Will you get Vista? Which version?

[Bad Sector]

Don't buy it then. What do you need Vista for if it offers nothing that you need?

For me? Nothing at all. However if i want to play a DX10 game i have to get Vista - not because DX10 requires anything that Vista provides, but because it is locked to Vista.

Is there the possibility to have both Windows XP and Vista in the same machine?

But beyond that, i want to see the new X-Men 4 movie once it comes out, in my computer. The HD-DVD drive is there (or actually, it will be :-P). Cables are ok, mechanically it's ok. But then why should i not be able to play the movie just only because i have Linux as my OS?

I'm all for protecting copyrights, but i'm totally against such DRM systems. As someone said above, these things didn't existed until now, but yet the entertainment industries (games, music and movie) are bigger than ever. To me these are signs from someone greedy who has a lot and wants even more than someone who has serious financial problems due to people making copies of stuff they got.

I am against the whole "well, piracy does exist and that's the only solution we can come up with" idea. This solution is simply wrong. If your finger is harmed, you try to cure it, you don't cut your hand. If your car radio is damaged, you go and buy a new car radio, you don't buy a new car. If your house's roof has broken tiles, you replace them, you don't get a new house. If you cannot fixed them, you just live with them and use other means of protecting yourself from the rain.

Also i'm against the "blame pirates for what we do to all of you; it's their fault" thing. That's nothing more than a pathetic attempt for an excuse that insults everyone intelligence.

Speaking from a personal perspective, unless i'm forced to do, my games won't have any DRM. I consider it unethical to treat my customers as criminals.

Sure, this may lead me making less sales (note: i won't lose sales - i didn't gained them in the first place in order to say that i "lost" them). But then i wouldn't have done to my customers something that i dislike being done to me. My "anti-piracy" strategy is to make a product good enough so i won't have to worry about piracy.

Of course that's just my ideas and plan. Others may do as they please, we still pretend to live in a democratic world.

[Stefan Maton]

Hi,

I got an 1 year MSDN subscription from one of my clients (I'm an freelance programmer) as an end of year bonus for my work. So, I actually have access to all OS version in different languages.

I'm currently reinstalling all my software on my working machine which I just updated to Vista Ultimate. For what I've seen until now it made a good impression. Having an 8800 GTX in my machine, I run the Aero desktop and I must admit that I like it. The explorer usage is quite intuitiv and I quickly learned how to use the folder bar to quickly jump between folders.

I'll have to see how VS performs under Vista. I'm currently installing the SP1 for it.

My main reasons for switching to Vista is my work. One of my contracts is within game development. Another reason is that I want to test my own stuff on Vista. Also, I've my own game engine in development, so an DX10 port of the render kernel must be done.

Have fun,
Stefan

[Nexic]

My PC probably can't even handle their DRM "features". I'll probably buy a notebook soon but I'll either be uninstalling Vista or at least dual booting with something actually worth having.

[Adrian Cummings]

I switched a dev machine here to Vista ultimate mainly as I wanted to be sure that new pc software I release from time to time is compatible, which it now is of course.

I also run XP SP2 on another machine just in case heh.

I can't see Vista going away so you might as well get the pain over with now if you are a PC based indie writing software, games etc.

Personally I quite like it once it was patched up and running 100%.

My old games would'nt run on it tho and I can't recompile them due to loosing a lot of the assets but they do work if you do this below of course i.e. I just printed a message on my website for any passers by that want them on Vista...

"Older titles below are also compatible with Windows Vista when set with the Program Compatibility Wizard to 'Microsoft Windows XP (Service Pack 2)' and 'Run this program as administrator"

Sod all else I can do really with the older software given I can't recompile them for Vista many years on anyway but anyway that works for me.

[bvanevery]

Yes that's the only reason why I'm gonna get Vista, and it's part of my WinXP upgrade anyway. I choose Windows Vista Basic, the cheapest edition, should be enough for testing purposes.

Not really. IIRC, Vista Basic doesn't have the Aeroglass interface, and that's going to be a source of testing problems.

[bvanevery]

I'll be buying a new PC next month, with vista pre-installed. I'm quite looking forward to it. I remember keeping win98 after win 2000 had become popular, and when I upgraded it was like a breath of fresh air, no system wide crashes, no freezes, much much better to develop on. Then, I was the only one in the office who kept win2k and didn't go to XP, eventually, when I did, a year later, I was similarly impressed with how much more stable and it was.
I won't delay this time, I don't see the point. The new hardware will have drivers optimised for the new O/S. games will be written to use the new O/S.

Um. If you were a late adopter, then you saw late editions of the OSes with a bunch of service packs already installed. The early versions sucked, and I'm not seeing Vista as an exception in this regard. It didn't support my Sanyo PM-8200 cell phone modem, so I searched high and low for 2 days until I found PM-8100 drivers for XP that actually happened to work on Vista. I achieved internet connectivity, but my system mysteriously froze on me no less than 5 times when accessing certain webpages. Possibly the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT driver is to blame for that. I installed a newer driver hacked for laptops from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com , because NVIDIA doesn't provide laptop drivers on their website and Dell drivers are slow to keep up with NVIDIA. I haven't had any web freezes today, so maybe the NVIDIA driver was to blame, not the oldy moldy cell phone driver. Either way, from a stability standpoint the experience has been unimpressive.

Wait for at least 1 service pack, preferably 2.

[cliffski]

everything runs perfectly on my machine, but laptops are a different kettle of fish, I've never installed a new O/S on a laptop without problems.

[cliffski]

Speaking from a personal perspective, unless i'm forced to do, my games won't have any DRM. I consider it unethical to treat my customers as criminals.

Do you lock your front door when you go out? or is it unethical to treat your neighbours as criminals?

[KNau]

Actually DRM is like locking your neighbors doors and letting them into their own homes only a limited number of times.

[bvanevery]

Actually DRM is like locking your neighbors doors and letting them into their own homes only a limited number of times.

Which is exactly what you do at a homeless shelter, with people who are likely to take drugs or alcohol, start fights, and have serious mental problems. But most people own or rent their homes, and have strong rights under the law to their private property, so the analogy is flawed. Someone else's software license is not your private property. But maybe that's the whole problem with DRM. As I sit here trying to come up with the right analogy to extant buyer-seller relationships, I can't find one.

[Bad Sector]

Do you lock your front door when you go out? or is it unethical to treat your neighbours as criminals?

Funny that you mentioned that, because i usually forget to lock the door. Once i forgot to close the door and when i went on vacations this summer for two weeks i came back to see that i had forgotten the window open :-P.

Nothing is missing, but i don't recommend doing such things :-P.

In any case, that analogy is flawed.

Anyway, i'll probably put some kind of basic copy protection in the manner that princec does (allow people to give some number of copies to their friends/relatives), but only that far and possibly with a Steam-like approach where you'll be able to get and launch the game from any computer that has net access. I love that part of Steam.