Driver Support

[epp_b]

First of all, I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this poll, but I thought that it was the most relavent, because I'm talking about hardware drivers here....anyway...I'm guessing that, understandably, this will probably apply to mostly Linux users.However, it can also apply to those who want to use older versions of operating systems because they simply don't like the newer ones (yet). For example: I use Windows 98SE on my machine because I detest Windows XP. I can see that some mfg's are starting to phase out of support for Windows 98SE What manufacturers have you bought computers from, and how well did they support the OS you wanted to use, if something other than the provided OS.Personally, I find that IBM has very good driver support. I could buy almost any brand-new IBM laptop today, and get Windows 98SE up and running on it with ALL of the hardware working (not to mention Linux, OS/2....)ECS also has very good driver support for several operating system platforms and versions.Sony, on the other hand, only seems to support the latest Windows operating system for many of it's computer product lines.

[Guest genaldar]

IBM usually doesn't go the other way though. On a lark we looked into installing XP on my brothers pentium 150 laptop (48 megs of ram, shipped with win 95). That wouldn't work so we looked into loading 2k. That would work (if we trimmed the fat, which I can do, I had 2k flying on this computer back when it was a celeron 400). IBM didn't have drivers for anything on that system that they guaranteed would work. They had some nt drivers that might. Then again, it was an odd request.

[Stryder]

It really depends on the hardware manufacturer. Computer companies like Dell and IBM do not write the drivers for the hardware, the company that makes the hardware does. So the onus is really on the hardware maker to have drivers developed for multiple OSs, then on the PC maker to make them available to the end user. But you can always bypass the PC maker and go straight to the hardware maker. On a laptop you may be a little more dependant on the PC maker for drivers, but on a desktop you should never have to rely on the PC maker. It is too easy to tell what hardware you have even if your system came with poor documentation. Just pop open the case. My last several PCs I built myself, but the last one I bought, a Dell, I always went to the manufacturers website to get all the driver updates or alternative drivers for multi-booting OSs, not the Dell site.Just another way of looking at it.