No Clean Installs with Vista Upgrade

January 29, 2007 By Leave a Comment

George Ou at ZDNet reports, based on an Arstechnica article, that Windows Vista Upgrade Edition will not permit “clean installs.”

For years, just to make sure we have completely clean installations, we have been able to boot an upgrade CD, insert our valid previous Windows CD to validate it, and then install Windows (95, 98, 2000, Me, XP) in a partition of our choice.

No longer. Now, we have to install Windows XP or Windows 2000 first — then upgrade it to Vista.  He also reports that there is one workaround — if you tell Vista to wipe the hard drive after validating an existing Windows XP installation, it will install as a clean copy.

Got a new hard drive? You’ll have to install XP first. Then, you can upgrade it to Vista.

What brain-dead, clueless idiot thought up this?

Filed Under: Compatibility, Marketing Blunders, Upgrading, Upgrading to Vista

Quickbooks Incompatibility with Windows Vista

January 28, 2007 By Leave a Comment

ZDNet has an interesting article by David Berlind about Intuit’s Quickbooks and its incompatibility with Windows Vista.

More interesting is George Ou’s article, quoted and linked from there, that puts the problem squarely on Intuit — who apparently decided long ago not to make the application capable of getting certified for Windows XP. Unfortunately, those same things that were “no-no’s” in Windows XP are now blocked in Windows Vista. Seems like Intuit was sending communications to other applications via the Windows Registry…

Filed Under: Application Incompatibility, Compatibility, Data Security, Upgrading, Upgrading to Vista

Windows Vista – The Missing Manual

January 15, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Windows Vista is a nice piece of eye candy – Microsoft has dramatically changed the interface and added much more impressive graphics (if you have the graphics card to handle the Aero interface) and many security improvements under the surface.

Windows Vista, on the other hand, will be confusing to almost everyone whose been using Win98, WinMe, Win2000 and WinXP.

But, like new versions of Windows for a long time, Windows Vista doesn’t come with a manual.

That’s where the new manual from O’Reilly comes in –
Windows Vista – The Missing Manual.

Filed Under: Compatibility, Tips & Tricks, Upgrading to Vista, User Interface

Long list of Vista bugs that will keep me off Vista

January 9, 2007 By Leave a Comment

George Ou has a great article on Windows Vista bugs at Tech Republic (www.techrepublic.com).

Check out his Long list of Vista bugs that will keep me off Vista

Filed Under: Bugs, Compatibility, Design Blunders, RC1, Upgrading, Upgrading to Vista

Vista testers get unexpected holiday gift: No TV

January 5, 2007 By 2 Comments

TechRepublic.com has a great article about Microsoft’s most recent fiasco with the Vista Release Candidate 1 version.

It seems that the Media Center features stopped working on December 31st because it only licensed the MPEG-2 encoding technology until December 31st.

Those Vista beta users who decide to continue to trust Microsoft for media center functions are supposed to be able to get their Media Centers operating again when they upgrade to official release versions of Vista.

The official release is scheduled to be available on January 30th.  The Media Center functionality is in some, but not all, of the new Vista versions.

Welcome to the world of Digital Rights Management – Welcome to the world of Vista!

Filed Under: Digital Rights Management, Marketing Blunders, Media Center, Video

Microsoft Claims Vista’s Aero Interface Doesn’t Slow PCs

January 1, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it?

The Windows Vista interface is the number one eye-candy item in Vista — and the only visible effect of upgrading that most people will see.

InfoWorld has an article that kind of takes Microsoft to task for such a blatant non sequitur. I say “kind of” since the article doesn’t quite go so far as to question how gullible MS thinks we are…
In classic MS style, an testing lab found that, despite Windows automatically downgrading the Aero interface to an interface like XP’s on computers that don’t meet their standards, this doesn’t mean that Aero slows PC’s.

Filed Under: Compatibility, Marketing Blunders, Requirements, Upgrading to Vista, User Interface, Video