Coding Sanity

Well, Vista has been officially released, but guess what? The nVidia drivers I thought wouldn't have been released haven't. I hate being right. In fact, happy days, nVidia have deigned to release a new Beta driver. Well done nVidia! The new OS has finally been released after almost a 5 year delay, and you've managed to figure out a beta driver! I mean everyone was going on about Longhaul, but the reality is that the delays Microsoft had was nothing compared to the sheer incompetance of the hardware manufacturers. Oh, yeah Creative can be welcomed to the "we can't write a driver given 5 years" club too.

So, here I am stuck with a disastrously buggy OS, and frankly I can't tell if it's Microsoft's fault or not, but unlike the drivers the OS isn't in Beta, so I guess it's not. Until further notice I hereby place all blame for poor Vista reviews on the utterly moronic planning of companies such as Creative and nVidia. Once they actually release official drivers we'll see if that stance can be revised, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd guess that stable drivers are still some months away.

What I still don't get is why Microsoft isn't raising all kinds of hell about this.
 

Update 3 Feb 2007

Well, it seems that some nVidia owners are starting a class action lawsuit against nVidia. Good for them! I wish them luck. A friend of mine was conned into buying the 8800, which for quite some time was effectively a paperweight. I have my doubts as to what damage could be claimed from not been able to play games though ;-D However, they do seem to be collecting photos claiming that nVidia's hardware is Vista-ready, which it is clearly not. Nonetheless it must be said that at least there is some traction from nVidia's side, they released new drivers recently, albeit still as buggy as hell, with over 27 features not fully implemented, and of course still in Beta. But as pathetic and useless as that may be, at least they've actually released something. The same cannot be said for Creative. The latest set of drivers for my Audigy is dated 12th Jan 2007.

Unbelievably, much as I thought it would be impossible, the latest nVidia drivers (100.59) are actually significantly more buggy than the previous drivers (97.46). In fact, I have had over 14 complete system lockups today alone, all from the sheer difficulty of rendering my screen saver. I cannot, under any circumstances express my sheer hatred of nVidia at this point without swearing like a trooper. All I can say is they and Creative are now on my "never buy from these guys again" list.

In fact nVidia have been caught censoring the righteous anger of their customers (one of the reasons for the class action suit), and have posted some guidelines for posting in future, I especially enjoy these ones:

• "Post [that] the [hardware/software] [does] not work", hmm let's see, my computer does a complete lockup when attempting to render my screensaver, such that I must reboot. This replaces the previous buggy behaviour with worse symptoms, the only thing that has changed is the driver, so I guess it must have nothing to do with nVidia's hardware or software, right?
• "Ask for direct response from nVidia". Wow! That one's a doozy. Let me get this straight, customers will be banned and censored for daring to ask where the drivers for their hardware are? If we ask about timeframes, why the drivers are so buggy, why it took 5 years to deliver beta drivers or any other pertinent questions, then our posts will be deleted?

So, the end result? Well, Vista is coming off my machine, and I will not be reinstalling it until SP1 is out, if then. This goes down as my worst OS upgrade in history, and I'm including Windows ME in that equation, so you can figure how bad it has been. If I just wanted a pretty OS I'd get a Mac. It may not be able to play decent games, or run any of my tools, but frankly neither can the very expensive paperweight sitting on my desk.

At least with a Mac I might be able to watch my screensaver...