Drivers slow down Vista

Stan Beer
Sunday, 03 December 2006 08:35

Opinion and Analysis

While the official consumer release of Windows Vista is a little less than two months away, based on the enterprise release on November 30, the blogosphere is buzzing with comparisons between Vista and Windows XP SP2. Much of it is unflattering to the new operating system based on the lack of availability of drivers.

Aside from the fact, that current versions of Vista, ranging from RC2 to the disk handed out on November 30, mysteriously labelled Vista RTM, require heaps of hardware grunt to run, it appears that you would be a fool to install it just now. In my case, it doesn't recognize my DVD drives or my printer. Unless I upgrade my video card and audio card, I can forget about Aero, Flip 3D and sound.

Apparently, my printer and DVD problems, not to mention the sluggish performance, stem from the fact that hardware manufacturers just haven't got around to releasing good new drivers for Vista yet. Well, they've had five years and counting, so exactly how long do they want to leave it?

Then of course there's the question of security. One wonders why any organization would even consider installing an early release version of Vista, when aside from Microsoft and McAfee, no security vendor has even announced a production version of a Vista security package.

For consumers and businesses buying new PCs in February 2007 all these issues are largely irrelevant. However, for consumers and businesses buying PCs over the next two months with the intention of upgrading, the issues become very relevant.

Analysts are remarkably divided on the subject of Vista adoption over the coming year.

According to research group Gartner, just 4.2% of businesses will upgrade to Vista in 2007. On the other hand, Ovum predicts that a whopping 15% of businesses will adopt Vista next year. In fact, Ovum's 2007 Vista adoption figures for 2007 roughly correspond to Gartner's forecast for 2008.

For an enterprise or smaller business, what it boils down to is does Windows XP do the job I need and will Vista do it better. If the answer to the first question is yes, then the justification for an upgrade that requires additional hardware and extensive testing for devices compatibility becomes a hard sell for an IT manager.