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May 12, 2007
Chaffeurs not Drivers
There I was waiting for Windows Vista to update itself on my Vista Capable Toshiba notebook. The process completed and instead of irritating me to restart every 5 minutes, there was a more diplomatically worded dialog (so someone has apparently realised that a re-word would enhance the Vista experience). I wanted to see what had updated but didn't see the option to that prior to update.
After reboot, Vista sensed (well, a more refined approach anyway) that I was eager to find out what had updated and it showed me the update history. Not just for this month, but the whole history. I found out that the Intel 945GM Chipset drivers had failed to update. Clicked on the hyperlink to get me more info and it led me to a 404 response.
"Right", I said in my most John Cleese manner, and went to the Intel website to search for the drivers. After a few tries, managed to download WINVISTA154.EXE. Ran that.
Now, this November 2006 vintage entry level Tosh notebook - Core Duo, enhanced with 1.5Gb RAM - is not the fastest, but it's quite reasonable in general use. However, the Intel driver installation program threw up a dialog telling me what version of driver it would be, then the hard disk burbled without pause. Just kept on burbling.... Then the screen changed to 800x600 resolution and I was itchy enough to go through Control Panel to switch it back to 1280x800 while I watched it burble some more. However, the whole screen went black, burble, burble. Hasty human. I waited until the hard disk light did not flicker any more. Held down the power switch for 4 seconds, rebooted. After a successful reboot (the second time was good), I had to sit through a SAT test. In particular, the WinSAT. Shades of Linux - it was a black command prompt window, was this Windows System Assessment Test. Told me test timings, told me that it was testing 3D Graphics. Finally, I'm back to normal - or what constitutes normalcy.
Which prompted me to think - whilst in some areas the Microsoft has had some re-culturing in handling the end user - diplomatic prompts and the feel good experience, the illusion was completely broken by Intel with their DOS classic or Linux classic command prompt handling. And why does installing a few small driver components need to tax the machine's goodwill so much?
Posted by Anandasim at May 12, 2007 11:22 AM
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