[Coco] Rainbow IDE and Vista

[Roger Taylor]

To those who've upgraded to Windows Vista...

The Rainbow IDE and M.E.S.S. emulator system seem to work great.  You should
be able to upgrade to Vista and continue your IDE projects as usual, but
with a better experience.

Btw, Vista rocks like no other, but we're in the early compatibility problem
stage.  Get the Home Premium or above version to experience the Aero window
effects.  There's a 3-D flip window mode that shows you a 3-D stacked view
of all open programs and you can see those programs running in the 3-D view,
even the CoCo window in M.E.S.S.  Also, the program preview thumbnails that
pop up when you hover over the taskbar is excellent, and the blurred glass
effect that shows portions of any underlying windows or the desktop is
pretty cool.  The gadget sidebar feature is nice and I plan to make some
Rainbow IDE gadgets that can be installed automatically from the IDE, such
as a mini programmer's calc, and M.E.S.S. emulator tools.  This kind of
feature will allow portions of the Rainbow IDE to appear on the sidebar of
Vista so they are always visible if you like.

If I can give my 2 cents about Vista, to get the best deal, buy a new
computer/laptop with Vista on it, since the price alone of the upper
versions of the OS is ridiculous considering it has compatibility issues
with a great number of software titles (at this time).  This was a problem
with XP as well and it can literally stop you in your tracks if you run a
business or do a lot of work from home.  Luckily, some versions of Vista
come with complete multimedia solutions like DVD making/burning, which I
will have to convert the CoCo TV project to soon.  Vista and Nero don't mix
at this point unless you upgrade Nero for a cost.

So far, the IDEs that I use for all of my development work well under Vista
with no changes required.