Re:The new "better" driver model sucks. (Score 1)

Most of the BSOD crashes in Windows are caused by 3rd party drivers - primarily graphics and printer drivers.

For Vista, Microsoft undertook a massive re-architecture and rewrite of the video and printer driver architectures, enabling all code that didn't need to live in the kernel in order to communicate directly with hardware to be run outside the kernel in the user-mode driver infrastructure.

This means that the majority of video/printer driver code runs OUTSIDE the kernel and has already resulted in a massive reduction in the number of BSOD on Vista.

Of course, this means that drivers for video cards and printers needed to be rewritten. Whilst there were initially many issues with the video drivers in particular as the OEM's were getting used to working with the new driver model, most of those issues are now nailed. If you're still seeing stability/perf issues, try updating your drivers to the latest supported version and you should see your issues disappear.

HOWEVER, these driver architecture changes do not apply to proprietary drivers written by a third party (like those from Apple) - if those drivers corrupt memory, overwrite system structures, deadlock, etc., then there's nothing that ANY commercial OS can do to prevent a core-dump/BSOD.