Microsoft announced today a Vista Compatibility Center which is supposed to give potential users of Vista a good idea of what hardware and software is compatible with Vista. Good idea.
However, for the umpteenth time I’ve got to say that I think Microsoft is missing the bigger point here and needlessly making their message too complicated.
It’s not simply that Microsoft got caught with not enough driver compatibility when Vista launched–although this was definitely true. It’s that Vista came to market during the quick-paced transition to notebooks and Microsoft has still not caught up to this fact.
First and foremost the message should be: If you’ve purchased such and such notebooks in the last X years, you’re covered. Vista will run just fine. No reason to worry.
The important point here is that the age of people worrying about drivers is gone. They don’t want to be. Period. Notebooks to most of us are sealed boxes.
Now there are printers and cameras and lots of external devices and desktops where the driver problems still exist and for these Microsoft’s new web site will help. But my suggestion: Focus on the baseline: The notebooks.
In several respects Vista is an improvement over XP when it comes to mobile PCs. For the most part the sleep and hibernation features work better, the battery indicator is more accurate, and at least to me the wireless connectivity management is much improved. And then there’s the whole Tablet PC support. Much improved. If you haven’t tried it lately, you’ve got to check out Vista’s handwriting reco on a Tablet. It’s the best ever.
However, there’s still much room for improvement for notebook users when it comes to Vista. Some of these are:
* WLAN/EVDO support is poor. Why go through the DUN for configuring EVDO? It’s needlessly complex. Poor. Further, if a WiFi connection drops and there’s EVDO support, why isn’t there a transparent switchover to it and likewise back to WiFi when it’s restored? I don’t get it.
* Many notebooks include webcams, but where’s the webcam support in Windows out of the box? The situation is a poorly thought out mess right now at the user level and the developer level. Simply unimpressive. Lots of room for improvement here.
* What’s it with all the screen flickering in Vista when it boots up or switches from one mode to the next. I don’t care if it’s the driver or not. Ugly.
* Default total install size, sidebar, search settings are not notebook friendly–especially for smaller and lower-cost notebooks.
I’m hoping the next version of Windows will fix some of these issues. We’ll see. Of course, the market continues to change so that things that will be essential when Seven ships are only perculating now. Yep, it’s a challenging problem to keep up with everything.