Reasons to hate Vista...

[ffutures]

One of the things happening at work this summer is that a computer management company takes over our IT and will be installing new computers. All of which, unfortunately, have Vista as their operating system.

And it turns out that several bits of software won't run on Vista, even in compatibility mode, including some of our data-logging programs and the software for some extremely cheap radiation sensors. The latter, incidentally, runs perfectly under Windows 7, which is why they're not working on a replacement.

So it goes. At least for the next year or so, at which point they will hopefully roll out Windows 7 instead.

Comments

[ggreig]

To be fair to Microsoft and Windows Vista, it's usually - not always - the fault of the third party developer if software doesn't work on a new version of the operating system. They haven't followed Microsoft's best practice recommendations, which exist for a reason.

It's sometimes difficult to hunt down and cover everything, since there isn't a single location for these things; but a responsible developer will make the effort.

Doesn't really help to know that, of course. :-(

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Not really. The trouble is that datalogging programs usually mess with a lot of ports etc., so they are particularly likely to show problems.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I dunno... Vista is trying so hard to protect you that it prevents you from getting anything done. Windows 7 actually scales back some of the crazier stuff.

Generally speaking you're right. But Vista will go down in history as an object lesson in what not to do in OS development.

[ggreig]

Vista is trying so hard to protect you that it prevents you from getting anything done.

Quite the opposite. By choice, I developed as a normal user - not an administrator - on Windows XP, to be sure that we weren't making any invalid assumptions about access rights in the course of our development. That's what everyone "should" have been doing, but of course few people did, because there wasn't enough enforcement to protect people from themselves (and actually more importantly, to force developers to give up their sloppy practices and write software that could be run from a normal user account). Vista and specifically the UAC - the prompts everyone seems to hate so much - made an enormous step forward in making doing things as a normal user more comfortable and usable. I can elevate my permissions to Admin whenever I need (to install something, for example) while still running from a normal user account.

Windows 7 may knock off some more rough edges, but Vista was actually the big step forward. Enforcing a better level of security on everyone, not just those who chose, was always going to make Microsoft unpopular though, and they must have known it.