Niche software and Microsoft

This is going to be a rant.

 

I just bought some CDs from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the mormons), which purport to contain Pedigree Resource File details from their genealogical records. I say "purport" because I cannot verify this claim. The CDs are full of chunky looking data files, but absolutely all of them are binary files, intended to be read only by the supplied reader software. This is all well and good, supply the data in a wacky format, but provide a reader for it, all right and proper. The only problem is that the reader only works with Windows. I've searched around for something for linux that can read these files and come up empty. Looks like I either try to run a virtual machine on my underpowered desktop-cum-fileserver, or I borrow one of the girls' laptops. If I take the latter option I still can't guarantee it'll work since, although the software claims to work with windows 95, it makes no such claims about Vista.

 

I had a play with VMWare Player last night, and while everything installed ok, I don't seem to be getting anywhere with running images. I downloaded a ReactOS image (out of curiosity, mainly) and it got as far as a natty-looking boot screen and ground to a halt. If my PC is incapable of running that, I doubt it'll cope with XP. I suppose a third option would be to smuggle the discs into work and try them here, though that might get me eaten by the thought police.

 

I'll figure something out, I just had a long moment of "Grrrr!" last night.