For Linux their might be a binary driver, if you are lucky, but if not you are stuck with a working system but with no extras and your system working unaccelerated ...

While I can't say that nVidia is guaranteed to work, I've found that you are more likely to have graphics drivers available from them, than you are to get ATI drivers. A little research and I found that while ATI opened (parts of) its source, they don't really have any real interest in helping the OSS community or supporting Linux. Therefore, I've found ATI to be a little more hit or miss than nVidia (for example, my husband has one of the HD series cards from ATI, it happens to be one of the like three HD series cards that don't have 3D Acceleration yet, and the proprietary one makes the system less stable than a bad WinME install).

Most Linux system will support most graphics cards and monitors out of the box at the highest resolution Windows often won't until you load a manufacturer supplied driver for the card or the monitor

Exactly.

That's it? The LCD on my MacBook Pro is 1680 x 1050 but graphics will drive a 1920 x 1200 external monitor.

You do realize I'm talking about before graphics drivers are installed, right? With the drivers, my card can support HD resolutions.

That said, I can only speak for my experiences of Win2k, XP, and Vista installations (of which, as a computer tech, has been many), as the last time I installed Win9x was...well, in 9x, and NT4 was one I never really played with.

That said, I would kind of expect Apple software to support Apple hardware straight out of the box, that's kind of the point of running an OS only a handful of hardware combinations.

Let's not forget the "endless reboot" problem experienced by many Vista users that stemmed from an update that was originally marked as required.

Probably counts RC users (which have to register), launch party hosts, and institutions that had access to the release software before launch day (such as schools, I've actually had my hands on a release copy of Win7 Pro for nearly a month).

On some Windows installs, I've still had to go to two hands...

Have you even considered running Linux on your i7 build? I'm currently running Jaunty 64-bit full time on my i7 with 6GB of RAM and nVidia GTX 260. It runs at least as well as my former Win7 64-bit install, if not better in some areas.

You can thank ATI and nVidia for that. Even ATI's drivers aren't fully open-sourced due to legal issues, and although they've open sourced parts of their drivers, they've stated outright that they have no intent on helping the open source community with writing the drivers. nVidia is only slightly better because they actively develop drivers that work reasonably well on Linux, but they won't open their source. That leaves three-quarters of the drivers that are maintained by the community to be reverse engineered.

That said, Windows doesn't support most graphics cards out of the box, either. I don't know about you, but one of the first things I do when installing a fresh copy of Windows on a computer is go straight to the video card manufacturer so I don't have to deal with a crappy 800x600 resolution. Win7 was better in that it could actually support 1280x1024, but I still had to get the "extra binary driver" in order to actually do anything with my card and make full use of it.

Mmmm, vodka and lemonade... Dammit, now you're making me wish it was Friday...

Your signature certainly fits your attitude. :)

I think Microsoft and the majority of the population perpetuate the idea of just letting "mommy and daddy" (in this case, Microsoft, or the vendor in general) handle everything, unquestioningly. And, I agree, it is astounding that they do this.

That reminds me of the "Mac Attack" commercial, with the legal text that pops up. :P

How is telling someone that's complaining to disable the addon or spend thirty seconds on Google to uninstall it (and it's actually been fixed by M$ and doesn't require anything more than updating it to get rid of it) apologist?

I don't deny (fully agree, actually) that how M$ rolled it out is shady. Ethically speaking, they should have anything that affects a third party application as a separate download and make it clear what it's for. However, thanks to US law, they can basically say "you agreed to our terms of service when you installed the OS, and our ToS says we can push out whatever updates we want."

The addon was rolled out with an update to the .NET framework, because ClickOnce is part of the .NET framework. The addon adds functionality to Firefox to make use of ClickOnce (as opposed to requiring Internet Explorer to download an application that was deployed using ClickOnce). With a little twisting of logic, it becomes quite easy to see how Microsoft probably felt justified to include the addon in with the framework update. It's not like it was in an update for, say Office or the hibernate functionality.

There are two things, also, that add to people's negative reactions -- 1.) the initial inability to uninstall the addon, and 2.) the fact that it's Microsoft.

What most people seem to be missing is that the JRE also ships with a Firefox addon, and it's not obvious that it's getting installed when you install the JRE.

They also seem to be missing that the Java addon also cannot be uninstalled from the addon window. This is not something that Microsoft or Sun or Oracle did that circumvented something in Firefox. This is how Firefox handles addons installed by the permission level typically used by installers (system-wide). While Microsoft was in the wrong to not be more open about the installation, they at least took a step in the right direction by updating the addon so that it could be removed in the addon window.

Was Microsoft wrong to go about it the way they did? Certainly (and, in my opinion, so is Sun/Oracle; no one should be able to modify a third party application without being very explicit about it). Was it their fault the addon's uninstall option was disabled? Kind of, since it's also Firefox's policy to behave that way for the different access levels. Does Microsoft deserve the lack of trust they get? Definitely. Is the sky falling because of this update? No.

Regardless of what either the M$ fanbois or the M$ haters think, Microsoft is run by mere humans. This particular issue was partly unintentional (as evidenced by the update to allow it to be uninstalled) and partly poor customer service. At least Microsoft put in a description for the addon that shows up in the addon window so the user has an idea of what it's for (which the Java Quick Starter 1.0 doesn't do, surprisingly).

And thank you for your considerate response.

Then don't run Windows. There are plenty of perfectly acceptable alternatives out there.

And I'm not an "apologist retard" (and resorting to name calling is unbecoming, though I guess I should expect it from some posting as an AC). I actually don't really like Microsoft. However, my current career path has put me in a position that allows me to understand what the addon actually is and is used for, and I'm therefore less quick to put on my Tin Foil Hat in this case.

It takes all of thirty seconds to go to Google, type in the name of the addon, and get all the information you need about what it is, what it's for, and how to uninstall it.

There's a town in North Carolina that has tried this. As far as I know, Time Warner took the matter to the state to try to get them to force the town to shut it down. I don't know how far through or if anything has come of it yet, though.

Actually, it's not "completely unrelated." ClickOnce is part of the .NET framework. The addon allows someone using Firefox to download/install an application deployed using ClickOnce, instead of having to go to Internet Explorer to do so. The .NET Framework is a package of various tools for both developers and clients. Service Packs are designed to update, enhance, or add to that suite of tools. The addon is an addition to those tools. Java does the same thing when you install the Java Runtime client. It's just as equally uninstallable-but-disable-able. Is it shady? Certainly. It should be clearer when *anyone* that is not the user running the currently opened instance of Firefox installs an addon. Are MS being dickish about it? Not really. The disabled uninstall is, as someone else pointed out, a permissions discrepancy between program that installed the addon (the "user" it runs under) and the physical user. There's also an update, and other instructions, that allows it to be removed.

Then, there's also the fact that the only way to open the cannon to reach the roof of the castle to get to Yoshi and the flying cap for the outside part (yes, it's just a fun thing), requires getting all the stars. It also makes for a good time-sink when you're laid up in bed rest.

You mean the one that only has a tiny fraction of those SNES games? I think the console with the most games still currently has less than a hundred titles in it.