Will PA Run on Windows XP?

Oh no.. the pictures are mis-labeled..
it's meant to be ..
Bad Bad Bad
Bad Bad Bad
Bad Bad .. when are Microsoft going to release the next atrocious operating system

Vista was a superb OS which was criminally put down by people who didn't really understand what they were talking about. I would say that Vista is actually my favourite Microsoft OS because it marked the biggest step forward for Windows since 95.

sounds familiar....

seems laughable to me too, because the same people say they LUUUUV windows 7 which is an exact replica of vista prepacked with the same hotfixes for all the new drivers and problems brought along by the switch to 64bit.

I agree with you, most people that complained about the quality of vista running upgraded to vista on hardware that wasn't vista compatible at the time.
Vista was hungry on resources if you didn't have compatible hardware but its like that with every windows, A lot of people don't realize that and they buy the upgrade then complain about it not running great.. lol

IMO With the amount of prettiness they jammed into vista i was actually quite amazed myself at how well it ran.
I used vista for ages not because it was a better os than XP but because it was so darn pretty at the time and much easier to install than the linux's with compiz fusion (at the time compiz looked just as good if not better than vista).

Vista was designed with increased memory requirements during a time when RAM prices were dropping like a rock. Then netbooks happened, and I believe there was some incident which caused RAM prices to rise in 2006 so OEMs started shipping out piece of **** computers with 1GB of memory when Vista really needed 2GB. nVidia managed to single-handedly delay the release of SP1, and I think their drivers had issues at launch too despite an incredibly long time to prepare. It seems harsh that AMD get flack for their GPU drivers when nVidia have shown their incompetence time and time again, yet seem to get away with it because (in this instance) people blame Microsoft.

There was no justification for the dumbness of the knee-jerk reaction to UAC. UAC was the best thing to happen to Windows ever. So now Windows 7 comes with an insecure by default UAC setup. Thanks, idiots!

Vista even had the first decent Windows theme ever.

Windows 7 was designed to address the RAM issue too, though by then RAM prices were sorted and netbooks were on the way out thanks to tablets, and so to Windows 8...

Themes are one thing though. People who had trouble with vista ran xp with vista theme mods. Pretty vista start bar color, xp os.

Vista was really poorly accepted. 8 is really poorly accepted. 7 and 8.1 were their public apologies for both.

The 64 bit era real started back with vista and to be honest that was crap 64 bit xp never really existed in a practical sense.

I dunno. vista UAC was pretty irritating too. especially when you have to remind the computer you are the administrator.

this

not exactly... http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5213932&CatId=4622

The Mojave Experiment was a pretty convincing argument for the fact that most people didn't know what the **** they were talking about when it came to Vista.

An apology? That's ridiculous. Microsoft, as ever, was responding to changing market conditions. One of the big changes in Windows 7 was reduced memory usage because the netbook market had come into being at the time Vista was launched and it was one in which Windows XP and not Vista was dominating due to memory usage. Microsoft has traditionally, ever since Windows 95, made every other OS more of a refinement of the one that came before it rather than a full overhaul. Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, these were the big change OSs. So many people seem to forget that Windows XP, which of course everyone loves now, was despised at release and mocked endlessly for its look with howls of outrage at the change in Start Menu, etc, etc.

8.1 is part of their continued (and unsuccessful I would say) attempt to refine their merge of mobile and desktop in one OS.

Vista was the biggest change Microsoft ever made to Windows. Some may argue Windows 8, but I think that's only because the changes are so visible. Vista is the first OS Microsoft wrote from the ground up with security in mind, they changed almost every underlying stack, the graphics stack, the network stack, the audio stack, etc. It made fundamental changes to the ways Windows worked, and it made Windows feel modern after XP limped along for so long being service packed into relevance.

How does the computer know it's you? And what were you doing to trigger UAC enough to be irritating? Either you were constantly using admin functions (why?) or you needed to get in touch with the guy who wrote the software triggering it and explain to him that he's an idiot and multi-user systems started becoming mainstream years ago and how about he stop writing to the program's directory like a douche bag.

Running as a non-admin in XP was next to impossible because most programmers are inept at their jobs. Vista made it a breeze. Incidentally, that reminds me, Vista brought in Folder Virtualisation, which was another magnificent addition.

Well... Because I was using the admin account. So anything I ran I should have been running as the admin by default. Because I was the admin.

I just found that system fairly irritating. I think I've disabled it in Windows 8. There were some times when I needed admin functions pretty regularly. From memory it was changing settings and stuff. I don't really remember to be honest, it's been years since I used Vista.

And thank God UAC was there to protect us from you. And disabling UAC is a big mistake because it controls a lot more than you think, you've actually disabled a number of security mechanisms within the OS by doing that.

Lol. I just logged onto my computer. I actually haven't disabled UAC, there just hasn't been anything that's required admin permissions. I have no memory of what I was doing to the computer back then. After looking at the list, it was probably simply changing things in the control panel or installing/uninstalling programs and updates. Also doing various update stuff. I think compatibility with older games may come into that as well.

Can you not be condescending/patronising? Why is a non-admin using the admin account in the first place? Why did you need to provide Admin permission in the control panel in Vista, when they removed that aspect of UAC in Windows 7?

You should never run as an admin, that's simple security best practice, because anything that runs in your session runs with your permissions. Things that need additional permissions should be specifically elevated, hence UAC, though Run As is still more secure, but UAC is good enough for home users.

They didn't remove that aspect of UAC in Windows 7 (you can still set UAC to be the same as it was in Vista), they just added a new level of UAC which excluded certain things and allows malware to bypass UAC, then made it the default.

so it's more secure? why???

UAC, non-admin accounts, Run As, or Vista?

Thought this article is relevant to the idea of phasing out operating systems.

Microsoft ends windows 7 Retail.

Exactly. If everything that runs in my session runs with my permissions, it should never ask me for admin permission. There was some stuff "are you sure you want to do this" which was just stupid.

The only serious program I ever had with a Vista computer was hardware related, not software. How big is the chance that the UAC will block something which I didn't explicitly authorise?

So I can wrap my computer up in cotton wool and bubble wrap.

Or I can just rely on my antivirus and firewall to do its job properly.

Also if you put the maximum level of UAC on in Windows 8, you can't reset or refresh Windows 8.

I prefer to be able to do something about problems I encounter, rather than be secure in the knowledge that the million to 1 chance of something doing something mischievous to be computer has been reduced further.

Your machine doesn't know it's you asking to carry out the admin activity, only that something in your session is.

A firewall is irrelevant, because it only protects against external threats and UAC is a protection against things on the machine already. Anti-virus is not 100% effective, and it's even less effect when you're running as an admin as you have the permission set necessary to undermine the anti-virus!

UAC provides you a protection mechanism against files doing things they shouldn't. It gives you that chance to act by denying something permissions it doesn't need. If UAC somehow gets in your way then you really, really need to revisit how you use your machine because on your average day you shouldn't see UAC at all!