Another open letter to Bill Gates

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 06 February 2007 23:15

Opinion and Analysis

Having Media Center finally built-in (at least in Home Premium and Ultimate) is pretty fantastic too. I’ve been hassling relevant Australian Microsoft employees in the Windows division about it for years – finally, we have Windows, and Tablet and Media Center all-in-one!

But the drivers. For simple, everyday stuff. Yes, I’m sure that a number of these are up to your partners to create. But it’s been 5 long years. Everyone knew Vista was coming. We’ve had RC1 for months and months. RTM came out November 30.

What in the world has everyone been doing?! Now that Vista is officially out for anyone that wants it, can you please, please apply maximum pressure on your hardware and software partners to get Vista drivers and updates out there as soon as humanly possible.

Not everyone is going to rush out and buy a new computer, and yes, many of these problems will melt away over the next few months as drivers come on stream and new versions of software are developed (along with whatever updates can be made available in the meantime to get existing software working properly with Vista).

But in the meantime, some will want to upgrade their existing computers, and right now, you really can’t be confident that everything will ‘just work’. The sage advice is just to wait for drivers and updates to be released, even if you are buying a brand new Vista computer, as you might just want to connect it to other peripherals you already own, like a printer or other devices.

An example of a company that actually bothered to get Vista compatibility sorted by the time of the January 30 release is Nuance, formerly Scansoft. Almost all of their programs are now Vista compatible, and in the US, they were a partner of Microsoft’s for the Vista launch, and rightly so.

Of course it’s Vista’s voice recognition that is getting all of the attention instead of the new Vista update of Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.5, something I’ll be testing very soon to see how it compares.

One other big thing that the world only seemed to discover on the day of the Vista launch. Dreamscene. Why in heaven’s name was this so hyped, especially with the waterfall, when it won’t be available until Q4? This was announced in the Australian release, to everyone’s great surprise, as not coming until Q4.

As you are no doubt aware, there is a beta available on the Internet, but it only contains the raccoon bobbing his or her head up and down every now and then. Ye olde waterfall is nowhere to be seen. Of course people will be in anticipation waiting for it, but we’ve waited so long… one of the most hyped Ultimate Extras turned into an Ultimate Letdown. Maybe it’ll be release via the Ultimate Extras download soon, even if it is still in beta mode.

Of course there’s also all the stuff about DRM, and what Vista can and can’t play. Whatever the restrictions, people always seem to get around them, so I’m not sure if anyone out there is really too worried about the DRM stuff, talked about though it has been.

What else? Please read on to page 3 for the conclusion...