I don’t recommend using Vista yet (I run it on my secondary computer) and someday I might write up a full article on why it annoys me endlessly.

Today was one of those clincher moments — calc.exe crashed as I tried to evaluate a simple four-function math expression. Unfortunately I didn’t screenshot this miracle, but I couldn’t make this up if I tried. It is a very minimalistic Vista install that I only use occasionally.

Back in the Windows 3.1 days, calc.exe had a bug where certain expressions like (12.000001-12) would return a garbage answer. Who knows, maybe Microsoft managed to introduce a bug into a trivial addon that has worked since 1995? Maybe it’s the fault of something 3rd party, or a driver. If it happens again I’ll probably try to debug it. I just know that on every other Windows edition, calc.exe never crashed.

Stay away from Vista unless you’re a developer (reassessment pending a service pack).