Stack working in MACOS, not in Windows.

[Jim Bufalini]

stephen barncard wrote:

> I just need a Windows test bed for REV, not the latest version of
> Windows. I
> really don't want to have to deal with all this extra security crap.
> 
> Will Windows XP SP3 do what I need for now to test out Rev Features?
> 
> Microsoft is really trying hard to get people to NOT use XP. They are
> buying
> a ton of adwords with keywords like "Download Windows XP" that swamps
> the
> search engines. These "sites" are just a bunch of domains that redirect
> to
> the Windows 7 sales site.

It is true that MS is trying their best to get people over to Windows 7. This is because XP is an 8 to 9 year old OS that simply cannot take advantage of today's hardware advances or defend against some of today's exploits.

Vista can. But what most people don't know is that the "big" mistake MS made with Vista is they allowed hardware manufacturers to "mess with the OS." Large hardware manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo (IBM) and hundreds of others put in their own versions of, for example, UAC and other features of the OS to support things like finger print hardware and other proprietary hardware and drivers. This opened up a Pandora's box and is the real source of most of the complaints against Vista.

The main thing that's different about Windows 7, besides all the advertised features, is that hardware manufacturers can no longer alter the basic OS in order to "lock" customers into their hardware (and "their" version of the OS). This is why in upgrading a Vista machine to Windows 7, you can "lose" some features of a machine or require a BIOS upgrade or whole new driver sets.

Apple, as the sole manufacturer of both the hardware and OS, has never had to deal with this issue.

To answer your question, if there is no chance of your software being run on Vista or Windows 7, then XP SP3 is all you need in your test bed. Just understand that XP is a very "forgiving" OS and does not enforce many things that in its own docs have always said "should" be a certain way (which is how XP dealt with the issue of various hardware manufacturer demands) and which Vista and Windows 7 do enforce. 

The difference being that Windows 7 enforces things like security uniformly and all manufacturers must conform to a generic standard, where Vista can be all over the landscape depending on the brand of hardware.

Aloha from Hawaii,

Jim Bufalini