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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."
Maybe Microsoft should do what the Linux community does. Work with manufacturers to get the drivers written and then maintain the drivers for the manufacturers forever.
Ya, that's likely.
BTW - I own two webcams now. Neither work under Windows since I lost the driver disk (and those drivers were useless under XP64/Vista anyway), but they both work just fine under Linux. What's the world coming to?!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Nearly 2009 and we still can't plug in a printer and have it just work. The idea that any printer - consumer or professional - needs proprietary drivers that might have problems with Windows 7 is really sad. We need more standard HID devices, and better HID support in OSes.
Now that Microsoft are feeling the pinch of competition, they no longer have hardware manufacturers over a barrel. The hardware manufacturers now have the power to control the public perception of Windows, rather than Windows controlling the perception of hardware.
How did you come to this conclusion? The number of Windows users is still growing. OS X is taking a small percentage from that share, but their software is still restricted to their own hardware, making it very uninteresting for hardware manufacturers.
It's the fact that Windows is open to any hardware that makes manufacturers prefer this operating system. Also, the two factions live in symbiosis since none would exist without the other. Basically, Microsoft wants their software to work well and the manufacturers surely want their hardware to work well in what is to become the next major operating system that over 90% of the world's population uses.
Full Tilt
<quote><p>Like Compaq, Unisys, SCS, Wang, et al, Microsoft is loosing the war and will be gone within the decade. Mark my words.</p></quote>
They'll have to pry my Wang from my cold, dead fingers!
let's just spin that a little, the 21st century will be the century of Linux on the desktop
Well, MS does have one major competitor, which has caused nontrivial trouble lately: its own older OSes. As much as I'd like it to be otherwise, I don't think that MS is under much immediate threat from Linux or OSX. However, watching the rather pitiful attempt to get the Vista launch off the ground suggested quite strongly that MS has a real problem with pushing its "ecosystem partners" to upgrade in sync. The whole Vista Read/Vista Capable thing, where MS basically screwed over buyers and retailers to let Intel unload their old graphics chips, the fact that NVidia couldn't be bothered to have drivers that actually worked for months after launch, having to extend XP availability several times, etc.
MS isn't going anywhere; but they face a real risk of getting bogged down in their own backwards compatibility. With Vista, they ran into the nasty trap of not being able to muster enough customer enthusiasm to drive support from hardware and software vendors, and not having enough support from hardware and software vendors to ensure safe upgrades for their customers. Vicious circle time. They'll pull through; because they have the bulk and the power; but that isn't a pretty dynamic.
let's just spin that a little, the 24th century will be the century of Linux on the desktop
There, fixed that for you.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
No, but they do have the power to write drivers themselves (carrot)...
What? MS would have the same problem as Linux does, just to a lesser degree. HW manufactures would have to provide specs to MS, something they haven't done for Linux. The only saving grace would be that MS would be capable of signing an NDA with them.
Microsoft is only in this mess because they've been pawning that responsibility off on OEMs for years.
"You create a device, you write the driver" seems like a perfectly reasonable policy to me, at least for manufactures that don't open their specs to all.
Microsoft needs to be worried about it's own quality control issues first.
Network copies were REALLY broken when Vista was released. Copying files to and from a network was excruciatingly slow - how did that get past Microsoft's QA?
Explorer still occasionally shits the bed for no apparent reason. Why is explorer still the shell of the operating system? Someone should tell Microsoft that Netscape is no longer a threat to them.
There are a ton of BONE-HEADED design decisions in Vista (try selecting a wireless network with less than 5 or 6 clicks).
The ugly truth is that hardware manufacturers are not the cause of Vista's "perception problem". Vista is the cause of Vista's perception problems.
-ted
2%? Already?
The Year of Linux on the Desktop is at hand!
We first take the chance to declare you the cultprits of the vista fiasco, bad hardware makers!.
Now please be a good boy and support Vista 7 right away, we know this is a sudden move with so few months left for the beginning of 2009 and you are still trying to support Vista. But now we decided to release another OS, so bitch please support that one already, thanks.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Actually, Houdini pulled it off
...the lengths some people will go to for a laugh...
The manufacturers should spend more time collaborating with the Ubuntu and Mandriva communities. Windows 7 will suck no matter how much effort the manufacturers put into it. Why waste the extra time on a sinking ship?
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
Intro: "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."
Interesting.
Meanwhile, Linux driver developers are begging to write drivers (at no cost) for hardware OEMs.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6669895837.html
As a hardware OEM, you would have to be thinking that it is going to cost you way, way less to get a working driver for your new product written for Linux.
Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft?
'Cause it's Microsoft. Really, there's no other reason than that. Why should we reward their reprehensible behaviour by adding valuable functionality to their systems?
If they don't have developers, their operating systems are useless. : D
This
Enjoy.
Isn't Microsoft supposed to be the poster child for things like this? "You can't get drivers on Linux because of NDAs, etc." If you _can_ get NDAs and you _are_ filthy rich, and would like to make a superior product, go out and DO IT. Not whine and beg.
MS at least could do it if HW vendors would cooperate, which many would. But at the same time it's not like MS could just dump money into this and have it be sustainable; maintaining drivers for all the HW out there they want to support would be an enormous effort.
Making a wild guess, I wouldn't be surprised if it'd double the cost of Windows. (I seem to remember driver code being at least about half of the size of the Linux kernel, so this guess isn't completely out there.) HW would be cheaper, but basically people who buy little and/or common hardware would be subsidizing the cost of driver development for people who got more exotic hardware. I think it makes far more sense to tie the cost of developing the driver with the HW that it's for.
Also remember the "you create a device, you write the driver, we change the API, we beg you to update all your drivers to the latest beta API, with all nifty DRMs and UACs."
There's a new version of Windows issued what, every 3 years on average? (At least now that 9x and NT have converged.) Let's see, NT 4 was late '96, 2000 was 2000, XP was 2001, Vista was very late 2006 or very early 2007. 4 versions in 10 years, so just over 3 years is about right. (Windows 7 is scheduled for late 2009 or early 2010, which is about another 3 years.) The driver model changes even less frequently. (E.g. my impression is that you can use basically the same code for 2000 and XP.)
Not only that, but the changes for Vista were largely rather for the better, with MS trying to push most drivers out into userspace (where they can't cause bluescreens).
Contrast this situation to Linux, which almost has a stated goal to NOT have a stable driver API. This works fine for them, but if what you want is a stable kernel interface Windows is about as stable as you're going to get.
Some browsers no support having more than one window open at a time. You might try to get one of those.