From: "Rich Gauszka" 

"The drivers are out there." ? sequel to the X-files?

http://www.windowsitpro.com/mobile/Article.cfm?ArticleID=96022&News=1

In addition, Microsoft has added instrumentation to Vista so that customers
can provide the company with feedback if something goes wrong. Thanks to
this feedback, the company is making fixes at an unprecedented rate. More
importantly, Microsoft is identifying the device driver incompatibilities
that are causing the most problems and fixing those first. Of the remaining
4 percent of incompatible devices, or about 70,000 devices, 4,000 of them
account for about 80 percent of the problems. "This is our bogey list
right now," Wascha told me in a recent briefing. "So we're on the
phone with vendors, flying out to meet with them, and getting these issues
addressed. Once that's done, we'll do it all again."

So what's the criterion for getting a device to work in Vista? Wascha told
me that Microsoft will fix or create drivers for any device that generates
500 or more user reports. "We have legions of engineers dedicated to
this one purpose," Wascha said. "And we will continue to churn
through that list." The only exception, of course, is drivers for
devices that are no longer sold because the company that made them went out
of business. "Unfortunately, the answer there is that it will never
work," Wascha said.

Microsoft is caught in a catch-22 in some ways. Customers want the company
to be innovative, but often don't like the side effects of that innovation.
For example, Microsoft changed the graphics architecture in Vista to make
it more visually exciting, but then some users complained that their video
cards were no longer compatible. "Some people have had a less than
stellar experiences with graphics cards," Wascha admitted. "This
is a tiny minority of users. Unfortunately, it's been a vocal
minority." Wascha wouldn't name the main culprit, but in my
experience, NVIDIA's graphics cards have lagged behind ATI's, although the
gap appears to have shrunk in recent days.

And what about those high-profile problems that the bloggers are grousing
about? According to Wascha, those problems have never shown up in Vista's
instrumentation. That's right: These bloggers actually opted out of
Microsoft's feedback program. And when the fixed drivers do become
available, you never see follow-up posts crediting Microsoft for fixing the
problems. "We sit here and wrack our brains," Wascha said.
"The drivers are out there."

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5