One of the common problems when Windows Vista was released was that of missing or non-working drivers. Microsoft massively reworked many of Windows' internal systems and frameworks, meaning lots of drivers broke, with most of them needing major work, and some even needed to be rewritten completely. Apparently, Microsoft didn't communicate this well enough with its hardware partners - or the partners were lazy, who knows - because many devices failed to work with Vista during its early months of being out in the wild. Microsoft is trying to keep this story from repeating itself, saying that everything that works on Vista should work on Windows 7. To gain a little more insight into this problem, Microsoft gave out some very interesting figures regarding driver installation failure rates.
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Member since:2005-04-01
A quote from your fellow OSNews reader, Kroc:
It is not a 50 MB download. It is not an IE Toolbar, and Side Pane. It is not half-baked photo software. It is not a splash screen when your computer starts. It is not a tray icon.
http://camendesign.com/blog/stop_writing_software
Edited 2008-11-10 16:02 UTC
Member since:2005-06-29
This is the very reason why I refuse to buy a new printer. Mine broke like 18 months ago, but the amount of total and utter crap software and drivers the likes of Canon and HP put out simply stops me from buying their crap.
When I need to print, I either do it at university, or at my parents'. Until these guys learn to give me a driver download that's under 5MB in size (preferably under 1 MB in size) I will not buy a new printer.
Member since:2005-07-06
Kroc is spot on.
Same with some Wifi drivers where there seems to be 2 paths...
1. Install the driver using the auto run application on the CD and have some crap installed.
2. Let Windows search for the ini on the CD and just have the driver installed without all the crap.
Why can they not have just have the simple driver and a PDF or RTF on the CD to tell you what to do.
Member since:2006-09-30
I've been saying this for years...
I don't need a CD full of crap just to get a mouse working!
And once I finally managed to remove flash from XP, Yahoo Messenger installed it back without asking...
The only time I saw driver installing in Vista it was like, the first one:
"This driver requires Windows XP or later."
and the 2nd one even worse:
"The software has detected that the operating system is not Microsoft Windows."
Member since:2005-08-18
While I agree with almost everyhthing Kroc says one thing is not correct.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away (also known as late 80's, early 90's) Norton made some solid products, chiefly Norton Commander.
Of course, all that good software came to an end when Symantec showed up on the scene.
McAfee was also good back then, before they became Network Assholes or whatever the hell they called themselves.
Edited 2008-11-10 18:22 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
Yes, I think when comparing drivers issue one should keep in mind the result for the user:
1) disk driver, motherboard, video: the user can't boot: very annoying.
2) network/modem driver: the user can't connect to Internet: annoying especially when you know that the solution is probably available on Internet!
3) other drivers you just loose the functionnality of the hardware but the computer work and have access to Internet, so you can search if anybody has a solution.
Member since:
2005-06-29
from my experience... the most universal pain in the ass to install are printer drivers... they're terrible (to not say something worse) and, even if install correctly, they perform badly, slow controls, slow response time... and ugly as they can get!
fortunately printer drivers don't give much problems as motherboard (specially IO) and video drivers that may prevent you from actually booting the system (or repairing the system...)... but for those I have to admit that the quality got a LOT better since real x64 drivers came (that includes ia32 drivers too...)
I hope open HW specs gets more popular soon, this means better drivers for everyone...