21st October 2007, 8:41 PM
I could not possibly disagree with you any more. First, you are factually wrong. Commander Keen does not require a '486 with DOS'. In fact, it'll run fine on anything up to Windows XP... XP can do full-screen DOS programs. Some do have some problems, but the emulator VDMSound was made to try to deal with some of those while maintaining the direct DOS program access that is so great. Keen doesn't even need that, running just fine in XP. With Vista, however, Microsoft removed a crucial driver, so despite the fact that XP's DOS emulation returns pretty much intact in Vista, it is impossible to make DOS windows fullscreen, completely breaking DOS mode. This idiotic decision -- to remove DOS fullscreen emulation -- is what I'm complaining about. Well, I'd complain anyway, because there are plenty of DOS programs that don't work in XP no matter how hard you try, but it'd be a much, much less serious complaint than it is with this OS... it'd still be no replacement for the real DOS you get with every version of Win9X (WinME as I said can run any DOS program without speed problems perfectly), but it'd be something. As it is... real DOS is there, emulated, but it's utterly unavailable. That's so, SO frustrating... :(