Can this possibly be this easy?

July 26, 2007 1:03 PM

Probably there is a very simple answer to this question, but I have had crap results in finding it. I just need to know a few things about Works with Vista.

Long story short, I have been asked to complete some research (or rather, do it) that someone supposedly started but no one else here can make heads or tails of, really me included. So I'm basically starting over.

We develop a few applications and just need to get this Works with Vista thing down, as we're attempting to come into some sort of compliance, if you will. So this site seems to be pretty straightforward. It appears to me from more research that just "Works" is free. We have a copy of Vista to test with. I have been told that we have a winqual account. We have the cookbook to test against.

Questions: Are there additonal costs (other than clearly development costs, right) here that I'm not finding/thinking of?

How long will this take? It seems that if it's just a matter of self-cert and self-testing and then generating the code, that it shouldn't take long. Again is there something I'm missing here?

Are there other questions I should be asking? I'm not going to pretend for a minute that this is my area of expertise, so please educate me. I've been googling around and clearly there is a lot of trash associated with googling "Works with Vista" and related strings.

posted by Medieval Maven to work & money (3 comments total)

Have you tried calling Microsoft?
posted by rhizome at 3:33 PM on July 26, 2007

Well, what I'm looking for is clearly someone who maybe has done this before. Which is why I'm asking here. I'm not so bereft of resources that I don't have a telephone, but you know, sometimes there are "lessons learned" type things like, "It will actually cost you $$ if you make mistake x, which I made."
posted by Medieval Maven at 4:34 PM on July 26, 2007

For applications, "'lessons learned' type things" depend to some extent on the degree to which you use new Vista technologies in your application, or whether you are relying on compatibility mode extensively. Concentrate on things you've changed that use Vista, if your application was mature on XP/2003. And as always, The Old New Thing offers sage advice for developers.
posted by paulsc at 5:41 PM on July 26, 2007