Comments on: Vista Retraction http://www.belshe.com/2006/12/29/vista-retraction/ Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:44:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Jeff S http://www.belshe.com/2006/12/29/vista-retraction/#comment-985 Jeff S Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:57:06 +0000 http://www.belshe.com/2006/12/29/vista-retraction/#comment-985 I'm running it at home and at work. I'm doing so out of a professional need to understand the user experience on the platform more than from a burning desire to possess Vista. Having said that, I'm not unhappy with it. Is it 5 years of progress? Heck no. It finally does have support for no-execute (NX) on stack and heap pages (enabled only for services by default. But you can turn it on for everything, and I have. No problems so far). I would upgrade an OS just to get that single feature. Most annoying bit so far? Visual Studio 2005, the current production development environment from MS "has known compatibility problems" with Vista, according to the scary dialog box that pops up every time you try to run it. That's so incredibly lame. There's a prerelease version of a new development platform that was released to MSDN the week before Christmas. I haven't tried it out yet. Having said that, MSVC05 has worked just fine for everything I've asked it to do. Heck, I'm compiling with MSVS.net03. That works. Of course, if simple compilation at the command line didn't work, the OS would be so hopelessly broken I'm not sure what I would say. Oh, and I'm finding I have to run some of my day to day programs (like NX) as administrator or face a barrage of dialog boxes throughout the day. And I have to start NX about 5 times. It crashes the first 4 times, but works fine on the 5th. Seems to be that after X crashes some sort of compatibility setting is applied that makes it work. On my home machine, my firewire port isn't supported for some reason. And one other compability problem that absolutely baffles me. My PS/2-connected mouse doesn't work. Blimy. But I'm still using it. Stay tuned. I’m running it at home and at work. I’m doing so out of a professional need to understand the user experience on the platform more than from a burning desire to possess Vista.

Having said that, I’m not unhappy with it. Is it 5 years of progress? Heck no.

It finally does have support for no-execute (NX) on stack and heap pages (enabled only for services by default. But you can turn it on for everything, and I have. No problems so far). I would upgrade an OS just to get that single feature.

Most annoying bit so far? Visual Studio 2005, the current production development environment from MS “has known compatibility problems” with Vista, according to the scary dialog box that pops up every time you try to run it. That’s so incredibly lame. There’s a prerelease version of a new development platform that was released to MSDN the week before Christmas. I haven’t tried it out yet. Having said that, MSVC05 has worked just fine for everything I’ve asked it to do. Heck, I’m compiling with MSVS.net03. That works. Of course, if simple compilation at the command line didn’t work, the OS would be so hopelessly broken I’m not sure what I would say.

Oh, and I’m finding I have to run some of my day to day programs (like NX) as administrator or face a barrage of dialog boxes throughout the day. And I have to start NX about 5 times. It crashes the first 4 times, but works fine on the 5th. Seems to be that after X crashes some sort of compatibility setting is applied that makes it work.

On my home machine, my firewire port isn’t supported for some reason. And one other compability problem that absolutely baffles me. My PS/2-connected mouse doesn’t work. Blimy.

But I’m still using it. Stay tuned.

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