Vista Compatibility Center up and running

I've certainly given them a hard time about it, so it's only fair to point out that as of Friday morning, Microsoft's Vista Compatibility Center Web site is now live.

The site, in beta form, lists about 9,000 hardware and software products and their Vista readiness. Microsoft had planned on launching it on Tuesday, but encountered some unspecified issues.

With that resolved, folks can now feel free to pick on Apple for a while, given that it has had glitches with both its MobileMe service, much of which is still not operational, as well as activating new iPhones.

The Vista Compatibility Center is part of a broader effort on Microsoft's part to try to create positive attention for the operating system and demonstrate to both consumers and small businesses that it is ready for prime time. The company has also launched a separate effort specifically for small and mid-size businesses, offering free technical support for Vista.

[mrguard]

the site is up...oh..finally, you can sleep peacefully:)

[Save_Me_from_my_Govt]

I'm glad I bought a couple of extra copies of XP/Pro on June 30th. Now I won't have to worry about "incompatibilities" and the cost of new hardware, memory and devices for another few years...

Vista = "Features in search of an application"....

[mdburkey]

Purchasing XP Pro right now is not the brightest idea....Vista Biz (or Vista Ultimate) counts as an XP Pro license as well, for the same price.

In essence, do what most businesses I know are doing, purchase a copy of Vista Biz "just in case" Vista eventually becomes relevant, and then install XP Pro using the Microsoft sanctioned downgrade rights. The only caveat being you have to come up with an XP Pro CD to install from on your own -- but considering how ubiquitous it is, if you can't manage to come up with an XP Pro CD from somewhere, then you probably shouldn't be installing your own OS in the first place.

[Penguinisto]

mdburkey - true, but having two different CD keys is useful and if you're going to be paying the same price anyway? It's nice to have a spare, untouched and pristine XP disk laying around in case the other one gets scratched or otherwise rendered useless.

[tekwiz4u]

Ugh...who cares already!

[Penguinisto]

Well whad'ya know... Firefox 2 is listed as compatible (but not Firefox 3. Gee, I wonder how long it'll take MSFT to list FF3 as compatible? Hint: Don't hold your breath....) The funny thing is, I browsed the site w/o problems from my Ubuntu machine running... Firefox 3.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Wow. I must admit that your comments are always entertaining. You never miss a beat to openly mock, ridicule, degrade, criticize, or otherwise badmouth anything Microsoft. At least you're consistent.

What a loser.

[Penguinisto]

OH, no - I applaud them! I was pleasantly surprised that 1) Firefox was even listed, and that 2) MSFT didn't come up with some lame "you must upgrade your browser and/or OS to see this page" (like they tried on all of microsoft.com in 2000, until a quick UserAgent string change in Konqueror showed that MSFT was lying).

[Vegaman_Dan]

You may want to clarify that in the future, Penguinisto. Most, if not all your comments, are in mocking ridicule of all things Microsoft. I totally missed that you were not being sarcastic or juvenile. Your post would indicate otherwise, however.

[Penguinisto]

Sorry if I offend the sensibilities of the MSFT loyalists such as yourself... but maybe you can take take the blinkers off and realize that not all of use get our paychecks from Redmond. ;)

[Igiveup2]

"....not all of use get our paychecks from Redmond."
Myself included. The insinuation that all who counter the smears of the ABMers are on the payroll of Microsoft is a sophomoric copout. Isn't there a vested interest in the growth of Linux on the part of those who are in the Linux support industry?

[mjm01010101]

One immediate issue I can see is that it does not tell me what versions are compatible. Fairly useless without this.

[Penguinisto]

It does - for instance, it lists Firefox 2 as compatible (but not 3... though to be fair, FF3 came out only a few weeks ago).

[uhpl508]

FF3 works fine, I've been using it since beta.

[whizkid454]

Just because FF3 isn't listed on the site doesn't mean you can't browse the site with it.... The site is for VISTA compatibility, not Vista Compatibility Center compatibility.

[MSSlayer]

How can an OS that saps the usability out of hardware really be considered "compatible"?

It should say: This hardware will run with Vista but not as well as it would with Linux, OSX, and XP.

[Vegaman_Dan]

You are free to write your own compatability site if you wish to do so. But until then... yeah, your comments are... lame.

[Igiveup2]

Please tell us which hardware is compatible with OSX other than that made by Apple before you claim that OSX is more compatible.

[cheshirkat]

Too little, too late.

[ducksinthewind]

the disastrous MSWindows "update" called Service Pack 3 came to my vista lappy yesterday, without the SP3 name. Dont touch it.

Windows updates: "Windows Defender" and other security "fixes" totalling almost 66 Mb and requiring a "release for Microsoft from responsibility to the user" in order to proceed.

absolute trash. will not allow user to open hotmail, sets up impossible, unchangeable firewalls for IE and other really stable "trusted" internet sites. complete frustration, system restore required.

[Igiveup2]

Can't open hotmail after the latest update? Thanks for telling me. I never would have known that otherwise. I must be hallucinating hotmail.

[cporpheus]

Is Microsoft bashing still in season? I just want to make sure I haven't been out of the groupthink (as opposed to real and unique thinking and analyzing) for too long.

[Penguinisto]

If you have "real and unique thinking", how about posting some of it, instead of blind comment that can be all-too easily be mistaken for fanboyism. ;)

[Igiveup2]

Conform to the ABM groupthink if you don't want to be accused of being on the Microsoft payroll. ABM groupthink is the only real and unique thinking. War is peace.

[boone51]

that's because you're retarded

[rishidan]

It's like that time when the dog was sitting there smoldering, the fire department was still putting out the aquarium and your brother said to your mom and dad that "mistakes were made and, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I should have put the cat out first."

[Frost7331]

I'm suprised how much you guys can complain.

SP3 is FINE.I downloaded it,no problems except for my sound,which took about 10 minutes to resolve.Vista is fine if you are on a GAMING system,it's designed to better use memory,but takes up more.If you don't have atleast 1.5 gigs or over,you should consider getting a new PC.Besides,what's wrong with that? Benchmarks show,there is no difference between SP3 and Vista SP1,and even gains over XP SP2.
So don't say you can't "game" on,a system I could make myself for around 400 dollars(INCLUDING DISCRETE GRAPHICS CARD)

[Orion Blastar]

Yippie Kai Yay! 9000 software programs and hardware devices that work with Vista. Nice going Captain Falcon, but I'd like to see that number as high as one million or more. See I got a lot of legacy Windows applications that I need to run in order to get work done, most of them don't work with Vista. Stuff like Visual Studio 6.0 or Visual Studio.Net 2003, or PLC programming tools, you know stuff that works with XP and 2000, but not Vista, and we programmers get paid by getting work done and when Vista does not support our developer tools, we can't get much work done. Unless we downgrade to XP or 2000, but thanks to Microsoft they are shutting off sales of XP and 2000. So we cannot even do that anymore, now that new systems have Vista pre-loaded and there is no more downgrade to XP or 2000 anymore. Linux and Mac OSX won't run those developer tools either. I kind of need those developer tools to get software I wrote to be able to run on Vista. You know, so I can make them Vista compatible, like every other software maker on the planet needs them. Which I guess is why only 9000 of them actually work with Vista and not over a million, as there are over 100 million software programs for Microsoft Windows XP and under.

[commercebob]

Just looked at the site.

Used the Advanced search for hardware/ intel. Looks like Microsoft does not consider any intel processors or motherboards to be compatable with Vista.

[gsmiller88]

Well that took long enough.

[anonymous x]

wow, i don't care, i have never noticed any compatibility issues with my copy- don't need this website. far less software works with mac OS and linux (and no you penguin fanboys, wine doesn't always work) than with vista. This is overated, vista is a fine OS and this crap about it is spread by mac users and people who have never seen, much less used vista.