I know that I have bad-mouthed Vista in previous posts here, but the more that I read about it, the more I am convinced people should wait (a good long time) before updating.
I knew that there were numerous driver issues, but I had expected that they were for peripherals and non-essentials. However, resellers and Microsoft certified repair centers are now saying that many system-critical devices are not able to work with the M$ operating system.
It’s typical for these conflicts to appear shortly after an operating system is released. The big problem with Vista is not only the number of incompatibilities with existing applications but also the lack of drivers for critical hardware components and hardware peripherals, partners say.
One partner said he is surprised by the lack of Vista drivers available for basic hardware components that keep a PC running.
“Customers upgrading Vista in place may find getting support for existing hardware very challenging,” said Phil Aldrich, North American Microsoft Practice Manager for Dimension Data North America, a $3.1 billion solution provider.
“Tons of vendors haven’t done Vista drivers and that’s left a big hole in support. I can understand when it comes to printers and scanners, but when we’re talking about hard drives, chipset controllers and video cards, things that run the PC, it’s surprising,” he said. “It’s not just peripherals but primary component manufacturers aren’t ready, and that unusual compared to the previous releases [of Windows].”
I understand that it is not Microsoft’s job to provide drivers for every piece of equipment out there, but when you are selling yourself as THE operating system for the world, you would think that you would do a bit more homework in this area and work with more of component manufacturers out there to try and make the transition as smooth as possible. They have just simply dropped the ball on this.
The most amazing admission that I found in this article though was that Microsoft doesn’t even appear to have it’s own media player ready for Vista.
Partners and IT pros are also facing problems with peripherals.
“There’s not enough drivers out there. Peripherals manufacturers are not all up to speed with Vista, so be careful what you buy,” said Anthony Rodio, chief marketing officer at Supportsoft, a Redwood City, Calif., partner that provides helpdesk support for Windows Vista to enterprises and consumers. “People want to use the functionality in Vista and there are some multimedia, video and sound devices that support Vista, but many peripherals have to catch up.”
He noted, for example, that Microsoft’s own recently released Zune is not Vista compatible. And he added that one of his technicians recently bought an up-to-date webcam for Windows Vista and it didn’t work.
This was the one issue that people always used to attack the Linux OS. They noted that it wasn’t ready for the desktop because of driver incompatibilities and hardware issues. However, the past several Linux boxen that I have set up have had almost no driver issues, even with wireless networks and multi-media components.
Obviously I’m not a huge M$ fan, but even I’m amazed that they have so badly bungled this release.
