.Net Jonesie - Vista Compatibility

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Vista Compatibility by Peter.Jones@intergen.co.nz

There's been a few comments here and there about the lack of support for Visual Studio .old on Vista. I was reading bharry's post on this and it makes perfect sense to me - anything that takes time away from future versions is a bad thing in my book.

However, Microsoft are definitely going to extraordinary lengths to provide compatibility for as many applications as possible. For example, VB 6! There is still a heck of a lot of VB code out there and it's not going away soon (btw, have you noticed the investment Microsoft have made in VB6 <-> VB .Net migration and tools since the big stink last year?). I don't know how anyone can say that Microsoft don't care or don't listen - that's just patently wrong.

I installed Vista RC1 on a fast machine over the weekend so that I could work on a small DotNetNuke web site (for a moonlighting job - don't worry, the boss knows :). During the process I had to install SQL Express. Vista gave me an interesting warning message that told me I needed SQL Server 2005 SP2. Now after a bit of hunting around I finally realised that SP2 doesn't exist yet. Hmmmm, this could be a problem. However, I then noticed the Application Compatibility icon on my desktop and in about 1 minute I had SQL Express running in XP SP2 mode.

Now I don't know about you, but I can't remember ever knowing enough about the future to tell users of my applications that they should get a patch that does not yet exist. Frankly, I find this to be amazing that Microsoft would go to these lengths and a clear demonstration that of their commitment to delivering a great product.

So, now I really want Vista at work - not because it's necessarily any better - but mainly because it's new and shiny. New is good because it will have the latest goodness (and sure, the latest bugs). Shiny is good because I spend 10-12 hours a day looking at computer screens and I need a bit of a change to keep me interested. Oh, and I guess it's faster and easier to use and all that boring stuff too.

This is a great industry to be involved in.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006 7:31:30 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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