Vista Hardware Compatibility Issues

Early up-graders to Windows Vista are reporting annoyance by the loads of software and hardware incompatibilities coming to the fore as they use Windows Vista. For the record the Redmond, Wash., software giant launched Vista and a companion update called Windows Vista Application Compatibility Update to the market on Jan 30. Seems like they expected a lot of issues with the system because they made sure that Vista patches were available on the net even before the Compact disks of the operating system left the factory.

That update, KB929427, makes good some of the more challenging application incompatibilities, but the nightmare is far from over, for the early bird upgraders. There is nothing new about compatibility issues when a new operating system is launched, however, Vista is not only has a number of incompatibilities with existing applications but also lacks many drivers for critical hardware components and hardware peripherals. Support for Vista hardware is compounded by the fact that most vendors have not created drivers of their hardware that is compatible for Windows Vista support making more of a headache. This is understood when it comes to peripherals such as printers and scanners but so far as critical hardware components such as hard drives, chipset controllers and video cards are concerned the lack of compatibility will crash the system. The manufacturers of primary components of the computer hardware system are just not ready with their wares to support Vista.

Early adopters of Microsoft Windows Vista have the following problems to contend with:

• They will face a drastic lack of available drivers vendors leading to conflicts in applications.
• New peripheral hardware components will lack compatible Vista drivers and the old components drivers will simply refuse to work in most cases.
• New security feature often flags existing applications as suspicious and interrupts service
• The OS automatically recommends which Vista versions is best for each PC's configuration. This will cause small businesses to download different Windows Vista Edition.

So in the ultimate analysis, Vista may seem attractive in it’s packaging but it still has far to go.