It's something lots of people here on OSNews have been waiting for. It's something we've talked about, something we've theorised about, and something we've declared as the future for Windows' backwards compatibility - and now it's here, and official. Over a month ago, Microsoft bloggers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott have been briefed by Microsoft on a technology for Windows 7 called Windows XP Mode. Available as a free download for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate users, it's a fully integrated and licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 in a VirtualPC-based environment, with full "coherence" support. In other words, it's Microsoft's variant of Apple's Classic environment, and it's coming to Windows 7, for free. Near-instant update: The Windows 7 RC will indeed be available publicly on May 5. TechNet/MSDN will get it April 30.
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Member since:2009-02-25
Member since:2008-07-15
Thom, I know you find Vista and/or Windows 7 to be the best thing since sliced bread, but it doesn't always work so well for everyone. Whether it's a crappy driver or not doesn't really make a huge difference in the end for the person having the trouble, does it?
And, that being said, some of the drivers included with Vista itself must be extremely buggy--certainly possible, as they're still developed by the hw manufacturers and MS just includes them in Vista. I had an Intel ICH8-based internal audio chip that repeatedly caused a blue screen in Vista, and that was with the driver included with Vista itself. There are no driver updates for this particular card.
In some situations, the argument over whether it's Vista or a driver is meaningless. It reminds me of the argument I here from a lot of Linux users that Linux doesn't crash, Xorg or the desktop environment might crash but the kernel does not. In the end, it's irrelevant, and all part of the same whole to most people.
Further, how bad must the Microsoft driver certification procedure be if such drivers make it through their screening? With the number of problems Vista can have and if, as you say, Vista doesn't have problems and only the drivers do... I think Microsoft better bump their driver QA a bit, especially for drivers that are included as part of a default installation.
You can't blame everything on Vista or Microsoft, but you can't blame everything on bad drivers either.
Member since:
2005-06-29
The only way I can see happening what you described is if you had a bad driver, or gave permission to install shady software. Vista doesn't just crap out like that for no reason. Or, a faulty hard drive. considered that one?
It's not XP we're talking about.
Edited 2009-04-25 13:13 UTC