Well, I gave Vista a fair crack of the whip!

Okay, after ranting a while back about why we wouldn't move our corporate network over to Vista I decided to try an experiment and give it a fair crack of the whip. I sprinkled a couple of Vista machines throughout the network to see how they would get on. This was a huge mistake.

First up were our two new CAD machines. Autocad 2005 doesn't run on Vista. Furthermore, according to the manufacturers it will never run on Vista, but I can buy a new version (2008) for $4,000 per machine...... So, now I'm left with two new swanky quad core workstations which won't actually run the software they were bought for. My next problem is, if I fork out $8,000 for two new Autocad licenses, who is to say that the next version of Windows, won't break them, and I'll be paying out this kind of money every few years (we have 10 CAD machines, so I'm actually looking at $40,000 every 3 years). Now, this is not AutoCAD's fault. They wrote the code three years ago.

Quite simply, Microsoft Vista is not 100% software backwards compatible with Windows XP. This is very important. We spent a lot of money on licenses buying into the whole Microsoft house sort of thing. All of our desktops are XP, they all have MS Office and all of our servers are Windows 2000/2003. We have a multitude of other licenses, all of which run on Windows XP. We are very happy with this setup.

But now we are forced to throw out the working system we have and replace it with a new system which doesn't work with our existing software and hardware, because Microsoft says so? Microsoft has essentially dictated that we have to spend more money on them. Now let me be clear, I understand them stopping support for XP, my gripe is that they are stopping sellling it soon. Basically leaving us out in the cold.

Aha - says you, why don't you take the XP license off the old CAD machine. Well, I tried this, but HP don't publish XP drivers for this workstation because (and I quote) "We won't be supporting XP on our new machines because it has been discontinued". Now, some of the Vista heads may try and spin this around so that HP is at fault, but let's face it, if XP was still being sold in droves to the masses, they would still support it. Up until Vista, if you bought a new machine you could still get 95/Me and 2000 drivers for it, if you so desired.

So, now I'm left with a huge problem, do I start throwing money at upgrading all of our existing software (which still works fine), and face the possibility of having to do it again in a few years when they release Windows Plinky. Well, luckily we have a solution.

Rather than spending $4,000 on AutoCad, we spent $250 on ProgeCAD. It does everything AutoCad does, and uses the same commands and is Vista compatible. Our draughtsmen have been using it for a month now, and have uncovered no problems.

This experiment in "alternative software" worked so well, that we've started experiments with Open Office. They seem very positive. We will probably be rolling Open Office out throughout the corporation in the next few months. Yay, no more Microsoft Office licenses every 3 years at $500 a pop. Now, there's just the pesky Vista licenses.

The one thing stopping us from changing operating systems was our existing set of software licenses (all Windows based). If Microsoft is going to have the power to make them obsolete by releasing non-backward compatible systems at the drop of a hat, then we may as well jump ship now, before we have to give them more money.

We are currently piloting Linux on a number of laptops (including the Company President's - who was getting incredibly frustrated with Vista). Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it only took about a week. Those who have the Linux laptops are now using it 100% and love it (especially the President!).

So, as far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has dropped the ball huge time with Vista, but I'm kinda glad, because they have saved us a small fortune over the next year or so, by forcing us to go Open Source. As for our server upgrades to Windows 2008, well they're on hold while we investigate replacing them with Linux..... :wave:

P.S. For full disclosure , my laptop is dual boot. Linux for my work. Vista for games and support work.... and for my beloved Visual Studio (for home projects).

If it aint broke, don't fix it. Especially in business.

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Originally Posted by kregg

If it aint broke, don't fix it. Especially in business.

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did u get that from my autocad monkey joke¿

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Originally Posted by Azbrandr

did u get that from my autocad monkey joke¿

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Yes he did, nobody has ever said that before you wrote that post;)

There's a cat behind my laptop.

Hooray! Another Vista bashing thread!

Windows Plinky, as SurfDemon so elegantly put it, will undoubtedly be to Vista what 98 was to 95 - a bunch of very expensive bug fixes. If I hadn't got sucked in and paid for pre-installed Vista on my new machine, I'd be waiting for it to come out before I upgrade...

I'm not happy with the idea of changing my entire operating sytem: Windows XP was proof that given enough time, Microsoft could release a worthwhile product. So I'll wait for Plinky, and cross my fingers.

BTW, if there are any Microsoft marketing employees out there, Windows Plinky is an excellent release name. :D

From what I've heard, MS is pulling the plug on Vista for the most part... it shouldn't have even been produced to begin with.

We can only hope. MS should stick to slowly and painfully improving QDOS... afterall, it's worked with all their previous OS releases.

There is one really good feature in Vista that works well. It's now really easy to re-partition your drive so that you can install other operating systems ;)

It's scary how Vista has changed my perception of Microsoft overnight. I love XP and the Visual Studio suite.... but I honestly feel that their lack of interest in the public feedback is driving me away from them and into the open source/aternative market, where consumer reaction drives the features and development.

They seem to be adopting the, "we know what's best for you, and all your complaining is simply because you don't understand what we're doing" attitude.

Well, I have news for them, we're the customers, and we know what we are doing, and computers are merely a tool to help us do our job. We don't want to be spending a fortune every few years to upgrade our software just so that we can look cool. We have 6 Vista machines in the office and about 100XP machines.... I'm fielding more calls from the Vista guys than all of the XP ones..... ah, I know what you're thinking, it's just a learning curve, but it's not that. Some of the calls are about "features" in Vista. e.g.
- "Whenever I try and open Instant Messenger it asks me if I really want to do this?"
- "I click on remember password, and it doesn't. Why do they put the box there if they're not going to remember it?"
- The SETI@home screen saver won't run because it's blocked on startup. I can manually unblock each time you reboot the machine, but there is no tick box to say to unblock every time.... there appears to be no work around for this.
- "When I hit Windows Update I get the BSOD......."
- "It says I have to wait 372 days to copy the files down from the server? Is there a faster way".... [in fairness, this one was fixed by SP1 - but still being unable to copy files from the server made the whole system inoperable for a number of users - why wasn;t this found in testing?]
-

Wow these threads are so funny.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

- "Whenever I try and open Instant Messenger it asks me if I really want to do this?"

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Look at the exe's properties and make sure the box "Run as administrator" is checked. If it isnt, it tells us that this instant messenger of yours needs admin privileges to run and is therefor badly designed. Not Vistas fault.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

- "I click on remember password, and it doesn't. Why do they put the box there if they're not going to remember it?"

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Remember password were?

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

- The SETI@home screen saver won't run because it's blocked on startup. I can manually unblock each time you reboot the machine, but there is no tick box to say to unblock every time.... there appears to be no work around for this.

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Im a bit puzzled about this one myself actually...but I havent looked around alot, so Im sure there must be something to change it.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

- "When I hit Windows Update I get the BSOD......."

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BSOD are often(always?) caused by drivers or hardware, just saying that "i got a BSOD, Vista sucks!" is defenitely not fair.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

- "It says I have to wait 372 days to copy the files down from the server? Is there a faster way".... [in fairness, this one was fixed by SP1 - but still being unable to copy files from the server made the whole system inoperable for a number of users - why wasn;t this found in testing?]
-

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Why it wasnt found is pretty irrelevant, isnt it? I've used Vista for a looong time now, and when SP1 wasnt out yet, file copying could be awfully slow at random times, but i never experienced the system becoming inoperable. Did they experience that exact thing?

You can't get AutoCad 2005 to work in Vista by running it in XP Compatibility mode?
A few posts on this thread appear to suggest you can (they refer to Autocad 2007 at first, but a few 2005 users state it works):
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/sho...&tf=0&pageid=2

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

- "I click on remember password, and it doesn't. Why do they put the box there if they're not going to remember it?"

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It's a security feature. You should be thankful Microsoft botched this one up well.

http://www.vbforums.com/

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Originally Posted by Atheist

Wow these threads are so funny.


Look at the exe's properties and make sure the box "Run as administrator" is checked. If it isnt, it tells us that this instant messenger of yours needs admin privileges to run and is therefor badly designed. Not Vistas fault.

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Microsoft Instant Messenger? I don't blame Vista, I blame Microsoft.....

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Remember password were?

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Logging into trusted websites. It doesn't trust them...... ;)

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Im a bit puzzled about this one myself actually...but I havent looked around alot, so Im sure there must be something to change it.

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I've hunted high and low, and can only find hacks using timers etc.

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BSOD are often(always?) caused by drivers or hardware, just saying that "i got a BSOD, Vista sucks!" is defenitely not fair.

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True, but we have rock solid XP machines that never BSOD. We have Vista machines that do. Telling the users that it's HP's fault doesn't make them any happier. Bottom line, the driver support isn't there. By the way, I have had a BSOD on this lap top just before I posted this. None of them are running anything esoteric, they're all brand new HP workstations and laptops.

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Why it wasnt found is pretty irrelevant, isnt it? I've used Vista for a looong time now, and when SP1 wasnt out yet, file copying could be awfully slow at random times, but i never experienced the system becoming inoperable. Did they experience that exact thing?

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This was happening on all of them connecting to all of the servers (the servers are Windows 2000 and 2003). When all of our files are stored on the server, yes, it pretty much stops the job dead in it's tracks. We ended up downloading the files via XP onto a USB drivew and transferring them that way........

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Originally Posted by nemaroller

You can't get AutoCad 2005 to work in Vista by running it in XP Compatibility mode?
A few posts on this thread appear to suggest you can (they refer to Autocad 2007 at first, but a few 2005 users state it works):
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/sho...&tf=0&pageid=2

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Unfortunately not. It does at least start up in XP compatibility mode, but it can't read or write files from a networked drive.... which pretty much makes it useless for us. We've been on the phone to the authors and they point blank stated that they didn't know of anyway to get it working on Vista.

By Microsoft Instant Messenger I assume you mean "Windows Live Messenger"? It doesnt need administrator privileges to run so you must have set it to "run as admin".

Wouldnt the password thing depend on so much more than just the OS the client uses? Browser, cookie settings etc.

I would be very wary of switch CAD programs.

If I were you, I wouldn't even upgrade AutoCad to the newer version for Vista, must less change the software completely to a cheaper version.

This is the foundation of your company's product, even a minor bug in the CAD program or a minor difference between what you had and what you changed to will severely screw over your product.

Engineers at Airbus has learned this when they used too many different CAD programs between their Departments.

...

Also, it's a big mistake to roll out anything untested, to random user machines. If you ran a test lab you would have uncovered those issues. Be careful, what you did would get you fired at most big companies. However at small companies it's probably not a big deal.

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Originally Posted by capsulecorpjx

I would be very wary of switch CAD programs.

If I were you, I wouldn't even upgrade AutoCad to the newer version for Vista, must less change the software completely to a cheaper version.

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Agreed, but unfortunately our hands where tied by the vicious - we can't buy XP and our AutoCad license doesn't work on Vista - cycle. So we had to do something. That something was to look at competitors. We did a lot of research and for the AutoCad we do (mostly electrical wiring diagrams) there is no difference with using ProgeCAD. We have had such poor support from Autodesk, that it would be a poor business decision for us to keep throwing money at them.

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This is the foundation of your company's product, even a minor bug in the CAD program or a minor difference between what you had and what you changed to will severely screw over your product.

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All of our drawings are one off's for a particular client.

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Engineers at Airbus has learned this when they used too many different CAD programs between their Departments.

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After the 6 month review period we will be moving all of our CAD guys over to ProgeCAD, and selling the AutoCAD licenses on e-bay :)

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Also, it's a big mistake to roll out anything untested, to random user machines.

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This was a controlled test group. We specifically chose people eager to try Vista who would have the technical knowledge to deal with problems and in non critical replacements (all of the users still retained their XP machines - which it turns out was just as well for the CAD guys). The company President who was really pushing for Vista gave up with his and now uses Linux when he's on the road..... and he couldn't be happier.

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If you ran a test lab you would have uncovered those issues. Be careful, what you did would get you fired at most big companies. However at small companies it's probably not a big deal.

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Aha - just like Microsoft discovered them in their test lab.... I disagree that we would have uncovered them. For something that should be as stable as an OS then field testing is the best way to find out if it is right for your company. It uncovered this admirably, something that Microsoft's Test Lab apparently couldn't.......

As for getting fired, I wouldn't do this in a big company, but then large companies have less flexibility when it comes to software, but they also have greater clout. When they tell AutoDesk that they're going to stop using their product on 1,000 desktops, AutoDesk would bend over backwards to give them an upgrade or some such. But AutoDesk doesn't care about our 10 CAD licenses......... :ehh: So we are forced into taking drastic steps.

We are a medium sized company, but as stated, we were actually very careful in our roll out - to test the water so to speak. Infact, we were as cautious as we could be, given that we cannot easily purchase XP anymore, basically we were being railroaded into buying XP and then into upgrading AutoCAD and upgrading god knows what else that doesn't work (incidently the print servers we have aren't Vista compatible either - but that doesn't really matter as half of the printers don't have Vista drivers....). Luckily we have enough different types of printer that that isn't a problem, but for a small company I can see them taking umbrage at having to buy new printer servers for their new computers......

In a perfect world, Microsoft would have released an operating system that was backwards compatible with existing hardware and software and I would have gone on my merry way buying their licenses (quite happily I might add).

I am now faced with two choices (Vista or Linux) both of which involve me making fundamental changes to the IT structure of the company. If I go with Vista, there is nothing to say they won't pull the same stunt in 3 years time and I will be forced to do this again........ or I could go with Linux, and not have to worry about a license being "discontinued".

Let me stress, this is not about Linux being free (although that does help). It's more about stability (in the sense of not changing it on our users every 3 years). I can download a copy of Linux and put that install on the server in the knowledge that I can use it on any new desktop that comes in here for the next X years, and no one can stop me. At our leisure, we can decide when we want to test a new version of the operating system and move the whole corporation forward when it suits us.... not when it suits Microsoft.

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Originally Posted by Atheist

By Microsoft Instant Messenger I assume you mean "Windows Live Messenger"? It doesnt need administrator privileges to run so you must have set it to "run as admin".

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Sorry, yes, WLM. Sorry, I checked that, and that's not the problem. It only happens when she is not logged into the corporate Domain, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

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Originally Posted by Atheist

Wouldnt the password thing depend on so much more than just the OS the client uses? Browser, cookie settings etc.

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Well, it works fine on all of the XP machines... "remember this password...tick", but on none of the Vista machines.... :( A quick surf on the web shows all kinds of work arounds and hacks, but much as us, no-one has a really good reason as to why it doesn't work. Adding the site to "trusted sites" should be all that is required..... apparently :rolleyes:

Microsofts attitude to Vista & backwards compatibility:
http://images.despair.com/products/d...ors/apathy.jpg

I beg to differ. Vice City actually works in Vista!!

That's a mega bonus in my books.

Quasar's attitude on trying Vista:
http://images.despair.com/products/d...s/laziness.jpg

:lol:

Did anyone see that "Tony Robinson: Crime and Punishment" program on Channel 4 last night? It was about the Anglo Saxons and their methods for "Trial by Ordeal". Fascinating stuff.

The prosecution could choose any of three horiffic ways to find the defendant innocent or guilty:

1. Holding a red-hot iron bar for several seconds (eg. sheep rustlers).
2. Being tied up and thrown in a river (eg. witches).
3. Being forced to install Vista (eg. murderers and heretics)

After a few centuries, the enlightened Church decided that option 3 was too barbaric and came up with the "Hand in boiling water" method instead.

If installing Vista is a pain, then installing linux is pure death.

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Originally Posted by Atheist

If installing Vista is a pain, then installing linux is pure death.

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http://zane.typepad.com/photos/uncat...18/failure.jpg

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Originally Posted by Atheist

If installing Vista is a pain, then installing linux is pure death.

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You get to Heaven faster. :holy:

Can i just say about the BSOD and "rock solid XP machines" If found a major issue with this. Basicly i had an XP machine that never BOSD'd then i installed vista and anytime i treid to install anything large or use a memory intensive app bang, BOSD.

I simply wasn't happy with the fact that it was vista's fault. So i done extensive memtest runs. It turns out that my machine wasnt rock solid at all. Because xp used ram in a liner fashion where as vista doesnt. This meant that although i never ran into problems with my ram for 4 years doesnt mean it wast faulty. Vista caught this issue day one. So thats one up to vista

I just don't see the point in blaming Microsoft for an incompatibility that some OTHER software vendor has.

If your cad vendor put out a free patch that made their software work on Vista, would you still complain? Is the fact that they don't Microsoft's fault?

How do you decide where to lay blame? Do you even know why the incompatibility exists? You just assume blame Microsoft. Plenty of other vendors have software that runs fine on Vista, and it sounds like this cad company does too, they just want you to pay for it. Again, how is that Microsoft's fault?

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Originally Posted by kleinma

I just don't see the point in blaming Microsoft for an incompatibility that some OTHER software vendor has.

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If this was the case that people complained that Linux suffers incompatibility of previous software, would you defend Linux as such?

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Originally Posted by kregg

Quasar's attitude on trying Vista:
<Laziness image>

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I own Vista thank you very much. I'm allowed to say whatever I like about it.

But if you people insist, I'll say something good about it: it looks preeettyyyy...

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Originally Posted by CodedFire

I simply wasn't happy with the fact that it was vista's fault. So i done extensive memtest runs. It turns out that my machine wasnt rock solid at all. Because xp used ram in a liner fashion where as vista doesnt. This meant that although i never ran into problems with my ram for 4 years doesnt mean it wast faulty. Vista caught this issue day one. So thats one up to vista

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Out of curiosity, if it ran fine on XP and would have continued to run fine on XP, why is it the computers fault if Vista uses it in a different fashion which happens to cause BSoD's?

Especially if the average user has no knowledge of this and cannot fix it, and just sees loads of bluescreens on Vista where they saw none on XP?

I do see your point but the fact remains my system was faulty. If i had a large enough application that was ram intensive i would have seen it in XP. I also see your point about the average user. I think vista does expects a higher level of intelligence than XP actually does.

A not on Linux, i do see the point about windows user using the fact that linux has many driver issues but this is not linux fault this is the manufactures fault plain and simple.

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Originally Posted by kregg

If this was the case that people complained that Linux suffers incompatibility of previous software, would you defend Linux as such?

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If Microsoft drops support for a specific technology in Windows that certain applications rely on, then the case can be made to blame Microsoft for creating incompatibility. However the case with most software issues with Vista is simply that programs are written poorly, and assume things like everyone is an administrator, etc. blame can certainly be placed with the 3rd party vendor.

I don't know the case for the specific cad program in question, so it is hard to pass judgement on who to blame in terms of the compatibility. All I know is this thread is about someone complaining that a 3rd party vendor wants money for an upgraded version of their software that runs properly on Vista. I just don't see why that is Microsoft's fault, and that is my only point.

The way I see it is simple. Almost any software incompatability between XP and Vista is Vista's fault. Supposedly they're built on the same processor architecture. So if it works on XP, why wouldn't it work on Vista? Vista did the exact same thing IE7, Office 2007, AND Media Player 11 did, and all of them pissed me off for it. They took the familiar, the tried and true method, threw it out the window, and started over. The only advantage Office 2007 had was that it still supported the older technology. Vista clearly doesn't. MS made the same mistake with the XBox 360. Only games coded in a certain fashion for the XBox are compatabile with the 360. Apparently they didn't take a hint from Sony AND Nintendo; the PS2 was 100% backwards compatible with the PS1, and I'm fairly certain that both are fully compatible on the PS3, and the Wii can directly handle any GameCube game with no updates. Everything that succeeds in the long run supports older technology until a better method of distributing out-dated technology arrives. The Wii has the online component to download old-school games to the hard drive. It simply wouldn't make sense to include physical compatibility to the NES, but technology is far enough to enable easily downloading it. Nintendo supports old technology, but knows when to move on. Microsoft just moves on. They have absolutely no regard for the current standing of technology. I think they tried to build Vista for the future without knowing what the future would hold. As a result, they rather forgot that we might still be using older programs. Microsoft consists of damn good developers and a lousy creative/support staff.

I dont see where you specify why "any software incompatability between XP and Vista is Vista's fault". Are you saying Vista sucks because its new and not an XP clone? What do you mean by "only games coded for xbox360 are compatible with the 360", isnt that normal? I dont know if my xbox360 was modified before I bought it (second hand) but I can play put old xbox360 games in and play them..And you can download old games from Xbox live arcade, very much like the Wii can.
Not all editions of the PS3 handles backward compability.

I dont see what this is about actually, I use all the old software that I used on XP and it runs like an oiled lightning (even a game from 1997!). That means that only certain old software can not run on Vista (altough I'm yet to have found them), so those applications must have something in common. What could that be hmmm...bad design? No updates since 1995?

I challenge you to a duel!;)

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

The way I see it is simple. Almost any software incompatability between XP and Vista is Vista's fault.

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Let's assume that Vista did come with 100% backwards compatibillity. In that case, that's a lot of code to bring over. And code compiled = disk space loss. Next thing you know, you'll be whining about how Vista is such bloatware etc. Also, XP was a really buggy OS. It was like the developers got a corkscrew and tried to drill as many holes in the OS as possible. Vista has been redesigned to do the same thing, but w/o the flaws.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

Supposedly they're built on the same processor architecture. So if it works on XP, why wouldn't it work on Vista?

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XP was a bug-ridden piece of crap. That's why.

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

Vista did the exact same thing IE7, Office 2007, AND Media Player 11 did, and all of them pissed me off for it. They took the familiar, the tried and true method, threw it out the window, and started over.

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There is a reason why they've done it. You may not like it, but it helps Microsoft being deafened by security experts to some degree.

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

MS made the same mistake with the XBox 360. Only games coded in a certain fashion for the XBox are compatabile with the 360. Apparently they didn't take a hint from Sony AND Nintendo; the PS2 was 100% backwards compatible with the PS1, and I'm fairly certain that both are fully compatible on the PS3...

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:lol: Fully Compatible??? Where the hell have you been for the last 2 years? PS3 was never fully compatible with the PS2. It may have been for the PS1, but not for the PS2. The PS2 architechture is so overly complicated, even the Sony team have trouble emulating it software wise. They've tried harware wise, but the costs (they decided) were not worth adding the emulation (which IMO is a majorly stupid choice - they've cut a big slice of their profit by doing so). Now the new PS3s have software emulation, with regards to the lowest costing PS3 which has no compatibillity (i.e. no emulation whatsoever). Now that's dumb. Nothing. Nada. No PS2 games can work on the PS3. At least GTA Vice City for XP still works in Vista, which you claim the OS has no backwards compatibillity whatsoever for previous OS software.

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

I think they tried to build Vista for the future without knowing what the future would hold. As a result, they rather forgot that we might still be using older programs.

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If Vista was going to compromise security just for the sake of some old CAD programs and a few other nonsense ones, then I would have just disowned Microsoft completely. For a start, you haven't even used the bloody OS, so you can't even have a proper rant.


http://www.shipmentoffail.com/wp-con...flbot-h33r.jpg

I wouldn't have kept the HP machines if I was in that situation. You could have just returned them and purchased computers with XP on them.

I'll be in the loft if anybody wants me.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

I just don't see the point in blaming Microsoft for an incompatibility that some OTHER software vendor has.

If your cad vendor put out a free patch that made their software work on Vista, would you still complain? Is the fact that they don't Microsoft's fault?

How do you decide where to lay blame? Do you even know why the incompatibility exists? You just assume blame Microsoft. Plenty of other vendors have software that runs fine on Vista, and it sounds like this cad company does too, they just want you to pay for it. Again, how is that Microsoft's fault?

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I would argue that people should be made aware that Vista is not 100% backwards compatible with XP. My main gripe is that I am being strong armed into buying Vista because they are refusing to continue selling XP licenses. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand why they wouldn't want to continue selling a product that once they have a successor out, but if our most expensive peice of software won't run on it, then I would be an idiot to buy this new O/S. Who's to say they aren't going to pull the same stunt with next verison of Windows.... oh, sorry it doesn't run your existing software.......

I don't think you can blame AutoCAD (although it annoys me that they won't provide a patch... they want to sell more licenses at $4,000 a pop). But at the end of the day, they wrote their software to work with XP, they cannot be expected to second guess what Microsoft are going to do next with their O/S. The reason AutoCAD doesn't run may well be beacuse it probably uses far more of the O/S than most other software (multi-threaded etc.).

So, in short, Vista is not 100% backwards compatible with XP. This is obviously a fact. People should be made aware that if you buy Vista, your existing software might not run with it. Suddenly the reason for not going over to Linux (so we don't have to replace our existing software licenses at significant cost) is removed from the equation. It's looking more and more like we will be ditching Windows in favour of XP. (And I've always been a Microsoft head....)

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I don't think you can blame AutoCAD (although it annoys me that they won't provide a patch... they want to sell more licenses at $4,000 a pop). But at the end of the day, they wrote their software to work with XP, they cannot be expected to second guess what Microsoft are going to do next with their O/S. The reason AutoCAD doesn't run may well be because it probably uses far more of the O/S than most other software (multi-threaded etc.).

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Come on man how can you say that. Of course it is autodesks fault. Why should you have to pay more for a new version of the same software. At the end of the day autodesk know how to fix the issue regardless of what caused it and instead of fixing it they bring out a new version!

At the end of the day, both companies are just trying to make money so there is not alot you can do really, but you cant go blaming Microsoft because they implemented new features to an OS that has been relativity the same since windows 95. Software developers im sure where told about vista, they had time to fix it.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

My main gripe is that I am being strong armed into buying Vista because they are refusing to continue selling XP licenses.

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Vista came out when? It went retail Jan 2007 (and was available to MSDN subscribers a few months before that). So the OS is over 1.5 years old.

Yes they are going to be discontinuing manufacturing of Windows XP at the end of this month, but that doesn't mean you can not get copies right now.

So even after 1.5 years of Vista being out, they still are allowing you to purchase XP if you want, and some hardware vendors even give you the option if you are buying a prebuilt system. That is strong arming you how??

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Originally Posted by kleinma

Vista came out when? It went retail Jan 2007 (and was available to MSDN subscribers a few months before that). So the OS is over 1.5 years old.

Yes they are going to be discontinuing manufacturing of Windows XP at the end of this month, but that doesn't mean you can not get copies right now.

So even after 1.5 years of Vista being out, they still are allowing you to purchase XP if you want, and some hardware vendors even give you the option if you are buying a prebuilt system. That is strong arming you how??

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It's not about the timescale. We put Vista on to the test a long time ago and found serious flaws (such as copying from the network drive taking months) which made it un-workable. We waited for SP1 to fix all fo these things before re-evaluating it (April of this year), and low and behold it still doesn't work.

Simply put, Vista is not 100% backwards compatible with XP. Now, we are not talking about some obscure piece of software that doesn't work with it (it's AutoCAD!), and we're not talking about an old bit of software (3 years old).

Look at it from our point of view as a company. We have invested very heavily in Microsoft licenses over the years, so much so that it's going to be a massive pain in the behind for us to move away from Windows.

Microsoft release a new O/S and stops selling the old one. This forces us to either
a ) Use pirate versions of XP in our new machines (which I refuse to do).
b ) Buy Vista machines and spend $4,000 per machine on new version of AutoCAD that are Vista compatible. Possibly to find ourselves in exactly the same situation in two years time when the next O/S comes out.

I would be insanse to go for option b. I would be allowing Microsoft to constantly pull the rug from underneath our IT department every few years.

so we are left with option c.

c ) Change to a different O/S (Linux?) where we can decide when and how we change over. We can keep running the same verison of Linux without license concerns until we have the time and money to swap base standards.

[qoute]
Come on man how can you say that. Of course it is autodesks fault. Why should you have to pay more for a new version of the same software. At the end of the day autodesk know how to fix the issue regardless of what caused it and instead of fixing it they bring out a new version!
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Don't get me wrong, AutoCAD is pee-ing me off by not supporting their software, but ultimately I have to agree with their line, which is "They wrote AutoCAD to be Windows XP compatible. It's not their fault that Microsoft broke backwards compatibility, and why should they have to pay money to fix Microsofts mistake." (Especially when they hope they can use this 'mistake' to rail road users into upgrading).

Now, whether breaking backwards compatibility was deliberate or accidental, it doesn't really matter. Microsoft really seem to be un-interested in fixing this problem. Are they really that arrogant that they honestly think that corporations will follow them blindly and throw money at them for no good reason?

What is the point in us buying more Windows compatible software if they can release another O/S in a years time (and discontinue Vista in 2 years) and force us to rebuy all of our software licenses again. What kind of a business model is that? Do you see my fundamental problem as IT manager with all of this?

I honestly cannot believe that you think this is an acceptable tactic for Microsoft. Let's use an analogy. What if I bought 10 new Welding Machines for my company that use 480volts supply. I use them for two years and the power company turns around and says that it's changing to 520volts next year. I have a year to buy new welding machines and discard my now useless old ones.... oh, and they might change again in another few years......

I would be irresponsible to stay with that power company..... what if there was another power company who said "You can keep using the 480volt or you can change to our new 520volt..... and when we go to a 600volt supply you have the option of continuing using the 480volt or the 520volt....." Suddenly that makes a lot more sense from a business point of view. We will replace the welders eventually and move to the new standard, but when we decide the welders have reached the end of their life... not after 3 years of use.

As for the still being able buy XP. That's not an option as we have to change sooner or later...... the only question is, now that we are being forced to change not only our O/S but also our other software, do we change to Vista or Linux.... and Linux is looking waaaay more attractive right now.

again you can still buy XP so it makes no sense for your statements of:

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Microsoft release a new O/S and stops selling the old one. This forces us to either

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You seem to know your hardware/software requirements for your company, so if you need copies of XP, go buy them. No one is stopping you, including Microsoft. They DID NOT stop selling XP yet, why do you keep making this claim as the base for your argument each time?

Also, when did Microsoft EVER EVER say that Vista was 100% backwards compatible with XP? When has ANY operating system been 100% backwards compatible with its predecessor?

Microsoft actually ackknowledged many changes and had beta versions out far far in advance, and actually has had development guidelines dating back way before vista that would have alleviated a lot of compatibility issues, however most 3rd party developers simply just ignore them. I was testing my applications on Vista prior to Beta 1.

Again, I said it before, the publishers of the CAD software obviously have a version that works on Vista, and you simply want to fault Microsoft because the version YOU have, which NEVER said it would work on Vista, doesn't. If the CAD makers said, here is a free upgrade that works in Vista, you wouldn't have a complaint would you?

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Originally Posted by klienma

They DID NOT stop selling XP yet

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I don't think that's entirely true.
I had occasion to ring Microsoft regarding licence keys for XP. They told me that they no longer sold XP keys.
Although, given my other dealings with local phone support, I'd believe that the guy was either pulling my leg or didn't know what he was talking about.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

again you can still buy XP so it makes no sense for your statements of:

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For how long, and by jumping through what hoops... :) As far as I'm aware they stop selling it at the end of this month. So, we can stick our head in the mud and have this conversation then...... or we can tackle the problem now.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

You seem to know your hardware/software requirements for your company, so if you need copies of XP, go buy them. No one is stopping you, including Microsoft. They DID NOT stop selling XP yet, why do you keep making this claim as the base for your argument each time?

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Ah - good point, except we don't really know how many machines we will need, and whether we will be able to get XP drivers for the new equipment (HP don't have XP drivers readily available for their new line of Workstations). So again, we can delay the inevitable, but we are not solving our problem, just throwing a pile of more money at Microsoft (pre-buying XP licenses) that we might or might not need.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

Also, when did Microsoft EVER EVER say that Vista was 100% backwards compatible with XP? When has ANY operating system been 100% backwards compatible with its predecessor?

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Very true. I will conceed this point, however, I think it is a reasonable expectation of corporations that software bought in the last few years should run on the new O/S.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

Microsoft actually ackknowledged many changes and had beta versions out far far in advance, and actually has had development guidelines dating back way before vista that would have alleviated a lot of compatibility issues, however most 3rd party developers simply just ignore them. I was testing my applications on Vista prior to Beta 1.

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AutoCAD 2005 was out before Vista was available for Beta (I think??)

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Originally Posted by kleinma

Again, I said it before, the publishers of the CAD software obviously have a version that works on Vista, and you simply want to fault Microsoft because the version YOU have, which NEVER said it would work on Vista, doesn't. If the CAD makers said, here is a free upgrade that works in Vista, you wouldn't have a complaint would you?

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Let's just clarify, I don't want to fault anyone. Microsoft have created a problem for my corporation, and I cannot imagine that I am alone in this from looking around the forums. I can solve the problem by throwing more money away or I can look for a solution which will mitigate the risk of it happening again.

Regardless of who is at fault - We would be idiots of the highest degree if we upgraded to Vista, for the following reasons.
- We have to buy $40,000 of new AutoCAD licenses
- We have experienced numerous crashes etc.
- There is nothing to stop this happening again in 3 years.

Now, the bottom line is that it's not important to me who is at fault. As the IT manager in charge of all of this, I cannot justify the move to Vista given the above information..... do you agree? I know people are going to say that the crashes aren't microsofts fault, but the driver providers, well I 'm sorry but that doesn't make any difference to my users when they lose their work.

As for being happy if AutoCAD released a patch, we would still be left with the crashes. Now again, and I cannot stress this enough, saying "but that's the drivers" doesn't make an iota of difference when one of our guys has lost his work due to a crash.

Vista is not ready for the big leauge yet. Yet, they're stopping us from buying XP (which is super stable). Sorry, but I'm not going to gamble my company's IT on Microsofts wim and lack of regard for it's customers.

P.S. I would be happy if Vista was as stable as XP and our existing licenses ran on it (regardless of who issued the patch).

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Originally Posted by penagate

I don't think that's entirely true.
I had occasion to ring Microsoft regarding licence keys for XP. They told me that they no longer sold XP keys.
Although, given my other dealings with local phone support, I'd believe that the guy was either pulling my leg or didn't know what he was talking about.

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The fact that you can buy XP from newegg right now is proof that you can still get it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Tpk=32-116-515

This is even a brand new OEM release that includes SP3 already, which as you know just went RTM like a month ago.

Even when MS stops making copies at the end of the month, you will still be able to get it under inventory runs out at retailers.

So even if Microsoft has stopped selling copies directly (who actually buys retail windows FROM Microsoft???) that doesn't mean they are not still manufacturing it for retailers who sell their products.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

Don't get me wrong, AutoCAD is pee-ing me off by not supporting their software, but ultimately I have to agree with their line, which is "They wrote AutoCAD to be Windows XP compatible.

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That was their choice to ignore Vista.. I was well aware of developer guidelines (albeit in-progress) for Vista well before 2005, even though I knew they would have no effect on me for a long time (the organisation I worked for intentionally stayed a few years out of date).

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AutoCAD 2005 was out before Vista was available for Beta (I think??)

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I expect so, but the necessary information was easily available.

That version of AutoCAD could have been made Vista compliant if they wanted it to be, or at least close enough for a fairly minor patch to make it work; they could even modify it now if they wanted. However, instead of that they decided to ignore it, so that they could force your hand, and take more money from you.

If they wanted, they could charge a reasonable amount for the patch/upgrade, or offer a reduced cost upgrade to a Vista compliant version.. yet they are deciding not to do that.


The situation is obviously far from ideal, but don't blame the wrong organisation.

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As for being happy if AutoCAD released a patch, we would still be left with the crashes. Now again, and I cannot stress this enough, saying "but that's the drivers" doesn't make an iota of difference when one of our guys has lost his work due to a crash.

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Again, far from ideal - but it isn't Microsofts fault that you are being sold the wrong hardware (or the hardware manufacturer is providing shoddy drivers, when they have had years to work on them).

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What is the point in us buying more Windows compatible software if they can release another O/S in a years time (and discontinue Vista in 2 years) and force us to rebuy all of our software licenses again. What kind of a business model is that?

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Vista was a massive change (I think the biggest since Windows 95), which many people (including those in roles like yours) had been arguing for.

While in the short-term it causes you issues with other software companies, the longer term is good - based on the relatively small changes from Windows 95 to XP, I highly doubt that the scale of issues arising now will be replicated in the next 10 years or so.

Can you say with any certainty that whichever flavour of Linux you go for will have the same kind of stability?

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Sorry, but I'm not going to gamble my company's IT on Microsofts wim and lack of regard for it's customers.

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A lot of the changes were what a huge amount of customers were demanding, even if they think now that the outcome isn't quite what they wanted.

It certainly wasn't done on a whim, and MS went out of their way (over an extended period) to help developers and system builders deal with it.


You are in a nasty situation, and I'm not sure what would be the best solution for you, but blaming Microsoft for the failings of the work of other companies is not justified.

Come on, surely we're not talking about retail copies here.

ok, then talk OEM copies, those are on newegg too.

XP OEM available until end of Jan 2009:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

..plus whatever time it takes for retailers stock to run out.

plus the fact that if you have valid product keys, you can use them. Last I checked Microsoft was not going around reclaiming everyones XP cds.

Retail keys even legally permit a 1 time transfer of a product key from 1 machine to another for upgrade purposes. OEM copies are tied to the machine they came on.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

Also, when did Microsoft EVER EVER say that Vista was 100% backwards compatible with XP? When has ANY operating system been 100% backwards compatible with its predecessor?

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That's not the issue. It's not plausible to expect immediate backwards compatability when building a new system. It's easy enough to accept this. But for goodness sake, at least TRY!!! With a little bit of playing around, just about anything dating back to the Win95 era can run fine on XP. That's pretty darned good backwards compatibility if you ask me. That means there are four meaningful generations of software that XP can handle. So what's the issue with Vista? It can't even handle most software from THE PREVIOUS GENERATION, let alone five! MS seems to have made absolutely no attempt at supporting backwards compatibility with Vista, and it really does piss me off. I like XP because it's stable and compatible. I refuse to switch to Vista because it isn't and it isn't. In fact, I have yet to see A SINGLE REASON why I should use Vista. There is absolutely nothing appealing about it to me, and I reeeeeeally don't like the idea of being forced to switch, just because I'm a .NET developer.

AutoDesk released a service path for AutoCad 2007 to be Vista compatible, I don't see why they can't do the same for 2006 or 2005.

Originally, there were OpenGL driver issues, but NVIDIA released some native graphics drivers that supposedly don't affect performance.

The XP compatibility switch at least allows the program to run, and right-clicking the desktop and running as administrator helps get AutoCad 2005 to Start.

So you are left with networked periphereals being inaccessible. Which in the grand scheme of the amount of code in AutoCad devoted to CAD, the networked drives and periphereal browsing capability could easily be fixed by AutoCad if they released a patch - seriously I can't imagine it would be that difficult.

You can write a C++ program in 10 minutes that can browse a network drive. So I still lay blame on AutoDesk for this - even though I understand it is more desirable to get their userbase on the newer versions, not just from a sales perspective, but a tech support and documentation perspective as well - at the prices they charge, it is unacceptable.

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

That's not the issue. It's not plausible to expect immediate backwards compatability when building a new system. It's easy enough to accept this. But for goodness sake, at least TRY!!! With a little bit of playing around, just about anything dating back to the Win95 era can run fine on XP. That's pretty darned good backwards compatibility if you ask me. That means there are four meaningful generations of software that XP can handle. So what's the issue with Vista? It can't even handle most software from THE PREVIOUS GENERATION, let alone five! MS seems to have made absolutely no attempt at supporting backwards compatibility with Vista, and it really does piss me off. I like XP because it's stable and compatible. I refuse to switch to Vista because it isn't and it isn't. In fact, I have yet to see A SINGLE REASON why I should use Vista. There is absolutely nothing appealing about it to me, and I reeeeeeally don't like the idea of being forced to switch, just because I'm a .NET developer.

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My company actually still has a few production apps that are 16 bit MS DOS applications. They run 100% fine on Vista x86. They do not run on Vista x64 because x64 dropped support for 16 bit apps. Am I crying about it, or am I happy that at least the x86 (which all standard consumers own) versions can still run DOS applications??

My point is the compatibility problems are with the SOFTWARE, not the OS. The software was likely written wrong in the first place. How many apps write to program files? How long as MS been saying NOT to? At least since XP shipped...

timeshifter, i know you ever tried getting old applications to work on Vista? And I mean really tried, not just installing it, seeing that it doesnt work, then go on here to rant about it?

Come to think about it, have you ever used Vista enough to rant about it, at all? ;)

I use both XP and Vista for my day to day operations, and I don't have any apps that don't run on both. Maybe I am just lucky, but I do have at least 100 apps installed on both.

Sorry I had to drop out of this thread for a while..... (Don't worry, it wasn't Vista's fault ;) ). I think we are going around in circles a bit here. It's not really important who is to blame, the bottom line still comes back to the fact that we are being pushed away from the Microsoft platform, after almost 20 years as very satisfied customers of theirs. Who is actually pushing us away is debatable (Microsoft for not being 100% backwards compatible, AutoCAD for not updating their software or Hardware manufacturers for only providing buggy drivers). But as a normal company doing our daily job, we simply cannot stick with an unstable platform such as this.

Now, to be very clear, this really pains me, as I love Microsoft products (I've been a Windows fan ever since Windows 286), but my first responsibility is to my company and it's employees. Quite simply, Vista is not ready for the corporate world yet. XP was fantastic for the corporate world. Yet, they're discontinuing XP before the Vista platform has matured enough for us to use extensively.

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Originally Posted by si_the_geek

You are in a nasty situation, and I'm not sure what would be the best solution for you, but blaming Microsoft for the failings of the work of other companies is not justified.

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After re-reading my posts, I'm pretty certain I didn't directly blame Microsoft for any of this (apart from their Messenger throwing up priv problems.... ;) ). There's plenty of blame to go around here (Microsoft, AutoCAD or Drivers), but the bottom line remains that I am being forced off the Microsoft platform.

You have done a few times, for example in post #45 you said:

"Let's just clarify, I don't want to fault anyone. Microsoft have created a problem for my corporation, "

(in response to: "the publishers of the CAD software obviously have a version that works on Vista ... If the CAD makers said, here is a free upgrade that works in Vista, you wouldn't have a complaint would you?")

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

Quite simply, Vista is not ready for the corporate world yet.

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The majority of what I have heard is the opposite.. including a company which extensively uses AutoCAD.

Unfortunately good news doesn't get pushed as hard as bad news.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

But as a normal company doing our daily job, we simply cannot stick with an unstable platform such as this.

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Absolutely.. so sort it out in a logical manner.

You should be getting the crashes sorted out, as that is not normal (it is way too late for there to be any kind of teething problems). Assuming that it is driver or hardware related, and the OS was pre-installed, get the PC supplier involved; If they can't solve it, get a refund and go elsewhere.

As to the CAD issue, find an decent alternative package (which you said back in the first post that you already have), or persuade the current provider to allow a reasonably priced upgrade to a Vista compatible version (as you have already found an alternative, your chances should be very good).