UnNews:Windows Vista not to natively support protected mode

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

10 March 2006

In a surprising turn of events, Microsoft held a press conference yesterday stating that Windows Vista will not natively support the 32 bit protected mode of Intel 80386 and compatible processors. When asked about why this feature will be left out from the release lead coder Alfred E. Newman replied: "We felt that protected mode support was just not ready for Vista. The NT line of operating systems is still too cutting-edge to be used in the productivity powerhouse that Vista is going to be." Instead, Microsoft will deploy a new version of MS-DOS as the operating system's foundation. The new DOS, called "MS-DOS 2006", will feature improved support for TSRs and the ability to automatically load supporting programs directly into extended memory, allowing it to have all 640 kilobyte of conventional memory ready for applications that depend on it. Microsoft promised that all other proposed Vista features (except for those already canceled) will "have a chance of making it into Vista". When asked about whether customers could be expected to put up with Vista's proposed 480 installation floppies, Newman replied: "What, me worry?"

The new decision was universally met with contempt by the Apple world. "They think that pushing the MS-DOS version number from 7 to 2007 is a big step," Random MacGeek from AppleRumorsUpYourButt.com commented, "but we clearly had the biggest version number jump when Bungie went from Marathon 2 to Marathon: Infinity. Microsoft is late to the game, as always." When asked about the topic of Microsoft being late to the game Apple replied: "It's true! Microsoft promides to buy me and GNU here a beer at the game. Now it's halfway over and Microsoft is nowhere to be seen!" "We're not going to invite Microsoft to the next game," GNU added, "we have better things to do with our time than to spend it waiting for some guy from Redmond."