Product Question

[GrayKnight]

Hello,

 

I'm going to be getting the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect Edition 2003 (that's a mouth full). I was just wondering, do you have to register the product with Microsoft? Is it a mandatory thing for the customer (which would be me) to do or can you not register it? If you don't register the product with Microsoft do you not get some of the feature?

 

GrayKnight

[Robby]

No you don't have to.

[GrayKnight]

and you do not lose any features or anything like that in not registering.....

[Threads]

No, you don't lose any features. It doesn't have the same "activation" scheme as Windows XP and other products do.

[GrayKnight]

that is great because I just "hate" to be forced to register a product. for me I do not like to give you that information (just something about me).

 

right now I'm a VB6 programmer and I was reading some information about "Longhorn" the new window OS to come out in a few years (04/05). anyway I do belive that they are getting ride of the win32 AIPs so that all vb6 programs will not work on the OS in a few years. which would mean that I need to upgrade and get new products.

 

thank you for your help.

 

GrayKnight

[PlausiblyDamp]

'getting rid of the win32 AIPs' (APIs) would not just invalidate vb6 programs but nearly every program written for windows (.Net / Java would be unaffected as long as they didn't make API calls) - this is not going to happen in the near future.

However the APIs are being depreciated in favour of .Net as a more consistant development framework for most applications.

[GrayKnight]

They will not cut out all of the win32 APIs in the next version of windows (Longhorn) however they are going to be cutting a lot out:

 

 

http://www.iapplianceweb.com/story/OEG20030507S0037

 

WINHEC: Microsoft plans Win32 API, XAML revamp

By Paula Rooney, CRN

(05/07/03, 04:27:34 PM EDT)

 

New Orleans, La. -- Microsoft plans a major cleanup of Win32 API and integration of XML application markup language (XAML) to make the next version of Windows as friendly to developers as users.

 

Details on this revamp were revealed at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here.

 

First, the software giant aims to slash the number of API calls in the Win32 API set from more than 70,000 to fewer than 10,000 to help developers better exploit the next-generation Windows shell, user interface (code-named Aero) and .Net framework components in Longhorn, according to sources familiar with the Longhorn plans.

"Win32 has like 76,000 APIs, and they're taking it down to 8,000 with Longhorn technology," said one source familiar with the plans.

 

 

And some movies that I was watching on Microsoft MSDN say mostly the same thing. This is what I was referring to. You are right when you that it will not happen all at once however well over the majority of the Win32 API calls (it seems) are going to be cut out.

 

Also here is a great movie by Microsoft's new WinFX plans with Longhorn:

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20031107WINFXBA/manifest.xml

 

 

GrayKnight

[divil]

You're talking at cross-purposes.

 

All existing APIs will remain in Longhorn for backward-compatibility. However, as win32 takes a back seat to .NET, the number of APIs necessary to accomplish these tasks will decrease as a more object-oriented api set is made available.

 

Finally the jump from calling in to C-style DLLs will happen, which we've been waiting for since the first version of Windows.