Borsuc wrote:@Shyranis: Companies aren't "lazy" by not kissing Microsoft's butt everytime they decide to "upgrade" their OSes architecture. Why can't they just let previous drivers work? It's Microsoft's fault, not the companies. They aren't lazy just because they don't make drivers when Microsoft wants to change their OS. It's Microsoft who are annoying to them.
Everytime Microsoft changes the way its drivers work it's because of updated security. As I pointed out, Apple does the same thing. For 7 years of XP Microsoft though stupidly chose to sit around and not change its OS very much, which got people into a sedentary state. People fear change if its not every other year. My husband, Mr unemployed computer tech says how he remembers all of the pushback when Windows changed from 95 to 98, or ME to XP, but that would disappear because the next version would come along for people to complain about while still being compatible with 90% of the old software. When XP finally came out, the constant bantering of the people afraid of upgrading died down, because it was the last one they would have to make in years. Once Vista came out, I think some people had their negativity bottled up the entire time because it's a very stable OS. It just had a lot of bad PR. Companies got used to resting on their laurels instead of actually using the developer info Microsoft puts out whenever it's prepping its latest OS. I can still play the games that matter to me, and for me that's all that is important. Heroes 1-5 work great for me, so does the entire Civilization series... well, just about any hotseat type game I can think of =D
I may have wandered off from my point.
The point is, back around 1999 companies were grumbling and whining about their drivers and having to make new ones all the time, but at least they did it. These days printers take a few months to get new drivers and crash their computers when a new OS comes out. It just doesn't make sense. How can companies keep up when Microsoft was releasing an OS every other year but they couldn't when they had 7 years (about a year with a release candidate and probably more time if they actually contacted MS). They also can't keep up with Apple. But apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility. PowerPC computers can't even run the latest version of their OS and Intel based ones can't run software for OS 9 and before (without third party emulators at least, and any computer can do that).
In general, companies these days are a joke. (Microsoft included)