The trouble with Vista

[AndFarr]

I recently bought a new laptop that came with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed.
After using it for a few days I can't imagine why anyone would choose Vista over XP. It is slower, and so fraught with frustrating pop-ups ( UAC ) that it feels like torture to use. Furthermore many of my critical software programs won't load: Adobe Golive CS2, Netobject Fusion 7, Adobe Elements 4, Paperport 7,
etc, etc. If I have to replace all my programs with the latest versions it will quickly cost me more that the cost of the new computer!
So I'm feeling like I've been had...
I've turned off the UAC at least.
Are any of you having the same experience? Any suggestions?
- Andrew

[Soquili]

Hi Andrew,

Vista can be frustrating with the UAC and other pop-ups.

Try running the installers for your programs as Administrator. Right click the installer and select Run as Administrator. This will insure that the registry entries are written correctly.

Try setting the compatibility mode for the programs by right clicking the program's icon and selecting the compatibility tab. Some programs will require that you put a tick in the Run this program as administrator check box.

[AndFarr]

I've had some "Catch 22" problems.
When I try to load Adobe Golive and Elements I get an error message that says: " you must have Internet Explorer 3.01 or higher to load"
Vista comes stock with IE 7, but the programs don't seem to recognize it as a later version of IE. So I tried to load an old version of IE 4.0 that I happened to have and it wouldn't load, saying that there was already a later version installed!
Vista seems to be less about security and more about gifting the software vendors with new "Vista Ready" software sales!
- Andrew

[steve.ledger]

When I upgraded to a P1 with Windows 95 and had 128mb ram, my son would restart to DOS to play his favourite games only to be greeted with "You must have at least a 486DX processor and 8mb RAM".. !!! The software was not future compatible - how could it be.

You can't have it both ways when buying brand new hardware technology with a brand new O/S that has had many significant kernel changes aimed at safer and more secure computing.

Follow Bill's instructions and many apps will be pulled into line, those that don't? Oh well - that's life..

Obviously there will always be some software which was created to run under older Operating Systems that will have some issues. There is no reason to expect all software that was written to run under Win98/Me/2000 & XP to work with an operating system that was not around when they were written, or indeed new hardware. (Ppl buying quad-core CPU's complain when their games don't run 4 times as fast - well was the game written with Multi_Threading support??? Nope...)

This is similar to buying a brand new Ford Falcon and finding that your seat covers from the old model don't suit and most of those parts you collected are just not going fit the new design. Is that Fords fault??? Nope..

It's frustrating, annoying, maddening and easy to blame it on a conspiracy to force upgrades.
On the positive side, without upgrades there would be no progress..

Have you noticed that whenever you update FireFox browser many of your extensions also need upgrading? Same thing. It's about progress and compatibility..

MORE INFORMATION
Applications that have earned the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo
To view the list of applications that have earned the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
https://winqual.microsoft.com/member...ifiedlist.aspx

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Applications that have earned the "Works with Windows Vista" logo
To view the list of applications that have earned the "Works with Windows Vista" logo, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
https://winqual.microsoft.com/member...swithlist.aspx

Full page here

[Soquili]

Andrew there are a few ways a program can check for which version of IE is installed.

The following link explains how programs "should" check the version.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/164539

IE 7 has the version and build registry values (on my machine at least). Assuming that your Adobe programs are looking for an IVer registry value, you may want to add one with a string value of 103. This will not hurt how IE works but may fool the Adobe application.

Let me know if you need help creating the registry entry.

If the IVer registry value doesn't fool the application you may want to copy the shdocvw.dll file from your IE 4 disc (it is probably hidden inside a .cab file).

[AndFarr]

Thank you for your suggestions.
I'll give it a whirl and see what happens!
- AF

[iamtheblues]

Don't know if this would help Andrew, but how about creating a new partition on the hard drive, and loading your preferred operating system on that, with all the programs that won't run under Vista?

OK, soapbox time:
Progress is all well and good, and I wouldn't argue with what has been said, (there's a but coming, isn't there) but given the huge market share that Microsoft has, surely they would create a lot more goodwill if they offered continued support for the older operating systems, rather than letting them fall by the wayside after a few years.
I've still got a scanner and plenty of software that are perfectly suitable for my needs, so I still run Windows 98 on a dual boot system. I'm lucky that I could do this myself, and not have to shell out for someone to do it for me.
It seems pretty unethical to me that a lot of people are being forced into purchases they would otherwise have avoided if they had chosen not to take the "progressive" route.
I know it's a question of "Let the buyer beware" but all too often the claims made for the new product fail to announce in print that is large enough to be read with the naked eye that there are possibly certain expensive byproducts as a result of undertaking the purchase of these much vaunted new systems. Let's face it, Microsoft have been guilty in the past of foisting half baked operating systems on an unsuspecting public. Windows ME was a perfect example of this.
What really irks me about this type of practise is that having bought it, you don't even own the blessed thing, and they are basically expecting the unsuspecting to do the beta testing for them.
With the release of Vista they are hoping that the public has a very short memory. It's all a big con and Microsoft deserve all the bad publicity they get.
There, I feel better now!
Solo mi dos centimos.
Saludos,
Bob.

[MarcT]

I have no interest in vista, the purpose of getting faster processors only to bloat them with millions of lines of code and slow down your performance still puzzles me.

Also, I've promised myself not to embark myself again with an system that needs so much work to have decent system performance.

I'll stick with XP, some applications I cannot live without aren't available under Linux or Mac. (Xtreme, MoI and others).
I just cross my fingers I won't have to be forced to use Vista.

This being said Xp is much more stable than it's previous 98 and 95 inceptions.


Regards,

coco

[juergen]

I am working with various *nix flavours for years and am developing on Windows OS for most of the times.

For the last 15 years or so each year I compared what operating system would serve me best on the client side. The last years things were close.

This year I got a new notebook. IBM Thinkpad X41t. Tablet PC with low end graphics card but with lots of memory and dual core processor.

It was delivered with Windows Vista preinstalled. Things didnt work too well so installed a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate, first 32 then 64bit version. Some stuff worked, the touchscreen never worked as I expected it (pressure sensitivity didnt work with Vista).
XP Tablet version wasnt any better, it was worse even, lacking drivers.

Fun came when I installed Ubuntu 7.10. Pretty much everything worked out of the box even. My touchscreen was recognized as a Wacom serial tablet and GIMP let me use the stylus/eraser with pressure sensitivity enabled. I have all 4 gigs available and it just works so far. I dont do much with Xara on Linux yet, just scribbles during brainstorm sessions, but for that it works fine so far.

I personally think that Vista was the first OS from Microsoft that helped other operating systems like Leopard (Mac) or Linux gain more attention as it is just plain bad stuff. Even if you get your pc up and running, get all drivers you need and have all applications working, you have lots of problems. All people in networks have to realize that network speed is sloooooow if talking to anything but other Vista, Win2008 machines. Or .... Samba shares. They see that even if you turn autoupdate off, Vista installs some updates, no matter which setting you choose. Just to ensure everything is fine. (Sidenote to germans: And we are scared of Schäuble.. =))
Fun thing is that that one of the few good things (UAC) is regarded as annoying by most of the users.

Well. I guess you know my opinion about Vista now. After all, I dont want to forget to mention the good point about Vista (Ultimate) though... It has a built in DVD player I really like.

Juergen

[pauland]

LOL, I used to work on a specialised real-time operating system. The discussion has just reminded me of a job interview where I was asked about the limitations of the computer system I was developing for and was the ability to only access 64K of memory a serious limtation. I explained that I had yet to encounter the 64K limit and it was not a serious problem, although I was also working on an updated version that could use 256K of memory.

Not exactly, Vista was it?

Yes, I did mean 64K not 64MB and I did get offered the job, although I turned it down.

Paul