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In some settings, this is realized via a mainframe class computer running (even older) accounting software because its operating systems allows it to, and the terminal nodes are regular PCs, running whatever "Windows" the company wishes. This concept allows a differentiation between "we bought this programs years ago" and "we need the newest 'Windows' on our desktops" requirements.



Of course, that's how it is intended to.



You're mentioning a valid point here. I'd like to add that not only corporate customers suffer from this "radical break", but also gamers who have their games running happily on "XP", and then encountering problems running them on "Vista" they got with their new gaming PC.

But let me - just as a sidenote - introduce the fact that you can have it both ways, but of course not with "Windows". For example, the FreeBSD OS version 7 allows you to run 3.x, 4.x, 5.x and 6.x applications just by installing the corresponding compat libraries. And I can imagine something similar would be possible with "Windows", too, but only if you get some kind of emulator or virtual machine running.



Why these big year numbers? Try half of the values, doesn't work, too. :-) But you're right, any kind of backwards compatibility to applications and hardware won't happen, I'm sure. Why? Because it's not intended. Buy. Buy now. Buy more. Buy and... be happy. =^_^=

Furthermore, I don't think 10 years old printers will work (except they are professional office products, not the inkjet toys, in such cases they are capable of standard interfaces, such as PS or PCL which will allow any (!) OS to use them).

Inkjet home printers are not manufactured to live 10 years

it's called virtualization.
Something Microsoft should have done.

If it's really a 12 year old accounting package, it wouldn't require more than windows 95. That could have been run in a very small virtualized environment (think 64 MB/s ram is plenty and 486 performance is good enough).

That could be easily virtualized on a modern dual core with 1 gig of ram. If MS has spent there time doing better virtualization integration, then you could have had it both ways.

Yes, an I am sure Vista with a 512MB plus memory footprint XP virtual machine, and all the extra disk space usage that entails, would have been welcomed with open arms by all of the Vista critics.

Virtualization is not perfect. It would use much more memory. It would suck for games. It would introduce it's own incompatibilities. It would be slower. It would introduce hardware issues as the VM attempts to access the hardware devices with legacy drivers. Basically all the problems people are already complaining about with Vista.

So, if MS had done this, they would have been faced with all the same complaints, and would have forced all of the Windows software vendors to rewrite their software if they want to get out of the XP penalty box. Wow - sounds like a win-win. Wonder why on earth they didn't do that.

There is no excuse for MS not to have both 100% backward compatibility AND a fresh properly designed OS. They bought VirtualPC. They own the rights to ship every version of MS-DOS and MS-Windows ever released. 100% backward compatibility should be no more difficult than to select the specs of the machine I want to run, and the OS version that goes with it.

If I can get darn near 100% compatibility with Atari 2600, NES, SuperNes, Genesis, Vectrex, every model of Amiga ever made, and various other systems, all coded by a handful of guys who are reverse engineering the original systems, there is no excuse for MS not supplying 100% backward compatibility for their OS.

Backward compatibility has been a lame excuse for not fixing their broken OS. I have a hard time believing that no one at MS has ever suggested "Hey, lets just include VirtualPC in the default OS install". The fact that they have not done this has be purely a business decision.

I tried Vista (which came with my machine) for a few days in my virtual machine. I didn't actually find any performance issues or UAC issues (except for a minor issue about Shares not working and the only documented solution was to turn off UAC....it would have actually good if it gave me a "Confirm"/"Deny" box instead of failing silently with no logging).

The main problem with Vista, from my perspective is that it seemed half baked. For instance, to turn off the UAC, you have to go to a special non-obvious place in the control panel and click a link that launched a DOS prompt that disappeared quickly with no feedback on success. Even Gentoo does a better job that this in their GUI tools. Things were also re-organized for no good reason and hidden under more layers of hierarchy (which made things hard to find). There wasn't even an escape hatch for classic mode since that didn't exist....even XP classic mode.

I felt handcuffed and weighted down....the way a Windows 95 user would feel if he was forced to use Windows 3.1. I could still get things done, but it was painful. It definitely seems like a downgrade of Windows XP.

"The main problem with Vista, from my perspective is that it seemed half baked. For instance, to turn off the UAC, you have to go to a special non-obvious place in the control panel and click a link that launched a DOS prompt that disappeared quickly with no feedback on success"

Hmm i wonder what OS you really used. Firstly it's behind user accounts which is quite obvious since its UAC(user account control) even name says the location, secondly you been asked to reboot in order UAC to go off(this isn't big enough confirmation to you???), thirdly there is no dos box.

"The main problem with Vista, from my perspective is that it seemed half baked. For instance, to turn off the UAC, you have to go to a special non-obvious place in the control panel and click a link that launched a DOS prompt that disappeared quickly with no feedback on success."

I just clicked the start button and typed "User". I saw "User Accounts" in the list and clicked it. At the buttom of the page is a link "Turn user account control on or off".

If that's not simple enough for you, run Help, and type in UAC - the first item in the list will be "Turn User Account Control on or off".

I've turned it off and back on before as well, and I didn't see any DOS prompt, and there was quite clear feedback about what was happening.

Ever hear of... virtualization? I'll just say this: Yes, you CAN have it both ways.

A brand-new, from-scratch operating system, plus virtualization, plus a copy of an older "legacy" OS (ie. WinXP) means you get the best of both worlds. Well, assuming that this new host OS is decent to begin with, and judging from Microsoft's track record of brand-new products, I would guess "decent" (if even that) is the best it would be for quite a while.

The "right thing" in my opinion (emphasis on that part) would be to start from scratch, for the most part, and rebuild Windows from the ground up, in a more sane way... doing away with all the cheap quirks and hacks. Build it with security in mind, instead of tacking it on to the current OS which still reflects in its design its former self which had absolutely no concept of security.

Unfortunately, what "should" be done won't be done, because money talks. Can't let the superior operating systems out there catch up, or their monopoly position will be descended to a mere level (and fair) playing field, where they have to (oh no!) compete and actually innovate.

I just don't see it being too hard to start over, with all their resources, and considering what you actually *get* with Windows (Calculator? Notepad? Wordpad? Come on...). The hardest part would probably be the absolute lowest level stuff and getting it to all work together. And if they were to go that route, drop the Win16/32/64 APIs for .NET and leave the legacy OS in a VM for older apps... I honestly could envision a good, modern OS. Well... after version 3 maybe.

And on top of that... the size of the OS on disc and installed would probably drop by countless gigabytes. *keeps dreaming*

... and the worst of both worlds too. This would be a nightmare security- and sysadmin-wise. The virtual machines would need to be administered too. If you were managing an organisation with a x number of PCs, all of a sudden you would have to manage x*2 PCs, half of which with a legacy OS, for which support is going to be stopped soon.

That's why you use a Virtual Machine. I built a Vista 64 computer for my wife to run her business, and she had to run a (16 bit) Win95 application. Upgrading to the current version would have exceeded the cost of her computer and all the other software combined. So I put it in Virtual PC (VBox did not work) with 98SE and it works just fine. It runs faster, in fact, than it did on her previous Pentium 4 under XP.

I have had no issues with drivers, the update to SP1 was painless, the system is quite responsive, and she likes it a great deal. Honestly, I don't understand all the wining.

Personally I'll stick with FreeBSD at the moment, but Vista seems pretty decent to me based on this exposure. I realize that this is a minority opinion.

I would have to be bold enough as to disagree with you here to some extent. In the Apple world, for transition to OSX from OS9, they used (Apple people, please forgive my crude oversimplification) a virtual machine to run their software-My point is: Why would amaze you that people would expect the same from a company with such vast resources as Microsoft?

Classic sucked big time. It was incredibly slow on an incredibly slow OS and crashed a lot. Yes 10.0 was a beta at best and so slow that one could be tricked into believing the bouncing icons were animated backgrounds. 10.1 was the real release. If you used classic under 10.0 you would have known that apart from being slower than molasses running uphill in the middle of a Canadian winter there were many applications that simply would not run.

If anything Apple tricked its incredibly tolerant and at that time much smaller and more hardcore user base. They promised backwards compatibility, then when it sucked badly the relatively few and mostly small development companies ported their mostly small applications to the OS X. Companies like Quark took ages to get their software on OS X.