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Microsoft Releases List of Verified' Vista Applications TMCnet Contributing Editor If you are wondering which applications run well on your newly purchased copy of Windows Vista, you now have an official answer, straight from the horse’s mouth. Microsoft (News - Alert) recently a released a list of applications it has officially verified that will run on Windows Vista, without giving any trouble to the user. The list is short and omits many popular applications that worked well with Windows XP - but Microsoft maintains that “all” the applications that worked well with Windows XP will work well with Vista too. Applications that have thus far passed the Microsoft’s Vista certification program include CorelDraw and WordPerfect from Corel Corp.; PowerDVD from Cyberlink; Nero 7 Premium; Trend Micro (News - Alert) AntiVirus and PC-Cillin; AutoCad 2008; QuickBooks 2007 from Intuit Inc.; Microsoft Office 2007; and many other Microsoft applications. Microsoft’s main competitor, Google (News - Alert) Inc.’s Desktop Search, and its Toolbar for Internet Explorer, have also passed the test. But there are certain notable applications that have not made it to the list of approved applications. They include Adobe Systems (News - Alert) Inc.’s entire line of graphics and multimedia software, Symantec Corp.’s security products, as well as the Mozilla Foundation’s open-source Firefox Web browser, Skype (News - Alert) Ltd.’s free voice-over-IP  software and the OpenOffice.org alternative to Microsoft Office.When Vista was in Beta stage, Microsoft had allowed the users to prepare their own list of applications that didn’t work well with it. Many of the applications that were reported as problematic were gaming applications. This was largely due to problems with a new rendering engine, DirectX 10, introduced for Vista. But when Microsoft released it own version of approved applications, many well known business applications were conspicuously missing. For example, the latest version of Skype doesn’t work on Vista - and Mozilla has documented known issues. Although many of Adobe’s basic applications, such as downloading pdfs, can run (albeit with minor problems) on Vista, many of Adobe’s multimedia software won’t be officially supported until the middle of this year. Industry experts believe that this omission of well known applications is a move by Microsoft to market its own products. Microsoft is all set to unveil its Expression suite of graphics and multimedia design tools this year. Also, Symantec, another product which is missing from the “approved” list, too faces the competition from Microsoft as the company released OneCare security suite last year. In a recently released statement on its website, Symantec stated that some of its software, such as Norton AntiVirus 2007, already works with Vista. The company said it will provide support for Other Symantec software, such as Ghost 12, by mid April. Microsoft’s Vista testing program consisted of two levels and the vendors had to pay to be a part of this program. The two levels include software that is “certified for Windows Vista” and software that “works with Windows Vista.” Microsoft claims that the certification process was fairly rigorous - and involved filling out a lengthy application that was double-checked by a third-party service, VeriTest, on behalf of Microsoft. Because of the cost and time involved, many vendors do not participate in this certification program. Also, the advantages a company will have in the market after being certified by Microsoft are still unclear. Adding to this, Microsoft has tried to keep away many of the well known products in a bid to promote its own products. Will the users go for the new Vista - or will they dump it in favor of existing applications? Vista’s future depends on the answer! --------- Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. |