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Wait on Windows Vista

I got a laptop with Windows Vista last week. It wasn’t by choice, that was the only option offered. I got the laptop so I would be able to present my game to publishers in-person. The first problem was that Visual Studio 2005 is not compatible, and simply won’t run. I downloaded Visual Studio 2008 […]

I got a laptop with Windows Vista last week. It wasn’t by choice, that was the only option offered. I got the laptop so I would be able to present my game to publishers in-person.

The first problem was that Visual Studio 2005 is not compatible, and simply won’t run. I downloaded Visual Studio 2008 Express. It wouldn’t install either, crashing during the install of the .net framework 3.5. I’m not sure why this is required, as I don’t use the .net framework, but at that point I was out of options.

I formatted the harddrive with XP instead. The problem now was that HP, the manufacturer of the laptop, doesn’t release video card drivers for my 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS for XP. The Vista drivers won’t install. So I’m stuck with <1 FPS even for browsing the web with Firefox, and I’m sure my game won’t work either.

I put a clean install of Vista again and am going to try to install the .net framework again. If it doesn’t work I’m formatting it entirely and putting Ubuntu on it instead.

Even if Vista works I’m not happy about it because of the DRM.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/27/windows_drm_monstered/
http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/167101037

Another thing is Vista is closed source and the current goverment does not have much respect for civil liberties. I would not be surprised if there were backdoors in Vista allowing the goverment to spy and intrude on people. Until Ron Paul gets elected, I would rather stick to open source.

3 replies on “Wait on Windows Vista”

We’ve got a few people working with Visual Studio 2005 on Vista Home Premium editions without any major problems. Maybe some strange behaviour related to Vistas user management, this thing bitches about just everything…

To run VS2005 on Vista you need an additional patch (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=90e2942d-3ad1-4873-a2ee-4acc0aace5b6&displaylang=en). However, like I did, you’ll probably encounter endless levels of frustration with Vista as a whole. It’s worth the time to dig around in search of XP-compatible drivers for your video adapter because your productivity will be substantially higher in XP than Vista. That I can promise.

I’d also avoid VS2008 for the time being.

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