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Microsoft Begs Hardware Makers To Take Support Seriously
Banana ricotta pancakes writes "Microsoft has confirmed that there will be a widespread public beta of Windows 7 in early 2009, while urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista. 'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them. Better hope that testing goes well."
Should Microsoft insure that its software compatible with hardware? After all software is a wrapper that allows a comfortable use of hardware.
You posting as AC proves that you know not what you speak of. May I point you here: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/10/how-linux-supports-more-device.html
"That's right...I said it."
No one saw the fall of Rome
Are you kidding? Alaric was garrisoned outside Rome for OVER A YEAR before the emperor betrayed him and negotiations for a piece of Switzerland (a la the governorship of Judea) broke down.
On the other hand, declining military drill as Goths and Vandals joined the Roman military was a contributing factor to the decline of the Roman empire.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I may just have bad luck... but Microsoft's driver compatibility is frighteningly bad.
When XP came out, didn't Microsoft end up writing drivers for a boatload of Logitech hardware?
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Sounds like you have a better solution going, but I still wanted to turn others in your situation who *do* wanna run Windows on to btwincap -- the card is probably using a Brooktree chip.
This driver is usually much better than the included buggy/glitchy ones.
Dynebolic is a kick ass GNU/Linux distro for video capture and editing. It can also cluster just by running the liveCD on multiple systems.
Microsoft Intellimouse optical: The driver in the link doesn't recognize this mouse... What's really funny is MS's Mac Intellimouse driver works perfectly. This is a rather old mouse, it was one of the very first optical mice available($70 back in the day).
Huh? This is my mouse of choice, and I have never had any driver troubles with it under Windows. Windows comes with a driver that Just Works, what more do you want?
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Microsoft has claimed for a long, long time that Windows' instability isn't Windows' fault; it's drivers. They should put up or shut up.
Indeed, Vista certainly doesn't have the easier way to select a wireless network.
Having said that, Microsoft is (sometimes) capable of learning from their mistakes. Windows 7 has a modern wireless selector now: http://windows7news.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/win7_m3_ms_17.jpg
This
Enjoy.
Apple now have, what, 20% of the laptop market by volume and rather more by dollar revenue? I'd say there's a strong argument that a significant demographic --- young, affluent, university educated, pick any two --- has already left town. I lecture occasionally at a University which is amongst the UK equivalent of the Ivy League, and have a friend who is a full-time lecturer, and both of us (me CS, she English) are under the clear impression that Apple are making massive inroads into the student laptop market. That's the classic opinion-former group, and losing that market is usually regarded as a very bad thing.
ian
Mostly we don't because of things like this:
Creative Goes After Driver Modder
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Just FYI, they very recently claimed this:
Microsoft: Moving to Windows 7 Easy for Device Makers
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Winfuture XP ISO Builder for the win. So simple my nephews could do it. Takes about 20 minutes to integrate service packs(including SP3),hotfixes,drivers,software,integrate XPize(under add hotfixes) setup a full unattended with the user accounts,etc. So much better to just use it for an unattended 2K/2K3/XP that doing the MSFT reinstall dance IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And ANYONE writing drivers on a professional level with Windows actually HAS the code under their shared licensing program. ANYONE can sign up for it and, probably, get access to the code as needed if they are willing to sign the NDA.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There are "hundred's of thousands" of hardware components out there for Windows. One can't truly expect Microsoft to write drivers (millions of lines of code) for hardware they have no financial benefit from. This task would dwarf the entire development for Windows itself. Why should hardware vendors get free drivers?
I agree that MS should create a list of hardware with suspect drivers so users can be aware of which items would make their OS unstable, before they buy.
Two things hampered Vista's perception of what it truly could have been:
1) Driver instability (which is not Microsoft's fault) and 2) heavy resource requirements
If you carefully select the hardware to marry with Vista, and give it some oomph in the RAM and CPU department, it's a gem - gaming on it is just incomparable to anything else! These days "Windows Server 2008" (running the Vista kernel) is almost all I use on my Macbook Pro using VMWare's Fusion. I've never had more fun with an OS! It doesn't have the glorious transparency of Linux, but Server 2008 just works, all the time, and has the Vista look if you enable the desktop experience - Leopard pales in ability. Having Leopard sleep (it's way faster and more efficient at this than Server 2008) underneath Fusion, is a great combo!
My point is that we should give credit where it's due. Microsoft is no monkey. MS employs the best and brightest - Google "microsoft talent"!
As the original article points out, it's a pretty meaningless statistic. Hardware support only matters to users when it's hardware they own. Linux supports an obscure SCSI card that only three people own - great if you're one of those three people, irrelevant otherwise. FreeBSD supports all of the hardware (with the possible exception of the modem - I don't have a phoneline, so I've not tried it) in my ThinkPad, so do I care that Linux and Windows support more devices in total? OS X supports everything in my MacBook Pro, so do I care that Windows supports more devices?
I used to have a gaming mouse that was supported by Linux but not Windows (it shipped with drivers for Win98, which didn't work with 2K and the manufacturer never supported 2K). Did it matter to me that Windows supported vastly more hardware than Linux at the time? No, because it didn't support my hardware. Same with my VooDoo 2 - Microsoft changed the driver model with Windows 2000 to prevent 3D-only cards working. I could still play GLQuake under Linux, but not under Windows. Again, the fact that 2K had better support in general meant nothing to me. Only the specific cases of failure mattered (and the fact that Linux didn't support my NIC or modem at the time was equally frustrating).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Postscript just doesn't make sense. Back when laser printers were really expensive it did - you'd buy one fast CPU in the printer (or print server - I used to have a dual P3 box that was made by Xerox and originally just ran a PostScript interpreter and some drivers for an expensive printer). Now, however, you will have something like a 50MHz MIPS chip in the printer and even a slow handheld will have a 200MHz ARM chip - a desktop or laptop will probably have a 2GHz CPU. When you print a PS file, you have to render each page in to a buffer and then output that to the page. Doing this on a 2GHz CPU on the computer is a lot faster than doing it on the printer. My old laser printer printed significantly faster when I used PCL instead of PS, because PCL is much simpler.
Oh, and you don't need a license from Adobe for using PS. It's an open standard - you can implement it yourself, use GPL'd GhostScript, or buy a license from Alladin if you don't want to use the GPL'd version. Adobe also ship an implementation you can use, and you do need to pay them if you use this.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Maybe I can buy Window NT 7 and skip over Vista (NT6) completely.
You just don't get it, do you? Windows 7 is nothing more than an enhancement to Vista, one with meaningless features. A new taskbar? New UI for Notepad? Less crazy UAC messages? C'mon, where are the real features? What the hell happened to WinFS?
Windows 7 is just Vista in sheeps clothing...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Windows 7 is just Vista in sheeps clothing...
Wait a minute. Microsoft said they were entirely rebuilding Windows 7 from the ground-up, trying to get the kernal to run more-efficiently. That doesn't sound like mere window-dressing (like M.e. was merely Win98.2). That sounds like a complete overhaul.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
The problem with that statement is that "major release" has basically ceased to have meaning for Linux. 2.6 was first released five years ago, and there's no 2.7 or 2.8 in planning.
(And in case you're wondering, no, the kernel APIs aren't stable from 2.6.x to 2.6.x+1, at least for generic kernel modules. Maybe the subset that most device drivers usually are, but I've written a kernel module that I needed to make fairly substantial changes to when I upgraded a couple point releases.)
Sometimes you people are monstrously uninformed. I have trouble imagining how you can assume that when the exact opposite was clearly stated, repeatedly, from Microsoft. All of the driver breaking that went on during Vista's development was done to create a framework for future efforts. Examples below:
The audio driver model was changed to create low-latency drivers and offer features like application-specific audio channels. Seven enhances this by offering separate modes (communication and regular). They also offer ducking (temporary volume reduction / playback stop) for communication devices. Ex: You get a skype call, your Windows Media Player lowers the volume during the call.
The video driver model was changed to lower the DirectX overhead and simplify drivers (by removing hardware CAPS). Seven enhances this by offering Direct2d to handle all 2d rendering (with some incredible enhancements including glyphing-support). As always for Microsoft, GDI and GDI+ are still supported along with Direct2D. For 3D there are a few new features:
1. DirectX10 Level9: Direct9 hardware wrapping that will allow DirectX 10 and 10.1 programs to use whatever features are available.
2. DirectX10 WARP: Software (optimized) renderer so that DirectX 10 is supported on systems with no 3d cards.
3. Coming in DirectX11 (which is a superset of DirectX 10.1): Compute Shaders which allows easier access to using GPUs for non-graphics computations.
DirectX11 will be supported in Vista along with Direct2d.
Vista drivers are compatible with Seven, but the newer features (like communication mode) will require updates. The hardware will still work, just not as fast or with as many features as it could.