Thoughts on Vista 5384 to 5536

[William]

I have been running Vista Beta since it became available. Last week I
downloaded and installed 5536 as a clean install, on a clean partition.
I quickly noticed that software compatibility was going to be a major
issue. some of my favorite programs that ran on 5384 do not run in 5536.
Three of these are Diskeeper Beta, Avast Antivirus Free edition, and
Nero 6.

Is it just me, or does it seem that Vista is become more non-compatible
with software than less?

William

 

[MICHAEL]

It is up to the software companies to write software
that is compatible with Vista. Just as hardware makers
are responsible for their own drivers.


-Michael

 

[Andre Da Costa [ActiveWin]]

Well, major upgrade releases of Windows tend to cause incompatibility with
older software, usually its up to the manufacturer of the product to update
their software to support the OS. Hopefully with the release of RC1, this
will encourage ISV's to start testing their apps to ensure compatibility and
release updates for existing apps by RTM.

 

[Bill]

This was my 1st experience with a Beta OS (5384). I expected problems, and
they were there. BUT - 5384 was not a problematic as I though it would be.
5536 seems to be better - few issues. I do not do a lot of fancy stuff, so I
do not run into a lot of the things mentioned here. My Epson scanner worked
in both versions, my HP 7760 printer only worked in the later version after
installing it with a 7800 ''family'' drivers. I have been an HP fan for a
long time, not so much any more.
I will put 5600 on when it arrives and see how it is.
I have played with Office 2007 Beta in Vista and XP, as well as IE 7 RC1 in
XP.

All in all, I am enjoying the Beta experience.

This newsgroup has proven to be the best source of info for me - you people
are the best - AND - you also get a wee bit testy at times, slightly more
than a ''wee bit'' other times, and down right nuts most of the time (this
is the best part<G>)

BETA ON............................


I have been running Vista Beta since it became available. Last week I
downloaded and installed 5536 as a clean install, on a clean partition.
I quickly noticed that software compatibility was going to be a major
issue. some of my favorite programs that ran on 5384 do not run in 5536.
Three of these are Diskeeper Beta, Avast Antivirus Free edition, and
Nero 6.

Is it just me, or does it seem that Vista is become more non-compatible
with software than less?

William

 

[William]

You would think that software that ran fine in 5384 should still run in
5536. Obviously the software has not changed. It therefore must be
something that Microsoft did to 5536 that changed.

William

 

[MICHAEL]

It is a beta, and yes- there were many changes from
5384 to 5536. You shouldn't expect companies to write
code that that will always work with all beta builds. Since
Vista is *beta* and parts of the coding can change- many
times the software must change, too. As you said,
"Obviously the software has not changed."
That, more than likely, *is* the problem.

-Michael

 

[William]

I had no problems with any of my hardware, and the performance of 5536
was better than 5384. However, it is the software issues that, to me,
are going to be a deal buster. After seeing what the pricing is going to
be, I would have to justify the expense of going to Vista from XP
Professional. While the performance of 5536 is much better than 5384, it
is not up to XP performance on the same hardware. For example, I have
two computers, one is a P4-2ghz with 1.5gb of RAM and the other is an
AMD Athlon 900mhz with 448mb of RAM. I have an ATI TV Wonder Elite in
the P4, and an ATI TV Wonder in the AMD. On the P4 when I watch live TV
with the bundled application in XP the CPU usage is about 20%. When I
run the Media Center in 5536 my CPU usage is between 95%-100%. When I
run live TV on the AMD with the bundled application, it averages about
37% CPU usage. I have not run Vista on the AMD computer.

When Vista is finally available to retail, I would have to justify the
expense. If there is nothing really dramatically new then I would keep
using XP Professional until the time comes to buy a new computer. XP
runs all my software and is easier on the CPU than Vista. If all I am
after is just the Aero Glass effect, then I could easily have it with
Stardock's Windowblinds 5.01 (which I have). It seems that Microsoft
needs to make a more compelling case as to why we need to spend our
hard-earned dollars on an OS that may not do for you what you can all
ready do with the current OS.

William

 

[Andre Da Costa [ActiveWin]]

The software is always changing, new builds breaks code from past builds
which causes incompatibility. It will be this way until RTM, but RC1 is a
stable enough build to start testing on. I wouldn't compare 5384 to 5536,
since one is a milestone build and the other an interim release
respectively.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Some bugs are dependent on other bugs being fixed so a workaround may be in
place. The the other bug gets fixed and the workaround stops working and
that has to be fixed. And on it goes.

 

[Travis King]

I also have had more compatibility programs in Pre-RC1 than Beta 2. My
scanner was a little harder to get going for one. Two, some programs that
worked fine on Beta 2 won't install at all on Pre-RC1 - when I go to install
some programs, nothing happens. What I did was install those programs using
XP and installed them on my Vista partition, all but one of the software
programs that I did this with worked.
These programs had this behavior:
Adobe Photoshop 5.5
HP PhotoSmart Photo Printing
Sierra PrintArtist 8.0
(and something else that I can't remember)

PrintArtist was the only one not to work right. The rest worked fine, but
in a real environment, it would not be ideal to install with a different OS
to get it to work on Vista.