OT- Autosketch CAD

i was given alnost 100 2kpro and 98se pkgs with serials by it guys hurrying to vista. some of them asked for them back.

I bought a new computer recently (I was OP for this thread). I had trepidations about Vista, and was wondering if I'd have to install XP. So far, with the exception of two programs (including Autosketch) I have had no problems and find Vista very acceptable.

The two programs I have had problems with are VERY old ones. My Autosketch is version 2. So I don't think it is unreasonable to find problems. It is just that since these programs did everything I wanted, I had seen no reason to upgrade. If I were sure that Autosketch 7 WORKED on Vista, I would buy it, but Autodesk does not mention Vista on their Autosketch web site, and an email query to them has gone unanswered.

snipped-for-privacy@some.doma>> Bruce Burden wrote:

did you try the built in vista stuff to make it compatible? does vista have any of those?

I'm here courtesy of Thunderbird and #2 machine tonight. Just came over from the Spotlight Hobbies (Hobbyheaven) board on Firefox. Still prefer Netscape for the newsgroups.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I feel your pain. Every time my son upgrades my computer I find that something I use all the time doesn't work with whatever he installed. Where's Scotty when I need him? He could retrieve data from alien computers of ancient make but I can't get anything to retrieve all the info I have stored on Netscape 3.0.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

gotcha. whatcha know and like.

and he could talk into a mouse and make it beg! oh computer!

I am now also reading via Thunderbird. I took too much flak for using Google Groups interface. I originally went to GG when I noticed some problems with my news reader, and my ISP told me that while they will retain their news server, they will no longer support Usenet.

But, I have found the same problems via GG as via a regular news reader. One question on that- one thing that originally bothered me was that my news reader would say, for instance, 12 new messages, and I would only find maybe 7. There were ALWAYS missing messages, even when I was doing no filtering myself. Where are these missing messages. I found even when using GG there were missing messages.

snipped-for-privacy@some.domain wrote: .

I tried to run compatibility mode, but nothing seemed to happen.

Microsofts Virtual Machine runs on Vista Home Premium (although it says it doesn't), havent tried any of the more sophisticated VMs on Vista yet. Point being you can load anything you like onto the VM, so sling on a suitable OS and load your package. Only problem you might have is transferring data, however the VM can be set to network with its host computer, which allows you to transfer data between the two.

Just a thought.

Mike

OM wrote: : : ...Bruce, much of what's wrong with Vista had AbZero to do with either : Gates or Ballmer. : I will grant you that Balmer has had zip to do with tech decisions, but he is still, IMHO, a scumbag. :-)

However, unless evidence surfaces to the contrary, I believe that Gates, in a coldly calculated attempt to force Apple out of the market, embraced DRM as advocated by the entertainment industry. And, add in the fact that windoze would NOT give you your OWN work back, he would also have had the entertainment industry by the short and curlies was a delicious part of those calculations. : : As with what destroyed Dell in 2001, a bunch of : mid-level managers and marketing goons made decisions regarding : "feature creep" : What hurt Dell was dirt cheap hardware prices that lessened their advantages wrt "just in time" manufacturing which cut their profit margins, which lead to an ill-conceived decision to try to prop up their margins by selling low margin consumer items: flat screens, printers, etc. And, the contracting PC manufacturing companies added to their woes, "JIT" be damned.

Once Dell lost their price advantage, the "touchy-feely" need became more important than simple price differential, and having no retail outlets became a liability. I think this is even more of an issue with plasma/LCD screens, as there are, what, only two companies making these things now?

And, the printer engine side is no better, given the print engine is where the expense is in printers. Ink has a very large margin, but if you don't OEM the ink, you don't get that margin. Oops. : : Those decisions wound up : bloating Vista to the point where it's crippled. 70% of IT departments : buying new machines wipe them and install XP, : I get the impression that IT is anti-vista because their internally developed tools/utilities will not work with vista due to the changes to the vista start-up mechanism.

So, the choice was to either:

1) re-write scripts that are likely "ad-hoc" to start with, and make them work with a mechanism that is not well understood on top of that, all the while trying to justify such expense to the (non-tech) CIO,

or

2) Ignore the problem, and stick with XP for as long as possible, and this makes a lot of sense when companies rarely spring for the hardware that will make the "eye-candy" come alive anyway.

This, of course, is excerbated when the (non-tech) CIO can't be sold on the "enhanced" securty of vista, because, after all, "aren't we behind the firewall?..." : : but Micro$oft still : lists them as a "sale" because it was sold on the system. : Sure they do. And they still can't claim vista to be a success.

Bruce

that's all i know about it.

OM wrote: : : ...There may be more truth to that that you realize. Apparently : (cr)Apple may be shutting down iTunes over royalty issues. : And anti-competetitive issues, IIRC. Sweden, I think? : : The decision's : supposed to be made here in a few weeks, but the word through the : grapevine is that the MafRIAA won't back down, and they're actually : hoping iTunes will be gone so they can go back to doing their own : individual sales sites per company. : Yeah, those have all worked with crap. Interesting that even spam-mart has given DRM tunes the boot.

Still, what do you expect from an industry that:

1) hasn't had a new idea in 4 decades, 2) sues their own customers. And screws that up to boot!

And then they wonder why they are losing sales?

Bruce