At 24 Oct 2007 07:05:24 -0400 Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:

> That's not true anymore. People are adding all sorts of hardware to
> their configurations, and expecting it to work.

I should've been clearer- I ment "out of the box." My last few PCs have
included vendor (Gateway, Dell, HP) utilities pre-installed that replace
"official" Microsoft-supplied OS features, like checking the web for
driver/OS updates, or tutorial/help screens, etc.

At least when you add a third-party hardware device later and "break" the
stability of the OS, it's easy to point a finger at the offending device,
since the problem won't predate the installation. As someone who
occasionally assembles his own PC, or radically rebuilds/upgrades an
existing one, I'm constantly amazed at Windows' ability to remove and
reinstall the appropriate drivers and keep the OS chugging along.