First off, I have used Vista on a friend's PC and find it a more
"pleasing" interface to use than XP. There are small UI improvements
(probably "inspired" by the Mac GUI) such as as the display of mini
versions of the minimized windows when the cursor hovers over the
window button on the task bar. The simple video editor is a vast
(Speed) improvement on the XP version of this application. Also, I
like the "ribbon" toolbar in Office - I would call it a "tabbed"
toolbar - it is a much more efficient arrangement of the functions in
my opinion. However, the "ribbon" does have a couple of silly
drawbacks - I have read the ribbon toolbar contents aren't
customisable. Why is there a separate Office "button" to the left to
the ribbon toolbar? Why not integrate: Open, Save and Print etc. into
another tab on the ribbon?

What irks me about Vista is its lack of support for "older" drivers.
I would have thought that Vista is a development of XP and it seems to
run "XP" applications fine. However, my 4 year old Western Digital 250
USB hard drive and 10 year old (but still working fine) USB attached
HP scanner, both of which are visible in Vista device manager, neither
of which function in Vista. Neither Western Digital not HP are
interested in producing Vista drivers for non-current devices. There
is no way I am going to junk perfectly working peripherals - that's a
criminal waste in my opinion.

Can someone explain why it has been so hard to provide a
compatibility mode for older devices in Vista? What (in essence) is so
special about the function of Vista drivers rather than Microsoft just
"importing" XP driver support in the Vista "kernel" and automatically
supporting thousands (tens of thousands) of device types already
deployed?

Clive

MS changed the driver model to get developers to stop using the system space
to run drivers and start using the user space. Using the system space has
caused 90% of the BSOD's in XP (too many poorly written drivers out there).
A poorly written driver in the user space might take down a program, but not
the OS.

"Clive" wrote in message
...
First off, I have used Vista on a friend's PC and find it a more
"pleasing" interface to use than XP. There are small UI improvements
(probably "inspired" by the Mac GUI) such as as the display of mini
versions of the minimized windows when the cursor hovers over the
window button on the task bar. The simple video editor is a vast
(Speed) improvement on the XP version of this application. Also, I
like the "ribbon" toolbar in Office - I would call it a "tabbed"
toolbar - it is a much more efficient arrangement of the functions in
my opinion. However, the "ribbon" does have a couple of silly
drawbacks - I have read the ribbon toolbar contents aren't
customisable. Why is there a separate Office "button" to the left to
the ribbon toolbar? Why not integrate: Open, Save and Print etc. into
another tab on the ribbon?

What irks me about Vista is its lack of support for "older" drivers.
I would have thought that Vista is a development of XP and it seems to
run "XP" applications fine. However, my 4 year old Western Digital 250
USB hard drive and 10 year old (but still working fine) USB attached
HP scanner, both of which are visible in Vista device manager, neither
of which function in Vista. Neither Western Digital not HP are
interested in producing Vista drivers for non-current devices. There
is no way I am going to junk perfectly working peripherals - that's a
criminal waste in my opinion.

Can someone explain why it has been so hard to provide a
compatibility mode for older devices in Vista? What (in essence) is so
special about the function of Vista drivers rather than Microsoft just
"importing" XP driver support in the Vista "kernel" and automatically
supporting thousands (tens of thousands) of device types already
deployed?

Clive

On Dec 29, 4:56 pm, "Colin Barnhorst" wrote:
MS changed the driver model to get developers to stop using the system space
to run drivers and start using the user space. Using the system space has
caused 90% of the BSOD's in XP (too many poorly written drivers out there).
A poorly written driver in the user space might take down a program, but not
the OS.


Thanks for the explanation.

Makes sense.

Clive