Comments on: Palm Desktop Windows Vista Compatibility

That being said, there is already an update to the built in Mobile Device Center available, so I guess they didn't get it all right by the release either!

Thanks,
Dave Haupert
dhaupert@ddhsoftware.com

Is it arrogance? Laziness? Greed? Stinginess? Ineptitude?
Likely a combination of all those factors.

I'd like to rant here for a moment (Ryan, forgive me)...

In regards to Vista, if you've got the horsepower to run it, it runs really well and is a big leap over XP. The most shocking thing is HOW poorly companies are handling the rollout. My fairly decent ($200+) Lexmark laser printer that I bought brand new @ Staples less than a year ago (and then expanded its internal memory) is UNSUPPORTED in Vista. I mean they have a generic driver but you have no control over any printer settings with it. I have not yet tried to get it to work with the older XP drivers but I am really hoping they'll work because the printer stuff wasn't really changed much from XP to Vista. Lexmark claims they have no plans to release a downloadable driver (ever) for that particular printer (or any of their older models for that matter).

Then our high-end HP business inkjet printer at work (with IR and duplexing, not a cheap home throwaway unit) aren't supported other than with the lame built-in Windows drivers. Same goes for our high-end HP flatbed scanners. Heck, even our <1 year old color Laserjet at work doesn't have drivers ready for download. HP is very vague but throws out dates of January and July '07 for availability!

My Acer laptop (Core Duo CPU, 2gb RAM, Radeon X1600 video) has a Vista-ready sticker on it yet Acer's released ZERO drivers for it. So it's running in a bare bones default driver config. Fortunately Ethernet and wi-fi was supported by the drivers on the Vista DVD. All I've been able to install are Intel's .inf package for Vista as well as my cordless mouse drivers! I am without Bluetooth, my multi-card reader, any real form of hardware accelerated video, sound or my integrated webcam.

Also, my Roxio CD/DVD burner package (Easy Media Creator 9) touts itself as being XP compliant yet they've released no updates or support items for it other than saying they will address the matter on January 30th. Hello!!?!?!

I am pointing the finger squarely at companies like Logitech, Acer, HP, Lexmark, Palm etc. for not taking this seriously. it's not like they have not known Vista's release was immiment. Of course, I'm not surprised at all by Palm sticking their head in the sane on this one..but I really expected better from the industry heavyweights listed above.

I mean, Windows is a necessary evil. I haven't seen this kind of ineptitude since the dark, dark days of the Win 3.11 to Win 95 transition. I had thought the industry had progressed beyond this kind of immaturity and nonsense. This is going to end up being a considerable blow to the Wintel community and cause a fair number of users to defect to Mac/Linux or simply revert back to XP. And all of the confusion regarding licensing/transfers, activations etc. is another black eye for M$.

I really feel M$ should have prodded companies harder to get their acts together and they should've shelved Vista for another 6 months.

So that we can close out on a positive note: ATI/AMD has been a model of what TO do. They have had stable Vista drivers out for a while and their most recent Catalyst drivers IMPROVE performance over Win XP in the gaming benchmarks. I suppose I'd buy a new PC pre-loaded with Vista now if the price was right...but I like to build my own desktops. But not offering drivers to owners of hardware for sale on store shelves TODAY is just pathetic. I feel sorry for all of those poor sods walking out of BestBuy with a shiny new PC with Vista preloaded and a shiny new multifunction or laser printer that has ZERO Vista capabilities other than the lame-o Vista default driver.

Ok, end of rant.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Sounds like a pretty good description of installing Linux a few years ago.

And it's a pretty good description of installing Linux today.

Granted, it's fairly straightforward to install many Linux distros now (Ubuntu, SuSE, Xantro etc) but actually getting them up to the same level of functionality as Windows or OS X is still a very uphill task.

I consider myself as an advanced computer user. Over the years I've become quite adept at both Windows and Mac OS X. I've been dabbling with Ubuntu and Xubuntu, some of the easiest distros to install and configure. My experience is when one thing is upgraded or installed it tends to break functionality elsewhere. I've spent a lot of time typing commands into the terminal and looking for solutions in the disorganized chaos that is the Linux community. I've implemented those solutions but heaven help those without a broadband connection or spare time to fix their computers!

Therefore I've come to the conclusion that all this talk of Linux making significant inroads into the desktop is just fanboy fantasy. Linux will only start being a major threat to the desktop market share when there is a Linux distro as easy to use, maintain, configure and support as Windows or Mac OS X.

Most computer users freak at the idea of entering computer commands into a command line console. If people were happy with this concept then Windows and the Mac OS would never have taken off; we'd still be using MS-DOS now. Yes, Linux has its GUI but all too often one has to resort to the Terminal in order to get anything configured properly. This is unacceptable for most computer users.

Re: SV's comment, click on the link in my tagline. But be forewarned, it is a long read.

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

Incidentally, one of the more compelling points about Linux for some is it's continued support for "legacy" hardware. That may be of no interest whatsoever to people living on the edge, but it's a great way to keep otherwise "old" hardware still productive.

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

Yup, that's what I read.

Thanks.

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/02/01/vista-and-itunes-dont-play-nice-together/

This is what I hate about the PC world. When Windows gets upgraded, vendors abandon their products. I was once very interested in a wee scanner put out by a Japanese company. Ran under Win95. When I wanted to actually buy it, we were at Win98 and the vendor said, Nope! No 98 drivers for you! Scanner EOLed. B*st*rds. IIRC, I never had such problems when I was using a Mac... (but keep in my mind my last Mac use was System 6!).

Mike Cane;

Truer words were never spoken. And scanners and printers are ESPECIALLY prone to abandonment due to OS shifts. We recently cleaned out a storage closet in our building and uncovered a PILE of really high-end HP/Umax/Canon SCSI/USB/Firewire scanners. The ones that do slides, transparencies, the whole works. All of them were bought from, say, '99 to '02 and all were rendered useless (or close to it) by the arrival of XP.

Then on the floor next to that shelf were some higher-end multifunction machines (laser & inkjet) of the time in addition to a few higher-end business Deskjets--the kind that do 2-sided printing or were wide format printers. None had survived the Win 2k ---> Win XP upgrade with anything more than the rudimentary Windows built-in driver.

I think the world (myself imcluded) got spoiled because Win XP lasted 5 + years (Oct '01 to Jan '07) so everyone just ASSUMED that everything bought this year would work next year. Prior to that we had only 2.5 years between 95 and 98 and ~2 years between 98 and Win Me(ugh) and Win 2k.

I'm just in an especially hard spot b/c I've bought and recommended purchases of quite a bit of hardware in the past 12 months and much of it isn't Vista compliant now nor does it look like it ever will be. Now the legion of friends/family/coworkers/acquaintences I do tech support for are going to be really miffed when their Vista upgrade kit comes in the mail.

P.S. All of the Mac people I work with and know all like Vista, at least superficially. I think the ONLY way you'd convince a diehard Mac guy to use a Wintel machine at work would be to stick Vista on it.

P.P.S. I had a wicked thought last night before I fell asleep--what if Palm is going to use this twice per decade OS paradigm shift to essentially abandon all prior products? That is, everything produced prior to the E2 or so.

They could release a new version of Palm Desktop that runs on the E2, TX, Z22, 700p, 680 but not on any of the older legacy hardware. They could blame Microsoft and nicely wash their hands of all of the "old" stuff (including the LifeDrive and the T5 and their drive modes). Heck, they could even jettison support for POS PDAs entirely in Vista if they wanted!

Pointing the finger at Vista would give them the perfect opportunity to essentially start over with a clean slate and redo Hotsync/Palm Desktop from the ground up while they keep hacking away at Garnet.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Those were the days...

Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.

LOL. Mr. Pot and Mr. Kettle. Either of these guys trying to convince anyone that it's about honesty is laughable.

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

LOL, thanks for the link. Now if someone would just sue the pants off of HP, Lexmark and all of the other lagggard peripheral manufacturers we'd be getting somewhere...

I think the basic point here is that Nvidia got complacent and figured their (for the moment) superior hardware equated to a clear victory over ATI. And Nvidia never really has (IMO) given their chipset/motherboard users the same respect given to their video card users. You DO realize that as of today Intel has NO Vista drivers for ANY of their nForce chipsets other than some alpha drivers dated July '05 for the Nforce 3 series? That's just sickening.

I currently have a single NForce-based Athlon 64 system that's being built for someone that wanted to put Vista on it. So I am carefully watching the situation to see how Nvidia reacts on the driver issue. I'm just glad I played it safe & have Intel-based machines personally.

In ATI's favor, they've historically been much better about older product support. Their regular monthly Catalyst driver updates are simply amazing, especially if you get the newest games that come out and encounter "issues" that need fixing ASAP.

Also, ATI moved to a .NET based control panel driver interface well over a year ago. That helped them be ready for the Vista transition far in advance of Nvidia in regards to their video drivers.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Stick with MS Outlook. Virtual Monopolies and Standards MATTER. This way, when companies like Palm and Sony shit the bed, MSFT will be there to pull your ass out of the fire.

all you have to do is save as a 97-2003 document. anybody that has used office 2007 knows this.

now stop spreading BS.

============

If you're an oil trader you buy oil before it is pumped out of the ground. It then gets set on its way to you, let's say via pipeline. Before it gets completely through that pipeline to the "other side" you have sold it to someone else. Sometimes you buy oil coming out of a pipeline. Since it's of a certain composition it goes into that "certain composition" holding tank before getting loaded onto a ship, say. You sell it again to someone else. Other oil from God-Knows-Where also gets loaded into that holding tank. As it comes out of that tank and gets poured into the ship, you buy it. The ship leaves port for your destination. You find a buyer in Norway, however, so you sell the load and the ship diverts toward Norway. Somewhat later oil futures and your special financial modeling software suggest you should buy it back and ship it to Brazil, so you do so and the ship diverts to Brazil. As it's approaching Brazil you sell the ship contents to a broker who handles New Orleans arrivals; the ship diverts there and offloads into some holding tanks of a "certain composition" that contain oil already from God-Knows-Where. The oil of a certain composition enters a pipeline and moves across country to the refinery where it enters holding tanks for "certain compositions" that already, of course, have other content; those tanks are next to other tanks that also contain similar "certain compositions" from God-Knows-Where. The broker sells that oil to someone else. The refinery converts the oil into its byproducts and that someone else sells the refined products to another broker who handles refined product trading in Northern Virginia. Let's say refined gasoline then enters a cross-country pipeline to the Fairfax, Virginia fuel depot. As it's traveling through the pipeline the political environment changes and oil prices plummet. The broker sells the gas to someone else. The gas arrives at the fuel depot and enters holding tanks along with other gas that's already there from God-Knows-Where. Tank trucks from all the major gas stations line up to fill up with gas. Somewhere prior to the gas pouring into each tank truck special additives are added to make the fuel brand-specific. The trucks leave for the gas stations or fuel depot substations where it is mixed with similar gas from God-Knows-Where.

Terror-free indeed.

Compared to the value of the oil in the tanker ship, a minor 1000mile diversion is nothing.

All I can say is "Trust me on this one"...

IE.
*Do I run the normal Palm install program on my new laptop and THEN run yours afterwards like a "patch" or do I run your softward in lieu of running the Palm software that came with my pda?

Many thanks,

Ben Pierce

Palm officially supports the E2, TX and Z22 handhelds under Vista. And I've tested several older odels such as the Zire 31 and Zire 72) that work fine under Vista as well.

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p