Lately there are a lot of articles bashing Windows Vista for its lack of driver support, stability or poor performance. All of these concerns are true just like all previous Windows versions.
I remember sites cropping up left and right back in 2001 that were dedicated to showing consumers how to get hold of Windows XP drivers and if your hardware was even compatible! At the time Windows XP was completely new, Windows 98/ME drivers didn"t work on this new OS - you needed either new hardware or hope that the manufacturer would code (beta) drivers for your devices. In my case I had a very expensive 10/100MBit Ethernet card from HP (the name escapes me, it"s 7 years ago!) and I emailed customer service about lack of driver support and they told me they would never release one and it was being discontinued, despite the driver being included in all "Whistler" builds right up until about the 24xx releases.
I had to install the older 24xx build and then "upgrade" to the latest beta releases. I think I did that until the RC"s and finally swapped out the card for something else.
In all fairness Windows XP for Windows users was a huge upgrade of an OS compared to Windows 95/98 and that sad excuse for an update Windows Millennium. Multi tasking was simply impossible without risking a blue screen of death and all of a sudden after its initial teething problems, became a very stable and reliable OS incomparable to the Windows 9x platform.
We forget all the ranting that went on here on Neowin when certain bits of hardware suddenly didn"t work, or 3D acceleration was simply terrible up until shortly before its release and even then a lot of cards suddenly weren"t supported under the new driver model.
I"d go as far as to say that XP really didn"t cut it until SP2 was released, that is when Windows XP came of age and was finally something to write home about. There will always be the users (like me) that will use the latest and greatest despite lack of driver support and obvious performance related issues and we will go on complaining, writing and informing about those short comings until the appropriate people fix those issues. it is believe it or not part of my job
The OS costs money, it"s my right as a consumer and hey, I am using it at work so it is also tied into my productivity, lets also not forget all those friends I have helped because they simply don"t understand why their printer no longer works when they loaded a Vista upgrade over XP.
They will say: "Hey it worked on XP! Why not Vista?" and I simply respond, "It will eventually, when those OEM"s and hardware manufacturers get off their lazy asses and support it properly.
So while it may look like a few of those articles on Neowin and around the Internet appear to crucify Vista, please remember that we are not the only ones doing that, real world average Joes are, and even big companies like Dell decided to back pedal by offering XP on their newer business line PC"s and laptops (but not for the general consumer) when they are supposed to have some sort of influence on the hardware industry.
Just goes to show that Microsoft may not have much of a say in that sector as we all thought it did. I know first hand by speaking with Microsoft developers how unhappy they are at failed promises by certain hardware vendors to deliver good drivers. Given time Vista will rock as much as XP did and still does for many today.
Hang in there.