Monday, January 29, 2007 #

Vista - are you going to get a copy?

Out of interest, and apologies if its been asked before, but

ARE YOU GOING TO BUY VISTA [soon/now]?

I'm not!

Then again, I don't have to in many ways, i.e., we have a licence that would allow me to have this on as many machines as I want, but, the only machine I currently have it on is a virtual one - via VMWare.

I've actually had it [in various forms] for, um, rather a long time now - but, whilst it was not a 'released product', I haven't really bothered - apart from using it for a grid-computing experiment [where I needed it for some rather devious and 'can't say' purposes].

Anyway, now that it's due, and seeing that some of the good features do actually work - well, I'm not convinced that I'll bother [even though it's free for me to load up a copy on my various machines].

It's 'free' for you, but you don't want it!!! Yes, and yes!


XP Pro works well for me - and my machines are all bolted down etc: and, having witnessed some rather dissapointing bugs in the business-release [which 'smack' of it [still!] being rushed - or - not properly tested], I don't think I'm going to jump on until I'm *forced* to [bought-a-new-machine / paid-for-it-pre-installed / might-as-well-use-it (with XP Pro as a dual-boot!)]

As an MS share-holder [and one-time employee], all of this makes me wonder about Microsoft's future ... how much does an OS [or an Office-Suite] not do before you consider you should/must upgrade? And, if your answer is that Vista is necessary - what about the next version - or the next version of Microsoft Office?? When will *the product* do enough - be reliable enough - that, thank you very much, but I'm quite happy with what I've got ta!

And, no, I don't think 128-bit stuff is going to convince me either, Duh!

So, what's the next cash cow for Microsoft? I mean - *search* is done and dusted, so ... what's next ... what's the next BiG Thing?

posted @ Monday, January 29, 2007 7:39 PM | Feedback (0)

Vista - User Account Control Bites?

Just wondering whether or not anyone else has had to modify their code to live with UAC?

The problem? Well, here's one - you can't use CreateProcess to shell another application - like a wrappered setup.exe perhaps.

I recently had to do this for some code that wrappered an AV installer here. CreateProcess fails coz the Shell can't prompt/ask the user if the incoming app's ok to be run.

A simple fix is to just do this via the Shell, i.e., through something like ShellExecuteEx – then the user gets asked the 'is it ok' question.

There seem to be other methods – most of which are documented on msdn of course

posted @ Monday, January 29, 2007 5:03 PM | Feedback (1)

Archimedes anyone?

Don't know if this will work outside of the UK, but, one of my can't miss radio shows is often Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time.

I say 'often' because one week the show is about something like the Speed of Light and the next, it's about Renaissance Poetry - guess which find more personally interesting!

Anyway, until this Thursday, the latest programme about Archimedes is available as an MP3 download.

The science-based programmes are available as a Listen Again thingmy here.

posted @ Monday, January 29, 2007 4:45 PM | Feedback (0)