the same machine IE6/7/8/9 and 10 will be around for a long, long time. Let me ask you a question: how do you convince the head of IT of a large organisation who has just paid a great deal of money to upgrade from IE6 to 7 he needs to upgrade again and he will have to pay for new software to replace all the internal applications that also had to be heavily modified to run on IE7?

Re:IE6

[zero0ne]

You explain that morons are purchasing software that cannot properly work in a standards compliant browser, or come with retarded activeX plugins that are a security risk.

You tell him that spending money now to work on getting all internal applications up to standards will allow future upgrades to go much smoothly.

You could also try and push Application virtualization such as Symantec Workspace Virtualization to virtualize IE6 / 7 / 8 or whatever old crummy legacy apps we are still using. (not a Symantec employee, though their application virtualization software works with the most software currently).

Or if you already have some awesome deals with MS, you could run with their TS application virtualization.

Or start priming him for a full Linux environment to help reduce license costs (that can partially go to fund high-quality developers or architects).

Re:IE6

[cyber-vandal]

He takes his business elsewhere. You fail.

I doubt IE6 users click on many ads

[judeancodersfront]

or buy much online.

You are absolutely right that web developers need to get tough with them. Don't even give them the option of viewing a broken website, use the IE6update script or autoforward them to the IE8 homepage. Web devs need to take more responsibility.

Why can't they install Firefox along side ie6?

[judeancodersfront]

AD is not a valid excuse, it works just fine with Firefox and there are plenty of guides online. IE6 is still used because of laziness. Corp USA uses it because it still works.

Re:Why can't they install Firefox along side ie6?

[cyber-vandal]

How ridiculous! Using something because it works. What they should be doing is moving to a browser that doesn't run their software.

Re:Why can't they install Firefox along side ie6?

[judeancodersfront]

Corp USA can install two browsers. There is no excuse for surfing the web with IE6.

Re:Why can't they install Firefox along side ie6?

[Larry Lightbulb]

Many businesses would say there's no excuse for surfing the web during working hours.

Re:Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[man_of_mr_e]

If you use services like Gmail, and have multiple accounts.. you need multiple browsers in order to keep them all open in real-time. For some reason, they haven't figured out yet that people might need multiple accounts.

APK spammng on theregister.co.uk

[tomhudson]

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/3/2009/09/04/windows_launch_parties/

Why does he do it? Because it's all he can do. Spam and more spam. And BTW, the stories about linux serving up malware from the London Stock Exchange were put out by Microsoft shills - who failed to point out that the cut-over to linux hadn't happened - it was supposed to happen on Valentine's day, and the story you quote is from 3 days prior. The compromised machines were running Windows.

Now you might be wondering why Alexander Peter Kowalski is so adamant about people using his hosts file to "protect" themselves. One simple explanation - anyone depending on it is open to attack, and if you download it, you've now advertised the IP address of a machine that's probably open to p0wnage.

It's also easy to fingerprint which machines visiting a site are using it with a bit of javascript.

So maybe he's just not too happy that pointing this out threatens his "business model". It makes sense, just like him accusing me of being a botnet operator when calling me a c*nt and a b*tch, and making fun of my temporary loss of sight in one eye (calling me an ugly cyclops) didn't work. Anything to keep people from continuing to question his BS.

No wonder slashdot banned his account.

Oh, almost forgot ... JUMP, FAT BOY, JUMP. Oops, too fat.

Re:APK spammng on theregister.co.uk

[DocHoncho]

Wow... I've never seen him act quite like this.

Way to poke the troll where it hurts Barb. You go girl.

I just love watching him burn with his pitiful rage.

P.S. => APK, your days of trolling /. with impunity are over.

No Linux distro is update-safe

[judeancodersfront]

They all eventually develop a problem from an update that requires the CLI to fix. Linux is not even close to being Windows without the apps.

Re:No Linux distro is update-safe

[geminidomino]

And then they'll get someone's 12-year-old nephew/"computer guy at work"/Retail-store "technician" to fix it, just like they do with all of the inane problems they have under Windows.

Re:Engineering the decline of their own market sha

[man_of_mr_e]

You remind me of all the whiners who installed FF4, then promptly switched back to FF3.x because they couldn't figure out how to go back more than one page at a time, and assumed it was impossible. You people have absolutely no patience, and when something doesn't behave exactly as you expect it to, in the manner you expect it to, you assume it doesn't do what you want.

Hint: Yes, you can turn of cleartype. And i'm not sure why you care about seperate search bar, you can force the address bar to search by prepending a ? to the query. For example, ? WaffleMonster

Well at least they have the D2D excuse with XP

[judeancodersfront]

The could probably backport D2D but a lot of those older XP machines have lousy GPUs anyways. But you make a good point about XP being sold in 2009. I think they should have made a non-D2D version of IE9 for XP. There are a lot of users that only upgrade their browser through Windows update.

Oh come on you have to be kidding

[judeancodersfront]

Most people who bought XP netbooks in 2009 don't even know what extended support is.

Re:Oh come on you have to be kidding

[VTBlue]

Most people who bought XP netbooks in 2009 don't even know what extended support is.

Consumers who buy netbooks in 2009 wouldn't have been able to afford extended support so your point is moot. Extended support is primarily for enterprise customers with multiyear volume licensing agreements.

Re:Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[apparently]

You need four browsers on a system?

A developer or tester of a web site needs each browser.

Bingo! Congratulations, you win a no-prize.

So wait, you're a web dev, but still ask "Uh... Internet Explorer?...Why? Does it do something else i'm unaware of?" What kind of hack of a developer doesn't test his sites for IE compatibility?

Where is the force?

[judeancodersfront]

Vista will still be supported along with IE9. There are also plenty of Vista compatible browsers. I can see why Vista users are annoyed but I don't think it is unethical.

Nope, sorry...

[toby]

OS X only does this for hardware architecture changes, after a long transition period while the previous architecture is emulated. For example: OS X 10.5 (introduced October 2007) ended support for the Classic runtime. The Classic runtime supported the API used in MacOS 9, 8, and earlier, and of course emulated the 68K architecture - that's around a 20 year coverage. The latest versions of OS X still include the Rosetta emulator for PowerPC applications to run, which is almost a 10 year coverage. (Ironically this is useful to run Microsoft's own products...)

(Prior to OS X, Apple deployed a high performance emulator for 68K to allow many applications of that architecture to run transparently on the PowerPC RISC line. This emulator was also present in Classic.)

So: No, Microsoft's incompetence doesn't lead to correct conclusions about how Apple manages backward compatibility. Maybe you should try a Mac: Sounds like you're in for a pleasant surprise.

Wait...

[toby]

Why did you install Windows, again? :D

Re:Wait...

[shatfield]

Why did you install Windows, again? :D

WORK! Ugh. Luckily it's in a VM :-)

Um...

[toby]

Safari 4.1.3 is running fine on this OS X 10.4 Mac (Safari 1.0 ran on 10.2 or later.)

However, Firefox 4 and Opera 11 no longer support PowerPC.

You insensitive clod

[Tooke]

OS customization seems to me like painting racing stripes on your car--you may think it's cool, everyone else doesn't care and thinks you're an idiot

Oh I can tell you, other people do care when they use my laptop (it's GNU/Linux customized to be controlled without a mouse). I also use programmer dvorak, so telling someone over the phone how to open firefox turns into "Press caps lock and K at the same time, then type hypen, Y, G, O, D, Y, S, B, and hit enter"

Nope

[bhpaddock]

The same #define is used for all APIs/DDIs these days. Take a look at shobjidl.idl (shell interfaces) for example.

Re:Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Google the term "humor" and "joke".

They didn't drop anything

[wjsteele]

Microsoft has NOT "dropped" support for IE 10 on Vista... they never had it to begin with!

Bill

ironically

[unity100]

whereas the company who actually sold those oses is producing this browser and NOT supporting its OWN product, something else, produced by the very 'the people' they are fighting against supports the very customers they have gave up on. firefox.

Killing an OS

[helix2301]

This is so typical Microsoft this is how they kill OS versions. First they start with the browser then its the Windows Updates. Then it becomes end of life.

I hope MS applies the same logic to OFFICE 2011

[dosware]

As with my browser, I'd prefer to view and scroll my Office documents using the latest DirectXX5d, hardware-boosted acceleration.

Shit not given ...

[RockDoctor]

Work has some IT people to worry about crap like this and other Windows issues. So, let them worry. For machines that I actually care about (as in "It's fucked. YOU fix it." is not an option), it's a non-issue.

Ridiculous

[bhpaddock]

The changes to the API surface from Windows 2000 to Windows 7 are innumerable. You must be joking if you think the only change is transactional filesystem access.

Of course "you can get the same functionality." You could write the entire OS yourself if you wanted. But if you actually want to push things forward your best bet is to build upon the works of others, like the huge amount of infrastructure the Windows team has put into each successive release.

Sort of

[bhpaddock]

Actually it makes it so that IE can only worry about writing to D2D/DWrite and whether there's GPU acceleration or not is something IE doesn't have to worry about.

So I can run iLife '11 on 10.5?

[bhpaddock]

Because the system requirements page says 10.6.3 is the minimum.

So what do you think of Chrome OS?

[bhpaddock]

Or the fact that Apple provides webkit as a core part of their OS's API set (upon which much of the included UI and apps are built)?

You act like history hasn't completely and utterly validated Microsoft's (ahead-of-it's-time) assertion that the web platform would be crucial to the future of computing.

Re:Engineering the decline of their own market sha

[matthewv789]

Re: pissing off content developers. You're right: as a web developer, I'm kind of doubting I will ever have a reason to test webites in IE9 or 10. I doubt IE9 or 10 will ever achieve much market share (they'll probably never break 10% each), and may be the beginning of the end of even testing for IE at all. Once IE6-8 all drop below about 3% market share each, there won't be much reason to test for old IE compatibility, and by that time time they'll have IE 11 or 12 or even 15, with increasing standards compliance, but no version with more than about 5-8% market share. If a site runs in current versions of Firefox and Chrome, AND in IE8, I'll just figure IE9+ must be AOK.

Good Decision

[Pigskin-Referee]

This is a great idea on Microsoft's part. In the past, Microsoft has tried so hard to support every product on every OS version in the past that security holes were opened and support became a nightmare. Microsoft has finally come to their senses and realized that the future is now and yesterday is gone.

From a brief perusal of the Microsoft TectNet, it appears that Vista does not natively support the features that the new IE10 version requires. It would involve back porting and possibly breaking other applications in order to get Vista compatible with IE10. Microsoft has wisely realized that, that is not a wise move to make. In any case, by the time IE10 is formerly released, Vista will all ready be over 5 years old. Supporting a five year+ old OS is hardly a prime directive and besides, IE9 will work just fine on it. Besides, Microsoft NEVER had support for Vista and IE10; therefore, how can they conceivably drop support for it?

Re:3 years of coding on Win7

[Lanteran]

Windows 7 hasn't been out for 3 years.

Windows 2000

[calagan800xl]

Windows 2000 Workstation (I specify Workstation because IIS 5 did a lot of damage to its Server counterpart) was the best OS MS ever came up with: I wish I could run IE 9 and 10 on it (just to browse MS specific stuff such as SharePoint and OWA, not as primary browser). Ensuring Windows 2000 compatibility would probably also help the Linux+wine users getting IE on their platform.

As a Vista owner

[DarthVain]

I guess I will just use firerfox, *shrug*.

Though it does burn me a little bit that I bought that BS OS from MS, and now they are seemingly cutting me loose. Christ, what a bunch of assholes!

Great

[Corse32]

The job of testing websites for cross-browser compatibility just got even more painful...

I got Zapped!

[cyberzephyr]

I now i run a Vista machine and am reconsidering.

I was happy with IE8 but if they are going to force me to take IE9 then i'm out!

I think i might go to LINUX even if for a bit!