Windows Vista
Our little company has one product for Windows, and of course we have tested it under Vista. The first "quick'n'dirty" test back in January showed that it worked, no problem. We thought no more of it, having no intention of moving to Vista ourselves. The Vista installation sat quietly on a virtual machine and wasn't opened again.
Then someone reported that they couldn't install our product under Vista. Time to shake the dust off that installation and have another look.
Digression: once upon a time, Microsoft took good care of its developers. In the last couple of years that's been less and less the case. This proves to be a case in point:
We started up the virtual machine, but we hadn't ever bothered to "activate" Vista, and the 30 days trial period had expired. In this situation, Vista will let you enter a valid product code, or purchase a license. That's it, nothing else works. Of course, we have an entire sheet full of valid codes - part of the developer stuff.
The only thing is: Vista wouldn't accept them. Microsoft provided its developers with an "upgrade" version of Vista, but we had done a clean install. What else would a developer do? These licenses are provided mainly so that developers can test their products. You always test in a "clean" environment - no developer in his (or her) right mind is going to install Vista over some other operating system, and then test in that environment, unless he is doing something very unusual. So why are the developer codes only valid for upgrades?
But there was nothing for it: this Vista installation was trash. Reformat the disk, re-install, and (this time) activate immediately. But how to solve the upgrade problem?
This is well documented in the Internet - lots of other developers have had the same problem. All you do is install Vista - without activating it - and then from inside Vista start the install process again. You are then allowed to "upgrade" your installation. The upgrade spends lots of time preserving your existing data and settings, and takes far longer than the original installation.
But the pain isn't over. After the initial installation, everything basically works: networking, video, etc. After the upgrade, this isn't the case - there are a number of problems. One example: after the upgrade, Vista could no longer find a suitable network driver. This, as with all the other problems, is soluble - but it is passing strange, given that both installations were carried out from the same installation DVD.
Final result: it took one person an entire day to get us back where we should have been when we first powered up the machine. Now it's Easter weekend, and we won't get to the testing we needed to do until next week.
Why? Why does Microsoft make this process so difficult? It is fair for a company to try to prevent illegal copies of its software. But when this impacts your legitimate customers, it's too much. We, as a company, have no intention of running Vista on any production machine. As far as we are concerned, this is one more nail in the coffin of Windows: our next major release will be developed independent of Microsoft, most likely in Java. Our internal network is moving to Linux. While we will obviously support our customers who have windows, we will also encourage them to make the move.
As another blogger has put it: Microsoft is nailing their own coffin shut, from the inside.
Then someone reported that they couldn't install our product under Vista. Time to shake the dust off that installation and have another look.
Digression: once upon a time, Microsoft took good care of its developers. In the last couple of years that's been less and less the case. This proves to be a case in point:
We started up the virtual machine, but we hadn't ever bothered to "activate" Vista, and the 30 days trial period had expired. In this situation, Vista will let you enter a valid product code, or purchase a license. That's it, nothing else works. Of course, we have an entire sheet full of valid codes - part of the developer stuff.
The only thing is: Vista wouldn't accept them. Microsoft provided its developers with an "upgrade" version of Vista, but we had done a clean install. What else would a developer do? These licenses are provided mainly so that developers can test their products. You always test in a "clean" environment - no developer in his (or her) right mind is going to install Vista over some other operating system, and then test in that environment, unless he is doing something very unusual. So why are the developer codes only valid for upgrades?
But there was nothing for it: this Vista installation was trash. Reformat the disk, re-install, and (this time) activate immediately. But how to solve the upgrade problem?
This is well documented in the Internet - lots of other developers have had the same problem. All you do is install Vista - without activating it - and then from inside Vista start the install process again. You are then allowed to "upgrade" your installation. The upgrade spends lots of time preserving your existing data and settings, and takes far longer than the original installation.
But the pain isn't over. After the initial installation, everything basically works: networking, video, etc. After the upgrade, this isn't the case - there are a number of problems. One example: after the upgrade, Vista could no longer find a suitable network driver. This, as with all the other problems, is soluble - but it is passing strange, given that both installations were carried out from the same installation DVD.
Final result: it took one person an entire day to get us back where we should have been when we first powered up the machine. Now it's Easter weekend, and we won't get to the testing we needed to do until next week.
Why? Why does Microsoft make this process so difficult? It is fair for a company to try to prevent illegal copies of its software. But when this impacts your legitimate customers, it's too much. We, as a company, have no intention of running Vista on any production machine. As far as we are concerned, this is one more nail in the coffin of Windows: our next major release will be developed independent of Microsoft, most likely in Java. Our internal network is moving to Linux. While we will obviously support our customers who have windows, we will also encourage them to make the move.
As another blogger has put it: Microsoft is nailing their own coffin shut, from the inside.
posted by bradley13 at 23:49
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