Xara 3D 6 and Vista RC1

[Big Frank]

Well, thanks for voicing your personal preference re: installing Vista RC1 on your PC.

It's my pleasure. I'm delighted you are delighted with your pre-release of the next Windows. But not everybody is blissfully unaware of the real and potential problems with Vista and it would be a shame not to use this opportunity to point out some of its fatal flaws which, being at RC1, it is almost too late to iron out now:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1932935,00.asp

Here's where I am coming from: In January 2006, Microsoft shipped the first security patch for Vista and that's a year before its release!! "it is clear that the poorly designed 'SetAbortProc,' the function that allows printing jobs to be cancelled, was ported over to Vista". It is hinted that Microsoft Vista will come out in no less than eight (!) versions. Why??? Vista will nevertheless sell because most computer users use the OS bundled with their Dell - but that doesn't make it good, it just makes it popular. McDonalds is popular, but it's nothing more than cholesterol, sugar and salt fodder for the masses. Then there are headlines like "Eugene Kaspersky of Kaspersky Labs predicts a rootkit for Vista within a year of release", "AV firms rubbish MS Vista security claims" and more (AV firms, although they have a Vista axe to grind, have considerably more expertise in AV than Microsoft, whose record in PC security is lamentable). And even one of the world's greatest fans of Microsoft and Windows, Paul Thurrott, said this on his site winsupersite.com: "the vast majority of new end user features in Windows Vista are already available to you - most of them for free, no less - in Windows XP. And by skipping Windows Vista, at least for the time being, you'll be left with a PC that is faster, more compatible with the software and hardware you own, and just about as capable as an otherwise identical PC running Windows Vista".

And those are just some of the reasons I will not be installing X3D6 on Windows Vista (whatever release), because I won't be touching Windows Vista with a barge pole until I have a compelling reason to do so. "Because it's new" isn't one of them.

[Soquili]

Frank,

I personally didn't update any of my home PCs with XP until about 3 months ago. None of it's features were adequate to qualify as a reason to update.

Because of all the problems in Vista and I know I will have to support it here at work. I think I need as much time to find all the "gotchas" and how to correct them before being swamped with 80 or 90 desktops all at once.

[Big Frank]

I personally didn't update any of my home PCs with XP until about 3 months ago.

Me too! I still have a Win2k laptop and a Win2k file server. I'm also still running MacOS 10.3.9 on my iMac because I fail to see why a few dashboard widgets should make me want to fork out for Tiger. However, Leopard might be a different thing, but once again I won't be in the rush to get a copy when it comes out. Let them fix the bugs first and we'll evaluate to see if it gives any productivity boost.

[Pilgrim]

Bill,

Here's the results of installing Xara3D 6 on Vista RC1. It installed without even a whimper. I've created just a few simple graphics and then saved them to the Desktop. On saving screensavers, the first attempt worked fine. When I made a few changes and then tried to overwrite the saved file, the program went into the infamous "Not responding" mode for about 10 seconds and then recovered with the new file saved. So, there appears to be a small anomaly but it doesn't seem to have any negative affects. The screensavers and animated graphics display just fine with Vista.

RE: installing Vista. Since this is a bit off-topic, I'll make this brief. Here's what I have done. I have a 250 gig HDD to work with. I created a new 80 gig partition, chose "V" for the drive letter and labeled it "Vista" for easy reference. I then ran the Vista "setup" from within XP (you can also boot with the DVD to install it) and simply chose "V" as the desired partition. The installation was quick and easy, much to my delight. So, now I have a dual-boot configuration, created automatically at installation. Vista is the default O/S on bootup and using the up/down arrow keys I can choose either Vista or XP.

To uninstall Vista, a special routine needs to be run so as to remove the Vista boot module since it uses a totally different method than XP, which will then restore the regular boot.ini process and allow XP to boot as before. If you are interested in that "routine", and/or any other information re: Vista RC1, either PM or e-mail me and I'll share that with you, since again, it is definitely off-topic here.

[AntonyF]

I have tested all of our programs (not extensively) and my results are here:

http://support.xara.com/index.php?_m...articleid=2466

When I made a few changes and then tried to overwrite the saved file, the program went into the infamous "Not responding" mode for about 10 seconds and then recovered with the new file saved.

I noticed the preview part of Xara3D went white when saving a file, but I wanted to investigate this one more. I'll keep what you said in mind too, they sound similar. But otherwise Xara3D seems to have come out best with Vista.

If anyone has any feedback from using our products with Vista, I will note it down. So it's best to PM me to make sure I see it.