Why do people hate vista?



  • @russ0519 said:

    SQL 2k works just fine, why should I upgrade?  Lets say you're driving a 2000 Nissan Maxima.  Your car runs great and has 50k miles on it.  Nissan came out with many upgrades through the years, but you're happy with your car, and you don't need the new features.  Now lets say Nissan built a new highway, and they pass a law that says that you can't drive your 2000 Nissan Maxima on that highway.   If you want to drive on that highway, you'd have to buy a Nissan that's been built after 2005.  They won't offer you a trade-in, you have to pay full price for the new car.

    So now would you say that you've had 8 years to upgrade your car and that you're an idiot for driving a car that's 8 years old even though it fits your needs perfectly and is in great condition?  

     

    Yet another bad analogy. First, cars do not become obsolete as fast as computer hardware and software; there are still lots of Model A and Model T Ford vehicles running today, working fine on the same roads that your 2008 Maxima runs on.

    Secondly, in the case Nissan built that new highway that only 2008 cars ran on, they still left the old roadways in place, and my older car works fine on those old roads. Just like MS leaving Windows 2000 and XP (older OS versions) capable of running SQL Server 2K (older SQL Server version).  Your analogy would only hold true if both MS and Nissan destroyed or disabled all old means, leaving only the new ones as viable options. This is not what happened.



  • @KenW said:

    Read the rest of the Lingerance post. He said that everything else scored in the low 2 range as well.

    Really? Ram: 2.9 (max rank for 512MB of RAM); CPU: 3.4;Video: 1.9 (means it doesn't support DX9); Gaming Video: 1.0; HDD: 4.4.



  • @russ0519 said:

    So basically it comes down to this... if you want to use Vista, either hope that your software is compatible, or be ready to pay through the nose for the software that isn't.  Thank you for proving my point. 
     

    So, assuming you live in the US, I suppose that when February of 2009 rolls around you plan on not watching TV any more, because of course you have not upgraded to digital; after all, it happens to be the latest technology and is becoming the only supported format, but will cost money for either a new TV or a converter box. Since that requires upgrading, you will not be doing so, but will just stare blankly at the screen enjoying the snow. Right?

    Things change. It happens to be called progress. It happens fast in technology. If you lack the capacity to understand that, you need to find a new career path. 



  • @Lingerance said:

    Really? Ram: 2.9 (max rank for 512MB of RAM); CPU: 3.4;Video: 1.9 (means it doesn't support DX9); Gaming Video: 1.0; HDD: 4.4.
     

    With the exception of the HDD, none of those numbers is good enough for Vista, and the readily available MS software would have told you that; your choice not to use it is your fault, not theirs. 



  • @KenW said:

    @russ0519 said:

    So basically it comes down to this... if you want to use Vista, either hope that your software is compatible, or be ready to pay through the nose for the software that isn't.  Thank you for proving my point. 
     

    So, assuming you live in the US, I suppose that when February of 2009 rolls around you plan on not watching TV any more, because of course you have not upgraded to digital; after all, it happens to be the latest technology and is becoming the only supported format, but will cost money for either a new TV or a converter box. Since that requires upgrading, you will not be doing so, but will just stare blankly at the screen enjoying the snow. Right?

    Things change. It happens to be called progress. It happens fast in technology. If you lack the capacity to understand that, you need to find a new career path. 

     

    While I do have a new TV that's digital, people with old TVs can buy a converter box which costs $50 (and get a $40 government coupon) for a net cost of $10.  That's 1% of the average cost of upgrading to a new TV (which is lets say $1000).  

    Lets assume, that the government made this switch and the only way to watch tv would be to buy a new digital TV.  I would consider that unreasonable, wouldn't you?     



  • I think what we all want to know, russ0519, is why you can't just spend the $200 (note: made-up number) needed to buy Windows XP and be done with it? What exactly is the reason why this isn't an option?



  • @KenW said:

    With the exception of the HDD, none of those numbers is good enough for Vista, and the readily available MS software would have told you that; your choice not to use it is your fault, not theirs.
    The Vista Blogger link from mfah states other-wise. 2.9 for RAM; indeed does suck as for some reason Vista will happily eat 300MB of that, also opening control panel will cause 30-90 Page Faults per second for the two seconds it takes to load it completely. My CPU falls into the Aero Compatable range, which I've stated numerous times I have disabled (as I've yet to register my copy I understand I won't be able to anyways). I will note two things: when I installed this I was fully aware of the class-action suit against MS for having the "Vista Compatible" system, also I have a nice sticker on my laptop from Dell stating specifically that the laptop is Vista Compatible. The point of this thread is "Why do people hate Vista" one of the major reason is the "Vista Compatible" system which is currently Vista's bane of existence, you and MPS have stated numerous times that my system is not one you would install Vista on, which further re-enforces my point. The fact that the recommended requirements are about 4 times greater than the minimum requirements suggests that the minimum requirements are freakishly low. Requiring a OS to run on today's equivalent of a gaming machine is what could cause any sane person to suggest that Vista is very much "bloatware". If I kill off explorer and have no other program than process monitor running my RAM usage is 222MB, I have the server service turned off and am disconnected from the internet, and sidebar and super fetch are turned off as well. I could not in anyway justify that.



  • @Welbog said:

    is why you can't just spend the $200 (note: made-up number) needed to buy Windows XP and be done with it? What exactly is the reason why this isn't an option?
    People still sell new copies of licenses for Windows XP?



  • @KenW said:

    @russ0519 said:

    SQL 2k works just fine, why should I upgrade?  Lets say you're driving a 2000 Nissan Maxima.  Your car runs great and has 50k miles on it.  Nissan came out with many upgrades through the years, but you're happy with your car, and you don't need the new features.  Now lets say Nissan built a new highway, and they pass a law that says that you can't drive your 2000 Nissan Maxima on that highway.   If you want to drive on that highway, you'd have to buy a Nissan that's been built after 2005.  They won't offer you a trade-in, you have to pay full price for the new car.

    So now would you say that you've had 8 years to upgrade your car and that you're an idiot for driving a car that's 8 years old even though it fits your needs perfectly and is in great condition?  

     

    Yet another bad analogy. First, cars do not become obsolete as fast as computer hardware and software; there are still lots of Model A and Model T Ford vehicles running today, working fine on the same roads that your 2008 Maxima runs on.

    Secondly, in the case Nissan built that new highway that only 2008 cars ran on, they still left the old roadways in place, and my older car works fine on those old roads. Just like MS leaving Windows 2000 and XP (older OS versions) capable of running SQL Server 2K (older SQL Server version).  Your analogy would only hold true if both MS and Nissan destroyed or disabled all old means, leaving only the new ones as viable options. This is not what happened.

    Lets say that there are old highways, but it's been announced that they are no longer being maintained and the potholes will eventually get bad enough that it will damage your car or cause serious injury and/or death.  Lets also say that all the other manufacturers have issued free upgrades to their cars to amek them compatible with the new highway, but the manufacturer of your car (which is also coinsidently the manufacturer of the highway) says that you have to upgrade to a newer version of their car.  Lets also say that you know that you car would run just fine on the new highway, although maybe it wouldn't get as great a mileage.  The company has passed a law, however, banning any Nissan cars before 2005 from that highway.  You have a choice - upgrade to a new version of their car (and face the same thing when they build some new supposidely better highway), or you can go with other potentially cheaper manufacturers, who are a little better at supporting what they've built.  



  • @KenW said:

    but will cost money for either a new TV or a converter box.

    Difference: The government is paying for most, if not all, of it. Computer upgrades are the user's responsibility.



    Carry on.



  • @Welbog said:

    I think what we all want to know, russ0519, is why you can't just spend the $200 (note: made-up number) needed to buy Windows XP and be done with it? What exactly is the reason why this isn't an option?

     

     I can, as long as we can all agree that if I want to use Vista, I have to spend extra money on getting my existing software to work.  Basically I'd have to buy another copy of Vista Ultimate, use my downgrade rights and run XP in a VM.  



  • @Lingerance said:

    [quote user="Welbog"]is why you can't just spend the $200 (note: made-up number) needed to buy Windows XP and be done with it? What exactly is the reason why this isn't an option?
    People still sell new copies of licenses for Windows XP?[/quote]I thought I read somewhere that they extended selling copies of XP due to everyone bitching about how terrible Vista is. I might be wrong, though. Regardless, buying Vista should still give you the rights to install XP, right? So instead of $200, it's $250. The nature of the question remains.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @KenW said:
    but will cost money for either a new TV or a converter box.

    Difference: The government is paying for most, if not all, of it. Computer upgrades are the user's responsibility.



    Carry on.

     

    Even if the government wasn't paying for most of it, it's still only $50, compared to $1k for a new TV, so only 5% of the cost.  If MS released a patch that cost $50 that makes SQL 2k run on Vista,  that would still be better then what they did.  I think what they really should've done is give Vista VM rights, so that I can run XP in a VM without paying additional costs.  And who knows, they might even do that eventually, if just to get enterprises to upgrade.     



  • @russ0519 said:

    @Welbog said:
    I think what we all want to know, russ0519, is why you can't just spend the $200 (note: made-up number) needed to buy Windows XP and be done with it? What exactly is the reason why this isn't an option?
    I can, as long as we can all agree that if I want to use Vista, I have to spend extra money on getting my existing software to work.  Basically I'd have to buy another copy of Vista Ultimate, use my downgrade rights and run XP in a VM.
    Well then I'm very sorry but I don't understand your problem. You have software A and you want to run it. It runs on OS B. You have both, and at minimal cost. You're running the software you want, presumably on the hardware you want. What is there to complain about?



  • @russ0519 said:

    If MS released a patch that cost $50 that makes SQL 2k run on Vista,  that would still be better then what they did.
    Don't the sell upgrade licenses? Would it be possible to upgrade to server 2008 without paying for a full license? Regardless of what you may think you will have to upgrade whatever SQL daemon you use.



  • @Welbog said:

    @russ0519 said:

    @Welbog said:
    I think what we all want to know, russ0519, is why you can't just spend the $200 (note: made-up number) needed to buy Windows XP and be done with it? What exactly is the reason why this isn't an option?
    I can, as long as we can all agree that if I want to use Vista, I have to spend extra money on getting my existing software to work.  Basically I'd have to buy another copy of Vista Ultimate, use my downgrade rights and run XP in a VM.
    Well then I'm very sorry but I don't understand your problem. You have software A and you want to run it. It runs on OS B. You have both, and at minimal cost. You're running the software you want, presumably on the hardware you want. What is there to complain about?

     

    Minimal cost is a relative term.  If I bought a full copy of Vista Ultimate, it would cost me $250 minimum.  Considering that my whole PC including Vista was around $1000, this adds 25% to my cost and more then doubles the cost of the OS (I believe the OEM version cost around $90, at least that's how much Dell was willing to give me to return it).  So now I have to pay three times what I originally paid for the OS just to be able to run all my programs.  Multiply this by the number of employees, and the costs are no so minimal.  

    I'm not really complaining.  I think Vista is a good OS overall.  I just want the MS zealots to agree that it's not perfect.  



  • @russ0519 said:

    Lets say that there are old highways, but it's been announced that they are no longer being maintained and the potholes will eventually get bad enough that it will damage your car or cause serious injury and/or death.  Lets also say that all the other manufacturers have issued free upgrades to their cars to amek them compatible with the new highway, but the manufacturer of your car (which is also coinsidently the manufacturer of the highway) says that you have to upgrade to a newer version of their car.  Lets also say that you know that you car would run just fine on the new highway, although maybe it wouldn't get as great a mileage.  The company has passed a law, however, banning any Nissan cars before 2005 from that highway.  You have a choice - upgrade to a new version of their car (and face the same thing when they build some new supposidely better highway), or you can go with other potentially cheaper manufacturers, who are a little better at supporting what they've built.  
     

    Still a bad analogy, unless MS removed Win2K/XP from the market entirely when they released Vista.

    No matter how long you keep beating that dead horse, it's still dead. The point is that SQL2K doesn't run on an OS that's 8 years newer than it is; your feeble efforts to blame MS for that are just that - feeble. If you want to continue driving your Model T, do so; just don't expect to run it on the Interstate Highways. Keep to the side streets instead. (Since you insisted on the car analogy. <g>) 



  • @russ0519 said:

    Minimal cost is a relative term.  If I bought a full copy of Vista Ultimate, it would cost me $250 minimum.  Considering that my whole PC including Vista was around $1000, this adds 25% to my cost and more then doubles the cost of the OS (I believe the OEM version cost around $90, at least that's how much Dell was willing to give me to return it).  So now I have to pay three times what I originally paid for the OS just to be able to run all my programs.  Multiply this by the number of employees, and the costs are no so minimal.  

    I'm not really complaining.  I think Vista is a good OS overall.  I just want the MS zealots to agree that it's not perfect.  

     

    But you are complaining. <g>

    Look, I pointed out a long time ago that expecting MS to continue to support older software by devoting the manpower to maintain and upgrade them was ridiculous. It doesn't make sense of any kind from a business standpoint. Why cut off your own revenue stream by encouraging people NOT to upgrade (because you're keeping all the older stuff alive longer with patches) while at the same time spending your own resources to produce those very same patches? Does that make sense to you from a business point of view? If it does, please hope that you always work for someone with better business sense than you have; if you ran things you'd be out of business in no time.

    Seriously, your thoughts make as much sense as saying "Well, my competitor uses the same base product I do in my manufacturing process. I'll buy a whole bunch at my own expense, and then give it to them because they're having trouble staying in business. So what if it hurts my own sales, costing me money on top of the money I'm losing by giving them inventory?" Does that sound like a good idea to you?

    And, since in your opinion software should never be obsolete, who's now producing the patches for all of the old Commodore 64 software to make it run on Windows/Linux/OS X? I must be behind on my reading; I haven't heard of any new releases in that product software recently. 



  • @KenW said:

    @russ0519 said:

    Lets say that there are old highways, but it's been announced that they are no longer being maintained and the potholes will eventually get bad enough that it will damage your car or cause serious injury and/or death.  Lets also say that all the other manufacturers have issued free upgrades to their cars to amek them compatible with the new highway, but the manufacturer of your car (which is also coinsidently the manufacturer of the highway) says that you have to upgrade to a newer version of their car.  Lets also say that you know that you car would run just fine on the new highway, although maybe it wouldn't get as great a mileage.  The company has passed a law, however, banning any Nissan cars before 2005 from that highway.  You have a choice - upgrade to a new version of their car (and face the same thing when they build some new supposidely better highway), or you can go with other potentially cheaper manufacturers, who are a little better at supporting what they've built.  
     

    Still a bad analogy, unless MS removed Win2K/XP from the market entirely when they released Vista.

    No matter how long you keep beating that dead horse, it's still dead. The point is that SQL2K doesn't run on an OS that's 8 years newer than it is; your feeble efforts to blame MS for that are just that - feeble. If you want to continue driving your Model T, do so; just don't expect to run it on the Interstate Highways. Keep to the side streets instead. (Since you insisted on the car analogy. <g>) 

     

    What if I said that my car was still under the manufacturer's warranty when the highway came out.  My warranty wouldn't run out for another 6 months, yet the new highway won't support my car, and they won't give me an in-warranty upgrade to make my car compatible.  I'm not asking to run SQL 1.0, I'm  just asking to run a product that's only one version behind at this point and fully supported otherwise.     



  • @russ0519 said:

    I'm not asking to run SQL 1.0, I'm just asking to run a product that's only one version behind at this point and fully supported otherwise.
    Would you expect Mozilla to patch bugs in Firefox 1.5? I mean Firefox 2 is out and 3 is in beta, so by the same logic Firefox 1.5 should be supported.



  • @russ0519 said:

    What if I said that my car was still under the manufacturer's warranty when the highway came out.  My warranty wouldn't run out for another 6 months, yet the new highway won't support my car, and they won't give me an in-warranty upgrade to make my car compatible.
    I'd tell you that you should've just waited for the new highway and then purchased a car designed to run on it.  It wasn't like they kept it a secret; they've been constructing it for years.



  • @bstorer said:

    @russ0519 said:

    What if I said that my car was still under the manufacturer's warranty when the highway came out.  My warranty wouldn't run out for another 6 months, yet the new highway won't support my car, and they won't give me an in-warranty upgrade to make my car compatible.
    I'd tell you that you should've just waited for the new highway and then purchased a car designed to run on it.  It wasn't like they kept it a secret; they've been constructing it for years.

     

    And this is why car analogies just don't work in the software world, as much as we would like them to.  I mean, there is no way Ford (for example) could install a simple technological measure in their cars which only lets you use gas purchased at Shell (for example) , then sue you if you publish a method for  disabling the measure in order to use any gas you want.  Customers just wouldn't stand for it.



  • @CodeSimian said:

    And this is why car analogies just don't work in the software world, as much as we would like them to.  I mean, there is no way Ford (for example) could install a simple technological measure in their cars which only lets you use gas purchased at Shell (for example) , then sue you if you publish a method for  disabling the measure in order to use any gas you want.  Customers just wouldn't stand for it.
     

    No, of course not.  But what if they put in a chip to restrict you from using leaded gas?  Would you complain about that?



  • @CodeSimian said:

    And this is why car analogies just don't work in the software world

    I used a construction analogy in an IP lawsuit. Our lawyer loved it.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    I used a construction analogy in an IP lawsuit.

    Were they building it out of Imaginary bricks?



  • @KenW said:

    And, since in your opinion software should never be obsolete
     

    In fairness, I don't actually recall russ ever saying that.  In fact, it seems reasonable to expect that the version immediately before the current version should still be supported, even if it is 8 years old.

    @Lingerance said:

    Would you expect Mozilla to patch bugs in Firefox 1.5?

    It's called Firefox 2, and I note that things that used to work in Firefox 1.5 generally don't break in Firefox 2. 

     



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @CodeSimian said:
    And this is why car analogies just don't work in the software world

    I used a construction analogy in an IP lawsuit. Our lawyer loved it.

    As a rule, lawyers love analogies.  I think it's because it takes hard concepts and turns them into things simple enough for even a lawyer to understand.



  • @bstorer said:

    As a rule, lawyers love analogies.  I think it's because it takes hard concepts and turns them into things simple enough for even a lawyer to understand.

    Luckily, I'm extremely good with analogies. I figured the judge wouldn't have a clue what we were talking about (we don't have "specialists" out here), so I went into analogy mode. Since I was the "expert witness", it was really important for me to make all of it understandable. The lawyer went nuts with praise afterwards (which I didn't expect). I'm just glad I didn't have to do that again.



  • @mfah said:

    It's called Firefox 2, and I note that things that used to work in Firefox 1.5 generally don't break in Firefox 2.
    It appears you missed the other half of my post. Also, yes stuff breaks in FF2 compared to FF1.5, they're called extensions technically similar enough to having a program require library calls that function differently across major version numbers.



  • @mfah said:

    @KenW said:

    And, since in your opinion software should never be obsolete
     

    In fairness, I don't actually recall russ ever saying that. 

     

    @russ0519 said:

    Your argument makes no sense.  VS2008 has NEVER been supported on MS-DOS 3.2.  I would, however, expect my turbo pascal from dos 6.22 days to run in Vista.  New OS's should be backward compatible.



  • @bstorer said:

    @mfah said:

    @KenW said:

    And, since in your opinion software should never be obsolete
     

    In fairness, I don't actually recall russ ever saying that. 

     

    @russ0519 said:

    Your argument makes no sense.  VS2008 has NEVER been supported on MS-DOS 3.2.  I would, however, expect my turbo pascal from dos 6.22 days to run in Vista.  New OS's should be backward compatible.

     

    Not the same thing.  Expecting software to still run is quite different from expecting it to be never obsolete.  Of course Turbo Pascal is obsolete, but why shouldn't it still be able to run? 



  • @mfah said:

    Not the same thing.  Expecting software to still run is quite different from expecting it to be never obsolete.  Of course Turbo Pascal is obsolete, but why shouldn't it still be able to run?
    You're splitting some mighty fine hairs here, but I'll move past it.  It shouldn't still be able to run because... oh, I don't know... it was designed for another operating system?!



  • @bstorer said:

    it was designed for another operating system?!
    Rather it was designed for a specific kernel architecture that was so horribly designed attempting to support it would significantly reduce the quality of the operating system as a whole.



  • @bstorer said:

    It shouldn't still be able to run because... oh, I don't know... it was designed for another operating system?!

    I would have to agree with that: DOS != Win3.1 != Win9x != XP



    However.. at that point, Vista and XP are close cousins, so anything that was developed specifically for XP should be able to run in Vista. I can see dropping 16-bit and DOS support.



  • @bstorer said:

    @mfah said:

    Not the same thing.  Expecting software to still run is quite different from expecting it to be never obsolete.  Of course Turbo Pascal is obsolete, but why shouldn't it still be able to run?
    You're splitting some mighty fine hairs here, but I'll move past it.  It shouldn't still be able to run because... oh, I don't know... it was designed for another operating system?!

     

    Windows has been designed on top of DOS and XP and Vista still have a fairly compatible version of DOS.  I would expect Turbo Pascal to still run on it.  If it doesn't, I'll understand, but without researching it further, I would expect that it would run.  

    There is no way in hell that VS.NET can run on DOS 3.2, or even 6.22.  It's not an app that can run on system that's doesn't have windows.   There is no way that MS can make it work. 

    SQL 2k, on the other hand, can be patched  to work on Vista.  The amount of work that it takes is not known at least to us, it might be minimal, or it might need a serious rewrite.  My guess is that it would be minimal.  It might even work unpatched, with a few workarounds or expectations that certain features are going to be broken.   

    Once SQL 2k8 comes out, I would expect MS to drop support for sql2k, and not to run it on any OS that they come out AFTER SQL 2k8 is released.  I'm fine with them supporting the last two versions, and I think that's reasonable.  It's just a bit unreasonable to drop support for SQL 2k before 2k8 comes out, and to not support SQL 2k on an OS that came out over 6 months before the general support for SQL 2k ran out.       



  • @russ0519 said:

    New OS's should be backward compatible. 
     

    I hate to break this to you but OS X is not backwards compatible with OS 9 and Linux kernel 2.6 is not backwards compatible with 2.4.  You have been spoiled by MS's previous "backwards compatibility religion", which as we can all see, has been pretty much abandoned.  Sure MS still keeps back-compat around, but they will no longer bend over backwards to avoid breaking existing apps in 100% of cases.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @bstorer said:
    It shouldn't still be able to run because... oh, I don't know... it was designed for another operating system?!

    I would have to agree with that: DOS != Win3.1 != Win9x != XP



    However.. at that point, Vista and XP are close cousins, so anything that was developed specifically for XP should be able to run in Vista.

    Not if it uses undocumented internal API hooks that aren't replicated in Vista.  Granted, you're trading one WTF for another.



  • @russ0519 said:

    Windows has been designed on top of DOS and XP and Vista still have a fairly compatible version of DOS.
     

    I'm sure you're aware of this, but just to clarify: Windows 9x was designed "on top of DOS".  The NT-based Windows (including XP and Vista) rely on a virtual machine (NTVDM) to run 16-bit DOS applications.  BTW, the recent 64-bit versions of Windows have dropped NTVDM:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTVDM

    Recent versions of Windows NT for 64-bit architectures, including Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (x86-64), Windows XP 64-bit Edition (IA-64), Windows Server 2003 (x64) and Windows Vista (x64), no longer include the NTVDM so are unable to run 16-bit DOS or Windows applications.

    Quick, start a petition! 



  • @russ0519 said:

    Windows has been designed on top of DOS and XP and Vista still have a fairly compatible version of DOS.  I would expect Turbo Pascal to still run on it.  If it doesn't, I'll understand, but without researching it further, I would expect that it would run.  
    Windows hasn't been designed on top of DOS for some time now.  Please disabuse yourself of that notion.

    @russ0519 said:

    SQL 2k, on the other hand, can be patched  to work on Vista.
      What do you think would happen if SQL 2000 were written by a different company?  Would you expect them to upgrade an eight-year-old version of their software to run on the new OS?  Or would they just tell you to buy the new version of the database?

    @russ0519 said:

    The amount of work that it takes is not known at least to us, it might be minimal, or it might need a serious rewrite.  My guess is that it would be minimal.  It might even work unpatched, with a few workarounds or expectations that certain features are going to be broken.
      Your guess is worthless in this context.  I would wager that if your company had the money, you could get MS to make it work on Vista.  But they aren't going to do it cheap.  Why should they?  It's a piece of software nearing it's end-of-life.  It'd probably be far cheaper to just buy the latest version.

    @russ0519 said:

    Once SQL 2k8 comes out, I would expect MS to drop support for sql2k, and not to run it on any OS that they come out AFTER SQL 2k8 is released.  I'm fine with them supporting the last two versions, and I think that's reasonable.  It's just a bit unreasonable to drop support for SQL 2k before 2k8 comes out, and to not support SQL 2k on an OS that came out over 6 months before the general support for SQL 2k ran out.
    Again, you can't think of it this way.  I know the boxes for both vista and SQL Server say "Microsoft" on them, but we're talking about two separate arms of the company.  It's best to think of them as separate companies, because then you'll realize what you're asking for is something no company would do for you.



  • @russ0519 said:

    I would, however, expect my turbo pascal from dos 6.22 days to run in Vista.
     

    Do you remember the: "Runtime error 200, division by zero" bug?

    Basically crt.tpu's code for the "delay" sub calculated the time it would take to run a series of instructions, and iterated them for the time you specified. Obviously, when the processors evolved and the time required reduced to zero (around about the P2 200MHz stage), it crashed. Should support be built in for that?

    Or how about programs that access the hard-drive through INT13h? Should they be supported and NTFS permissions dumped? 



  • @bstorer said:

    @russ0519 said:

    Windows has been designed on top of DOS and XP and Vista still have a fairly compatible version of DOS.  I would expect Turbo Pascal to still run on it.  If it doesn't, I'll understand, but without researching it further, I would expect that it would run.  
    Windows hasn't been designed on top of DOS for some time now.  Please disabuse yourself of that notion.

    Ok, my bad.  Windows 2000, XP and Vista were built on NT 4's codebase, vs 3.1/95/98/ME which were built on top of DOS.  

     

    @bstorer said:

    @russ0519 said:
    SQL 2k, on the other hand, can be patched  to work on Vista.
      What do you think would happen if SQL 2000 were written by a different company?  Would you expect them to upgrade an eight-year-old version of their software to run on the new OS?  Or would they just tell you to buy the new version of the database?

    I would expect them to fix it OR provide a cheaper way to upgrade then buying a whole new version.  If they told me that I would have to pay the full cost of the software AGAIN, I would tell them to go screw themselves and find a competing company.  

    @bstorer said:

    @russ0519 said:
    The amount of work that it takes is not known at least to us, it might be minimal, or it might need a serious rewrite.  My guess is that it would be minimal.  It might even work unpatched, with a few workarounds or expectations that certain features are going to be broken.
      Your guess is worthless in this context.  I would wager that if your company had the money, you could get MS to make it work on Vista.  But they aren't going to do it cheap.  Why should they?  It's a piece of software nearing it's end-of-life.  It'd probably be far cheaper to just buy the latest version.

    The only half decent thing that MS has done is to release SQL Express 2005, which meets most of my needs anyway.  I think if I buy a decent add on that can do replace SQL Agent, I might not even need to pay for SQL 2k5. The only reason MS did this, is to be able to upsell the full version of SQL and to compete better with the likes of PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle Lite for the low end market.  

    @bstorer said:

    @russ0519 said:
    Once SQL 2k8 comes out, I would expect MS to drop support for sql2k, and not to run it on any OS that they come out AFTER SQL 2k8 is released.  I'm fine with them supporting the last two versions, and I think that's reasonable.  It's just a bit unreasonable to drop support for SQL 2k before 2k8 comes out, and to not support SQL 2k on an OS that came out over 6 months before the general support for SQL 2k ran out.
    Again, you can't think of it this way.  I know the boxes for both vista and SQL Server say "Microsoft" on them, but we're talking about two separate arms of the company.  It's best to think of them as separate companies, because then you'll realize what you're asking for is something no company would do for you.

    I just don't think that MS's licensing terms are fair... It might even not be that huge a deal to buy an upgrade... it's that I have to pay the full price AGAIN is what's bothering me.  Either way, like I said, I might get away with using SQL Express.  Anyone know any good/cheap add-ons that let you do scheduled tasks?  Our DB's are about 2GB right now, so they still got room to grow before hitting the 4GB limit.  The only thing that I would love is to have redundancy - but SQL Express doesn't do clustering AFAIK.  They do allow for replication... Can anyone point me to any good articles on setting up replication or at least something like log shipping with SQL Express?



  • @dabean said:

    Do you remember the: "Runtime error 200, division by zero" bug?

    Basically
    crt.tpu's code for the "delay" sub calculated the time it would take to run a
    series of instructions, and iterated them for the time you specified. Obviously,
    when the processors evolved and the time required reduced to zero (around about
    the P2 200MHz stage), it crashed.

    Yow! And I wondered why Borland Pascal kept crashing when I said <font face="Courier New">USES CRT;</font>. Thanks for the info, though it's a bit late. 8=]



  • @CodeSimian said:

    Recent versions of Windows NT for 64-bit architectures, including
    Windows
    XP Professional x64 Edition
    (x86-64), Windows XP 64-bit
    Edition
    (IA-64), Windows Server 2003
    (x64) and Windows Vista (x64), no
    longer include the NTVDM so are unable to run 16-bit DOS or Windows
    applications.

    Quick, start a petition! 

    I know you're joking, but support for MS-DOS applications in AMD64 Windows is impossible due to technical reasons — you can't have Virtual 8086 mode when in long mode.

    Just in case.

    (BTW, does x86 Vista support DOS apps? I don't see it mentioned on Wikipedia.)



  • @Spectre said:

    (BTW, does x86 Vista support DOS apps? I don't see it mentioned on Wikipedia.)
     

    Yes, it still has NTVDM.  But full-screen (text) mode for command prompts has been removed if you are using an Aero-enabled WDDM graphics driver.  I believe you can only use full-screen mode with XDDM (i.e. if you are using an old XP graphics driver with no Aero support.)

    Going back to the topic of removing NTVDM (and 16-bit support in general) from 64-bit Windows: just try running an old installer like InstallShield circa-1996 on 64-bit Windows.  I believe MS had to put a compatibility shim to handle this case, since at least one part of InstallShield was a 16-bit executable (a launcher stub, IIRC).   A quick Google shows that others have had problems with 16-bit installers:

    http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=784331 

    See, MS has broken backwards compatibility (whether by design or necessity) and will continue to do so.  We will all have to get used to it, like it or not.  Just wait until 32-bit desktop OS's disappear.  Then you will see a flood of complaints.  MS will simply say: "You'll just have to run legacy programs in a VM."

    If I'm not mistaken, Server 2008 is supposed to be the last 32-bit Windows server OS, and "Windows 7" will be the last 32-bit Windows client OS.



  • @CodeSimian said:

    See, MS has broken backwards compatibility (whether by design or necessity) and will continue to do so.  We will all have to get used to it, like it or not.  Just wait until 32-bit desktop OS's disappear.  Then you will see a flood of complaints.  MS will simply say: "You'll just have to run legacy programs in a VM."
     

    They pretty much had no choice with the 64bit/16bi thing.

    As for demoting the importance of backwards compatibility in general - fantastic. Emulation/virtualisation is now common and well known enough that we can just throw that at back compat. issues and work on making the OS of tomorrow better, rather than being constrained by the past. Bravo, I say. Probably 99% of Windows source code is hacks to get around broken and/or old code.

    Shims put in for crappy code? Replace with "the developers of this software are retards. Please pester them to fix it or ask for your money back". Manpower dedicated to getting LameGame for DOS 6.22 working in Windows 7? No thanks. Let's have them put to use creating something useful for us in 2010. Just integrate an embedded bulletproof WinXP image into the OS to handle the old junk.



  • @RayS said:

    Shims put in for crappy code? Replace with "the developers of this software are retards. Please pester them to fix it or ask for your money back". Manpower dedicated to getting LameGame for DOS 6.22 working in Windows 7? No thanks. Let's have them put to use creating something useful for us in 2010. Just integrate an embedded bulletproof WinXP image into the OS to handle the old junk.
     

    I think you will be happy to read these rumours:

    Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn't think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows. Making the break from backwards compatibility is a dangerous proposal but a dream for software developers. Performance of native applications can be increased, distribution sizes can be cut down, functionality can be added without the worry of breaking old applications, and the overall end-user experience can be significantly improved.

    ... 

    In Windows 7, Microsoft will break from the Windows' norm by breaking previous API compatibility, offering new API frameworks as a native solution, and providing support for legacy frameworks (COM, ATL, .NET Framework, etc) through monolithic libraries designed to provide the functionality of all previous revisions of the modules in question. This extends/replaces the WinSxS philosophy, providing every single function, past and present, in fully comprehensive libraries. This should allow the majority of legacy applications to run perfectly, while still retaining native performance for applications compiled specifically with the Windows 7 platform in mind. It should also be possible for applications produced with previous versions of Visual Studio to be directly recompiled into native code using the new API frameworks.

     

     



  • @russ0519 said:

    I would expect them to fix it OR provide a cheaper way to upgrade then buying a whole new version.  If they told me that I would have to pay the full cost of the software AGAIN, I would tell them to go screw themselves and find a competing company.

    I just don't think that MS's licensing terms are fair... It might even not be that huge a deal to buy an upgrade... it's that I have to pay the full price AGAIN is what's bothering me.

     

    Microsoft offers the Software Assurance program that does allow you to upgrade your products.  A typical rate for mainenance is between 17 - 25% of the full license per year which last I checked is commensurate with SA.  And if you compare MS licensing terms with others in the software industry, you'll find they are somewhere right in the middle between fair and unreasonable.  There are many companies that sell their products and the only way to get patches/bug fixes is if you are on maintenance (equivalent to SA).  Also there are some that won't even allow you to drop maintenance for some products and retain it others unless you deinstall the products you dropped.  Microsoft on the other hand, provides patches free of charge as long as it is a supported product.  Whether you think it is fair or not, it's not like MS is out in left field in respect to their licensing terms compared to others in the industry.

    @russ0519 said:

    The only half decent thing that MS has done is to release SQL Express 2005, which meets most of my needs anyway.  I think if I buy a decent add on that can do replace SQL Agent, I might not even need to pay for SQL 2k5. The only reason MS did this, is to be able to upsell the full version of SQL and to compete better with the likes of PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle Lite for the low end market.

    Actually, SQL Express is the replacement for MSDE which has been out since 1999 - well before Oracle Lite, the entry level DB2 and the popularity of MySQL and Postgres.  The release of SQL Express was to address the shortcomings of MSDE (No GUI, workload limits, etc) as well as provide an upgrade path so that they could eventually kill off MSDE.

    As far as addons for scheduling jobs in SQL Express, take a look at http://www.valesoftware.com/products-express-agent.php.  You can thank Alex for that, he found it.

    SQL Express only supports subscriber replication, so you can't setup two instances of SQL Express in replication.  You could have one SQL Std (publisher) and one SQL Express (subscriber).  As far as high availability/clustering goes, you'll be hard-pressed to find good implementations in low cost/open source products (MySQL has serious limitations today and Postgres isn't there yet either AFAIK).  If you need that type of functionality, you'll need to go with one of the big boys (IBM, Oracle, MS, Sybase and few others).

     

     

     



  • @lpope187 said:

    @russ0519 said:

    The only half decent thing that MS has done is to release SQL Express 2005, which meets most of my needs anyway.  I think if I buy a decent add on that can do replace SQL Agent, I might not even need to pay for SQL 2k5. The only reason MS did this, is to be able to upsell the full version of SQL and to compete better with the likes of PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle Lite for the low end market.

    Actually, SQL Express is the replacement for MSDE which has been out since 1999 - well before Oracle Lite, the entry level DB2 and the popularity of MySQL and Postgres.  The release of SQL Express was to address the shortcomings of MSDE (No GUI, workload limits, etc) as well as provide an upgrade path so that they could eventually kill off MSDE.

    As far as addons for scheduling jobs in SQL Express, take a look at http://www.valesoftware.com/products-express-agent.php.  You can thank Alex for that, he found it.

    SQL Express only supports subscriber replication, so you can't setup two instances of SQL Express in replication.  You could have one SQL Std (publisher) and one SQL Express (subscriber).  As far as high availability/clustering goes, you'll be hard-pressed to find good implementations in low cost/open source products (MySQL has serious limitations today and Postgres isn't there yet either AFAIK).  If you need that type of functionality, you'll need to go with one of the big boys (IBM, Oracle, MS, Sybase and few others).

     

     

     

    I know MySQL supports clustering... what's lacking about it?  I'm really looking for more of a failover solution then real loadbalancing for the db server, and hopefully something that doesn't require shared storage.  I'm not seeing anything bad about it on wikipidia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL_Cluster

      



  • It does look like MySQL Cluster has addressed some of it's limitations since the last time I looked at it (no longer requiring all the data in memory and not expanding varchar columns).  But to me, the deal breakers are foreign keys are uneforced, durability isn't guaranteed , and no rollbacks/savepoints.  Essentially, I don't think its there yet for a transactional database where data integrity is a must.  Under certain scenarios, these limitations aren't that big of a deal like for example if you're just logging web hits for trending.  

    As a side note, if active-passive failover clustering is what you want and that's where you got the $100k for MsSQL; you should know that you don't need to pay for additional licenses for the passive nodes.

     



  • @bstorer said:

    It shouldn't still be able to run because... oh, I don't know... it was designed for another operating system?!
     

    That's fair enough, but the initial example was fairly silly to begin with.  Windows 2000 is only 2 generations behind Vista, is only one major version number behind, and is - allegedy - an earlier version of the same OS.  SQL 2000 is only one generation and one major version number behind the current version (2K5).


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