Use Vista and want to access MSDN? Use Firefox!

AFTER MIGRATING TO 64-bit Vista on my DSDC Opteron workstation, yours truly found himself somewhere between heaven and a hot place. First of all, most of the applications I use are working better than they did on XP64. And game compatibility hasn't been an issue at all, although, admittedly, WoW is the only game installed on the machine.

But, the biggest incompatibility issue between Vista and the normal world I found was hiding in a very unusual place - Microsoft's own developer network. If you use Internet Exploder 7 (either 32- or 64-bit version), MSDN will gladly inform you that you are using an incompatible operating system or that the web-site you are trying to visit is not secure.

What the heck...?

Even worse, using Microsoft File Transfer Manager, utility to download CD/DVD images of MSFT apps - isn't possible since "Vista's enhanced security prevents user from downloading files", so you have to either do a work-around, as Microsoft advises you, or start looking for another web-browser.

But let's say that I do not want to use Fireferret or Opera and decide to become Microsoft's poster-child and listen to its work-around. What happened was a constant loop of downloading new versions of File Transfer Manager and not being able to get the work-around to work. And I do not consider myself an idiot. ( Cough! News Ed.)

So, I did what any logical person would do: Install Fireferret on Vista and forget that IE exists at all. Not a shiny start for a browser that copies Fireferret's user-interface.

Oh my, MSDN and Microsoft's FTM works with no issues in Vista... courtesy of a foxy little app

Mr. Gates, Mr. Ozzie, Mr. Ballmer - next time around, stop being politically correct and just tell people to use Firefox; it will work. Customers pay thousands of dollars a year for a MSDN site licence, only in this instance to get a politically-correct, but useless Help feature. µ

L'INQs
File Transfer Manager and a useless warning
One solution for MSDN and Vista's love issues