Microsoft warns hardware makers to begin Windows 7 testing ASAP
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jun 2nd 2008 2:17PM
posted Jun 2nd 2008 2:17PM
It may not even have a firm release date just yet, but it looks like Microsoft is already taking a pretty hard line on Windows 7, with it reportedly now warning hardware makers to begin testing their devices on the OS as soon as the first beta becomes available or risk not qualifying for its certified compatibility program. As Information Week points out, that move is likely being done in order to avoid the mess stirred up when so-called Vista-capable systems went on sale in advance of Vista's release, many of which, as we all know, turned out to be anything but.
Anybody else notice that Bill Gates' sweater is about two sizes too large, or about the same size as the sweater Ballmer is wearing? Coincidence?
i think he borrowed it from Steve Balmer ;)
he admires Jay-Z you know...
Yeah, that picture is really wierd. What are the odds they both were in seperate dressing rooms thinking about what to put on and happened to choose the *exact* same thing? Wierdos.
@jollyllama
Who said anything about separate dressing rooms?
"Then they called us to the stage and we were, like, mid pillow fight, and I accidentally put on Stevie B's extra sweater. Man I'm going to miss this!"
I think Bill Gates stole my grandmother's sweater...
Richest man in the world and he can't make it past the bargain bin at JCPenny's.
I definitely wouldn't want to be in a pillow fight with Steve Ballmer, although I suppose it would be better than a chair fight...
Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're not frugal.
Doubtful. There are no permanent armpit stains.
Little known fact Ballmer burns whatever shirt he is wearing once he is done with it for the day due to an contractual agreement with the Center for Disease Control.
@Mikeweezer
You don't get right by writing a lot of checks
This is why Apple does not allow just any hardware to run OSX, in the end it is the consumers that will have to put with shoddy software and hardware integration.
iEye:
What?
WTF iEye
Balmer still has that retard come douche-bag look on his face.
iEye is a fake apple-fanboy troll. He's been trolling around every non-apple related article posting random pro-apple crap.
I'm a Mac user and I find it annoying.
It's a Windows 7 sweater... one size, fits all...
No Timmah,
Seven sizes, fits no one.
Well, I guess this will lead to less compatability issues for older hardware/software by the time Windows 7 finally shows up. I hear so many people complaining about how Vista isn't compatibile with anything, yet I have no problems with it.
me neither
Me neither.
I never had any problems with Vista being compatible with anything at all.
I find a lot of people complain about Vista, but every time I ask what's wrong with it they always say compatibility... yet they are never able to say what isn't compatible.
Now I'm not saying Vista is perfect, but I think it's gotten an unfair reputation.
Those that do have problems with Vista are laymen who are too lazy to download drivers for their hardware and expect the OS to do all the magic by itself. I upgraded my Pavilion 9074ea from XP and as I got my hands on better drivers with each month my machine's performance improved. It's way smoother than my house mates' brand new Vista machines who are poorly maintained. I have absolute zero to complain about, super fetch does an amazing job and the same goes for indexing.
I have an all in one printer: Lexmark X83. It won't even work with the XP drivers. In fact, they hosed my VISTA install.
I have an nForce2 chipset. All of the drivers are cobbled together, and the system frequently hangs when resuming from sleep.
I realize these aren't MSFT's problems, but at the same time, they are. With XP, I've pretty much tossed all driver discs in the trash. With Vista, I've been digging for driver discs, looking on developer forums, trying drivers for other devices, and basically doing everything I can to get it to work.
Vista has compatability issues. The best thing about vista is being able to dual boot it with XP.
I do like media center though with my 360 extender.
I have been using Vista since it was in beta and have had only minor issues which every time it was because I purchased cheap hardware. It seems to me that people do not like change, and vista was a big change in the UI people all the time tell me how they can't stand vista because they can't find anything. So buy good hardware and get used to it because the next version of windows is going to require good hardware as well and the UI will not be going back to the old style.
Brother 2070N Network laser printer when used as a network printer has an issue where the port is sporadically reported as in use, issue does not occur in Windows XP. Does not occur when used with USB only. Pretty annoying issue and I have already reported the issue to Brother. They have yet to provide an updated driver. The issue does not occur with my MFC9420CN by Brother which is a color network multifunction.
So yes compatability issues do exist, but probably not as many as people complain about.
@Andy
nForce 2?? On Vista??
And I though my computer was old...
Your computer is the problem.
@ Anthony
Same thing here. I personally don't like Vista, and use OS X most of the time (Only use Vista when I need Quartus II or something that don't run on OS X). But to be honest, I don't think Vista is that bad. Most of the people I talk to that hate Vista cannot answer my questions when I ask them why. Most of the people don't know $hit about it, and they are just saying that because other people say so, and I'm so tired of that! If you want to hate Vista, at least you should know why you hate it, and not just because other people say it sucks.
@Homeboy
Too True!
My favorite is when i hear...
Friend: "Man Vista sucks!!"
Me: "Why?"
Friend: "I cant figure out how to do... Oh and i heard that people are switching back to XP and Vista is not compatible with anything."
Me: *sarcastically* "Hmm, can't figure out how to use Vista, Then you should get a Mac!"
...................................................................................................
Warning: above comment uses words like Vista and Mac. Reader discretion is advised!
Why is it everyone who says vista is bad are usually people who have never tried it, i have to tell literally 10s of people a day that its fine, and that you have to TRY it yourself, not idly follow the journalists opinions, so its slower at some tasks, mine loads faster than XP and has stayed faster.
Vista blows on many levels. Thats a fact. People who say that things work for them have such low standards on their expectations or simply do not understand what their hardware is capable of. Try installing an alternate OS - any brand/flavor and check the responsiveness of the system. Maybe even turn on all the eye candy that you can imagine with compiz-beryl on linux based OS flavors and check the responsiveness of the system. Whats the excuse for Vista to be such a resource hog and still be so slow compared to its own previous versions?
Ditto. Zero hardware problems and 1 app issue with One Touch's BG meter software that doen't work at all on Vista....Which is where a free copy of VMWare Server comes into play. Its free on their site. Load up XP and away I go.
People bitch too much about Vista. With SP1 its a perfectly fine OS. It still has its glitches but so does 10.5 and pretty much every version of Linux on the planet.
The other problem is people not reinstalling the OS and leaving what the manufacture puts on the computer (depending on who you buy from). On my machine though vista will detect and download all the rights drivers.
I think people in the thread have hit the nail on the head. I think it has become increasingly fashionable for many to simply bash Vista. In my last job, doing computer training, one question I had to ask during the course was what OS my students were using. Of course, as soon as one person (or myself) mention the use of Vista, there would be snide comments abound. And yet when I pressed for more detail, the majority of those making poor remarks of Vista either hadn't used it or simply chimed in because of what someone else told. And they couldn't give me concrete answers when it came to compatibility issues.
I'm not saying they don't exist, but I think alot is overblown. Apple's FUD tactics are working very well, too.
With every new version of Windows there have been those that adopted them immediately, and those that waited. Early adopters deal with the technical issues of a new OS before anyone else. This isn't a big deal if you have the technical skill to handle that (for example, you've been through a few OS launches before).
The worst part of the Vista launch really did come down to the drivers. It's hard to fault Microsoft on this because they did give vendors ample time and warning to get their shit together. Being blunt, some vendors were purely lazy when it came to getting drivers out. This is where buying cheap hardware from half-ass vendors bit some people in the ass, because at the end they got no support from those companies.
Win7 uses the exact same driver model. This means that everything that works for Vista will work for Win7 (think back if you are old enough, to how you didn't have to change drivers between 98 and Me - if you were dumb enough to use Me).
This should make compatability a non-issue, so if anything I would reason that the push for OEM's to test against it is more for Perf benchmarkings and such. Who wants another "Vista Ready" fiasco? Not to mention one of THE biggest complaints was driver support (even though this burden is on the OEM) and performance/resources. Sticking to the same driver model tackles point 1, and you can focus more on point 2.
@Dude Krush: you mean like on Ubuntu Hardy Heron which for me flickers whenever I run anything using opengl if I have any of the compiz effects enabled while in Vista it runs Crysis smoothly with all settings on high(with aero running)? Don't get me wrong, I love Ubuntu and Linux in general and it's probably a better OS but don't pretend like it's perfect and Vista is beyond terrible in comparison.
When I installed Vista on my laptop, my CD burner driver, mouse trackpad, and my audio drivers were unsupported. Not only that, but my computer became agonizingly slow, even without the eye candy. It's really easy to fix problems with a desktop computer, because at worst, you can buy a new piece of hardware and replace it. Laptops are expensive to upgrade, and a laptop that requires an external mouse to even work is more-or-less useless. In the end, I reformatted my hard drive, installed Ubuntu server, turned that laptop into part of a home media center, and bought a MacBook Pro.
Three of the best decisions I've ever made.
Since you are all so concerned about speed, I suggest moving to Windows 98. I hear it's even FASTER THAN XP!!!
As software advances, so must your hardware.
No problems with Vista here. Have a friend who doesn't like that it uses too much resources, but I've not had a problem with that either, in fact... FF uses more resources half the time with my many tabs.
Tell that to my Netgear wireless card (WG311v3). Sure, Vista found the card and installed the drivers from the DVD but it still didn't worked. I had to use hacked drivers which luckily turn the card back to life. Once connected new drivers was found on Windows update which when installed once again killed the card.. Awsome..
I'm not saying that Vista sucks, far from it. But it does have all these nagging behaviors which makes it less pleasant to use.
What I hope will happen with Windows 7 is that MS keep the kernel (it's a modern kernel running neck to neck with everything else out there, no need for any major changes) but rework the GUI.
The GUI used worked very well with Windows 95 but since then large numbers of features have been added and with that clutter. Let's face it, how many different ways do we need for say changing the resolution? I'm able to to it in at least eight different ways while I would be perfectly happy with only one (or two counting the command promt). And it's like this more or less all the time, features and shortcuts are redundant in absurdum. Give me one place to change my ip-address, one place to change drivers, one place to remove programs, and so far..
I apologize for offending everyone with my apparently sickly 2.5GHz processor and 4GB of RAM.
You guys are twisted if you think that you need quad core @3GHz and 8GB RAM on a 64 bit platform to run Office 2007 and surf the internet.
I got vista on an old 650 MHz slot A athlon. It runs. It works. The original point by the original poster was that there are no Vista issues. That is not true.
NVIDIA, LEXMARK, AND CREATIVE FAILED THEIR CUSTOMERS ON DRIVER ISSUES (and other vendors did too I'm sure). That is a significant issue no matter how good you think Vista is.
When they no longer want to support something, they should at least throw it open for others to write drivers.
Honestly, what the heck has Apple software got to do with Microsoft. They are not even in the same market.
Windows: serious software that we use for business, on serious laptops, serious desktops, non serious laptops, non serious desktops.
Unix: serious business software, that stays largely at work
Linux: A variation on the above, that we give credit for bringing Unix to the house in a sensible package.
Apple osx: hmm, good for my daughter's computing needs. She still really loves that lovely clear plastic CRT monitor they made for it. Works like a charm for surfing the net. Also good for graphic designers.
@Mark
"compiz effects enabled while in Vista it runs Crysis smoothly".
wtf are you talking about? compiz is a linux window manager.
"I hear so many people complaining about how Vista isn't compatibile with anything, yet I have no problems with it."
Amazing! One person doesn't have problems with Vista.. Everyone else MUST BE LYING THEN!
i say give us XP2
Exactly. If it isnt broken, why fix it? Just improve on it. Thats basically how OS X has been, constantly evolving. This complete overhaul of windows is ridiculous.
Yeah, because OSX has never had a complete overhaul or anything.
yeah...just give XP a visual upgrade...Vista front-end XP back-end...perfect combo
But with OS 9 - OS X there's a few differences: 1) Apple didn't need to make sure that all the OEMs developed compatible hardware/drivers because, duh, it's the only one that made (and makes) Macs and 2) It got all the Apple developers on board with Cocoa or whatever, easy because back then the developer community was rather small.
That honestly is one of the most uneducated comments I have read in a while.
Yea..well XP contains outdated APIs that shouldnt be used in the transition from 32 bit to 64 bit. Plus, developers were able to do things Microsoft said they shouldn't do, which created system instability. The Vista OS is fine, its developers who don't follow guidelines who mess it up.
Eggothewaffle, the difference between Vista and Mac OS9 is like that between ..OS X and Windows 95.
Sure, they both carry a GUI but look at the kernel and you will see a world of difference.
MS today have a modern OS with protected memory, support for large numbers of processors/cores (at least 32 cores are supported by design even if some versions of Windows have been given an artificial limitation), a protected filesystem and much more.
Mac OS 9 on the other hand.. Man, that was like back to the stoneage compared to any other OS being sold at the same with the exception of Windows 9x/ME.
JMM, the only stability I've seen in Vista was slowlyness.. And boy I seen number of Vista's..
I don't need it to run Crysis or whatever other games, only thing I need is to switch between browser window to music player IN LESS THEN 30 SECONDS.. And yes it's brand new, medium class laptop.
@dzhiurgis
That is a lie.
Well this should be good since last time (with windows vista) Hardware companies 1/2 assed their drivers and made Vista crash ... I'm looking at you Nvidia
Are you guys seriously discussing their fashion? Would you like to discuss alternative chique designs that'd be "in" with todays executives .. maybe some cologne too and some stylish scarves.
It's spelled 'chic'.
Some of the software compatibility problems that Windows Vista experienced could have been easily avoided. Microsoft had released many of the guidelines and warnings of what could happen if those guidelines were not followed as early as Windows 2000 and made some of the guidelines requirements for the software to sport the "Made for Windows 2000" and "Made for Windows XP" badges. Seems that many vendors ignored it causing unnecessary UAC prompts. Note that programs that have the "Made for Windows" logo don't generate UAC prompts except in the case of installation and removal unless that program is a system utility.
Someone should tell Creative Labs! lol
i think the new OS should be backward compatible with the old hardware as was XP and notify that the hardware used would not be able to support all the features of the OS...rather than rejecting the device completely.
having backward compatible with the old hardware as was XP is not a good idea.
Right, because XP was BC with everything. At the time, I was seriously bummed because my Lego Studios Camera wouldn't work with XP.
Not to say XP wasn't compatible with most things, just pointing out the absurdity of your sweeping comment. Because I had plenty of peripherals that XP refused to even acknowledge the existence of.
old hardware needs to be expelled thats the reasone ppl have soo much trouble with xp they are using old hardware.
windows 7 should only run hardware that not more then 3 years old.
Matt: Sorry, but you've got that backwards. You're actually assuming that some product lines get better as you get closer to the present. I can think of a large number of products that were wonderfully complex and could do everything you needed them to do, versus today where you have version X of the same product line with half of the functionality gone. The same goes for software.
I can't believe how popular Vista bashing has become. I've been using it since RC1 and haven't had any problems to speak of. I run a triple boot system (Vista, XP, and Ubuntu) and when I really start multitasking (as I tend to do) Vista performs best of those three... hands down.
Can you tell what you're using because honestly you're like the only guy here (obviously, from all the bashing) whose computer can actually run Vista without problems (aka, you have found 2007's Holy Grail of computing).
I run Ubuntu/Vista. Primarily I use Ubuntu cause I'm that geeky. Regardless, Vista blows. First example: Installing SP1 won't work, and it'll only tell you that when it's fully installed 30 minutes later and needs to rollback for another 30 mins. Very lovely.
Oh, and my laptop was sold with Vista running. My dislike of Vista is rather high.
Wickedphoenix:
"Can you tell what you're using because honestly you're like the only guy here (obviously, from all the bashing) whose computer can actually run Vista without problems (aka, you have found 2007's Holy Grail of computing)."
If you look just a bit above, he isn't the only one "whose computer can actually run Vista without problems."
I'm with KRingg here.
I've run XP, K/Ubuntu, and Vista on my laptop have have never had any problems with Vista for Hardware compatibility and I must say Vista does perform the best out of all of them on this machine - and heck kudos to Microsoft to be able to make an operating system that actually runs with such a vast range of hardware compared to Apple.
One thing I've noticed is that Vista runs better on new machines compared to XP and XP runs better on older machines compared to Vista.
I'm using an MSI PR200 (MS-1221) Laptop - T7500 CPU
I agree with you KRingg, seems like is the cool thing to do nowadays. although i acknowledge a lot of people have problems with vista, there are a lot who dont. i put vista on my system that was built 2 years before vista was released without upgrading any hardware and i havent looked back.
I have no problems with vista, all I did was dump the cheap out of date hardware. (Asus A8NSLI deluxe mother board, 2gb memory, Ge-force 8500GT graphics card with HDMI out, terabyte of sata hard drive space, Hauppauge PVR 150, Pioneer Blu-Ray drive, DL DVD burner. All work and no crashes.
@Scythe: I've never heard of ANY problems like that(and I'm guessing most of the people here hadn't either before your post). You should probably do a clean install if it's doing that cause it sounds like something is messed up. (By the way, since you use Ubuntu you should know pretty well that sometimes individual installs of any operating system can have something somewhat wrong with them. God knows how many times I've had to reinstall Ubuntu cause something got hosed)
I saw some of the issues that's people still complain about back during the RC days and driver issues caused some sluggishness on certain machines within the first 6 months of release. Ever since then though, Vista has run great and works with everything I've tried so far. I've even been running x64, which should be the least compatible of them all. Sure, I have to use Dosbox to play 20 year old games, but I think I can live with that.
Speed-wise, my Vista machine runs my games about the same speed as XP did, and everything else is close enough, that I couldn't tell a difference. It did take some time for the drivers to get up to snuff, but it's such a shame that people who used an RC are still spreading FUD.
@ Scythe
Interestingly enough you were able to highlight some of Vista's good features which is volume shadow copy and transactional NTFS. Vista was able to roll back the update instead of just hosing the entire system after failing. On Ubuntu my system got messed up during an update though.
Looks like the lobotomy final took with Ballmer.
Yea, he looks like that creepy monster from Scooby Doo
Yeah, every time I look @ the pic, I see him doing an evil laugh.
Looks like he should be drooling to me.
Hardware companies: Open your specs. Let the community write your drivers. It'll get done quick quick, lickety-split and you'll save a fortune.
Bill's jumper is brand new out of a packet. Creases down the sleeve.
Steve made him cover up his Tux toting T-Shirt.
Microsoft = deathwatch :)
Sure, I really want multiple versions of bedroom coded drivers for one f**king device.
Or not.
Mark: A lot of people work out of their own home. "Bedroom code drivers" as you say tend to be as good or better than any "cubicle coded drivers."
Open source it and have a wiki for each company to cover all the versions while allowing feedback and testimonials. Is this really the Information Age or not?
Mark and BigD
F**king devices are best kept in the bedroom. Better write the driver there than in a cubicle. All that testing...
You wouldn't trust a f**king device plugged into Vista if it were on the Internet. Though that and a web cam it would make for interesting YouTube fodder :)
Ah, this is why Gates is retiring.
Vista works fine for me. Then again I don't run it on five year old hardware.
I run it on 4 year old hardware, no complaints. Running like a champ.
Bill : Don't mind him folks
Ballmer : Heh Heh Heh *Retarted Laugh*
I have a vista laptop and don't mind it for every day tasks, but other than for looks (though xp can be modded) i would take xp any day to run any of my more intensive things. Hopefully Window 7 can be a true replacement for xp, and unlike vista can give power to software, not fancy os visualizations that just slow everything down.
@BigD145
No, it's the age of corporate responsibility and support packages which is kind of hard to get if you rely on home programmers.
Which is not to say I don't like Linux because I do, I just recognise the limitations of non-supported drivers.
Corporate responsibility? There's no such thing. It's a myth, like Santa Claus and Jesus. Show me otherwise and we'll talk.
Jesus is a myth? Man, when is this crappy site going to implement an 'ignore' feature. Jesus is far from a myth, and here's hoping that one day you get past the need to make yourself look like a 'rebel' and maybe explore the 'myth'.
vista is no different then xp which was no different then ME which was no different then 98. each time an operating system comes. the previous version was what everyone wants. each time a operating system comes out. there is always compatibility issues and everyone would much prefer the previous operating system. i remember hating xp for 2 years before things started coming around. vista only took less then a year. i personally like it much better then xp. and as for performance. each operating system is generally built around the hardware floating around at that particular time. i really see no difference in speed between vista and todays hardware compared to 98 and the hardware at that timeframe. each operating system gets bigger and bigger. but hardware also gets faster and faster to pump out that bigger operating system. so i really don't get the whole speed factor thing. and how each one is supposed to boot up faster then the previous and what not. 98 won't run on todays dual core processors or the higher memory we all use today. or the bigger hard drives. much like vista won't run on hardware during the 98 timeframe. it's all about advancement. and keeping up with the times. although i do wish the vendors would be in a more timely manner in with keeping there drives compatible for newer operating systems. people wouldn't be so quick to kill a new operating system if the vendors would get on the ball. and have the stuff ready to roll when the time came. wether it be hardware OR software. like for instance. everything is 64 bit but no one is advancing in that manner. everything is still designed more with 32 bit in mind. thus having to run a 32 bit operating system on a 64 bit pc. if you want to make the most of your pc. otherwise, convert to 64 bit operating system and run what little technology that is designed for 64 bit. which has been out for what, 6 years now.
Dude, no-one wanted Windows Me.
Have you ever heard of punctuation and paragraphs? They're you're friends.
Windows 7 hardware requirements:
"...Each computer core incorporates a series of miniature subspace field generators which creates a symmetrical (non-propulsive) field distortion of at least 3,350 millicochranes within the FTL (faster-than-light) core elements, and this permits the transmission and processing of optical data within the core at rates far exceeding light-speed. Core elements are based on FTL nanoprocessor units arranged into optical transtator clusters of 1,024 segments. In turn, clusters are grouped into processing modules composed of 256 clusters controlled by a bank of 16 isolinear chips.
http://www.star-trek-voyager.net/ship4/ship_computers1.htm
I love how vista was just put out and they are replacing it... vista= fail I am glad I kept a copy of xp after getting Vista
They are going back to what they used to do, releasing a new OS every 2-3 years.
I know its been almost 10 years since they did that, so some of you may not be old enough to remember this.
nah, I had does then Windows this window 3.1 or what ever then 95, then me then xp then i bought vista, but I think my point was more that cant can't even establish vista as a standard people are still trying to go back to xp now they are trying to push something new( and presumably more powerful so people computers really can't use it) out.
"nah, I had does then Windows this window 3.1"
I have no idea what that's supposed to say.
I meant I had the original then version 3.1
I have quadruple-booted Vista, Mista, Twista, and Ubuntu on my machine, if you set the registry config from 3 to 4 and apply the hotfix, you can actually hectaboot OS's, as long as Vista is your primary (not Twista).
If we progress the resources wants of 95 to XP to Vista on to Windows 7, then Microsoft shouldn't bother even considering certifying systems with less than 4 GB RAM.
There is nothing worse to turn off people from Microsoft than Windows on a resource inadequate system.