If proof is needed...
... that the 'tech' industry dont know what they are really doing, or even what they are trying to achieve, then this would be exhibit B.
Microsoft and Windows 10 mobile debacle would be Exhibit A.
Samsung is advising customers against succumbing to Microsoft’s nagging and installing Windows 10. The consumer electronics giant's support staff have admitted drivers for its PCs still don’t work with Microsoft's newest operating system and told customers they should simply not make the upgrade. That’s nearly a year after …
It's more of a proof to never buy a Samsung computer, since it won't invest a penny in the lifecycle of its products.
Microsoft isn't responsible to develop all drivers for all materials, and if a PC makers refuse to invest in the maintenance of their drivers and applications, they sure should choose standard components from company that have an history of maintaining their drivers.
Kind of reminds me when ATI never updated their graphic drivers, condemning their customers to super bad performance and compatibility issues, when NVIDIA did the opposite.
I don't see why Samsung should spend craploads of money just to support Microsoft's insistence on foisting beta-grade software on people who really don't need or want it. I don't know how old on average we're talking about here, but the NP-R590 mentioned in the article is seven bloody years old; at some point, you are going to have to deal with the fact that ancient machines are going to stop getting driver updates.
"I don't see why Samsung should spend craploads of money just to..."
Seriously? So the worlds most popular desktop operating system has been out a year, and you think it's fine for SAMSUNG to not bother updating their drivers for it..? Then who should?
Additionally, I'd wager £10 that the chipset has a driver, but sammy hasn't gotten around to repackaging it with its latest crapware application yet.
Put W10 on a 7 year old Dell Latitude that shipped with Vista. Drivers worked fine out the box, other than SD slot. Used the Vista driver and.... It worked!
It worked because it was just a driver, written properly.
There's few drivers that were certified against Vista, 7 or 8.x that won't work on 10 - same driver architecture. Seems that Sammy haven't written them properly in the first place (they look for a particular version of NT kernel for example), or they package drivers with 3rd party apps that they haven't updated yet.
I'm a firm believer in vendors writing drivers properly, and do not contain applications.
Additionally, I'd wager £10 that the chipset has a driver, but sammy hasn't gotten around to repackaging it with its latest crapware application yet.
I had no idea it was this hard to either visit the AMD, or Intel Website, install a quick javascript package (YIKES!), and let it sus out the the Drivers for you.... At least this is how I used to do it, before I slipstreamed such 'Drivers' onto my Install Media (e.g. a USB Stick), Graphics Hurr durr that'll either be AMD, nVidia, or zark forbid Intel again I'm fairly sure the Sound is likely as not coming from some Realtek AC97 Chipset as not... The Touchpad? Likely either a Synaptics, or an Alps. Isn't this what Device ID's are for?
Its 2016, and, I can Google for my Drivers boo hoo hoo!
Except for when that doesn't work because despite being a perfectly normal AMD/Intel/Nvidia chip that may well work with the chipset OEM's driver, the hardware IDs of the chipset have been slightly altered so that they aren't included in the driver INFs from the chipset OEM.
In some cases, such as AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers this can be worked around by adding the correct hardware IDs to the INF, but this can be a bit fiddly to get right.
With Intel you're mostly stuffed as their chipset setup utility doesn't actually contain and drivers and just downloads the ones it decides you need, which with altered hardware IDs is none at all.
"Its 2016, and, I can Google for my Drivers boo hoo hoo!"
Why do you need to Google for your drivers? Don't they just come with your OS? And are updated via your OS's central update system?
Linux user for 8 years now, mildly amused by all this driver business with Windows that seems to involve downloading random executables from the Internet!
Seriously? So the worlds most popular desktop operating system has been out a year, and you think it's fine for SAMSUNG to not bother updating their drivers for it..? Then who should?
Did the world finally succomb en masse to the Nagware known as Windows 10? Methinks the troll doth protest too much.
"I'm a firm believer in vendors writing drivers properly, and do not contain applications."
And Santa
And fairies.
And unicorns.
And honest politicians.
Reality is... Even with new hardware. The chances of updating Windows and still having full functionality is NOT GUARANTEED. Never has been. Never will be.
NOT A NEW PROBLEM!
So tell me.
Who do you think causes the need for new drivers to exist?
Well I have upgraded an Asus EEEpc 1008HA (from mid 2009) to Windows 10, no problem. I just upgraded a 10 year old Core 2 Duo (P965 chipset) as well, no problem.
Certain device makers are just terrible at updating drivers. Broadcom has been pretty bad. Samsung is terrible (just look at the pathetic state of their tablets, which hardly ever get any of the updates they promise).
Of course if you want to avoid support for your hardware going away, best bet seems to be running Linux. Strange how we got to that state.
Several ASUS and no problem. [Not even THAT UEFI problem].
Betting on firmware problems. Motherboard &/| Devices.
Just as Microsoft has a grip on the Upper side of the Boot Stack. PC|MB Manufacturers should have TOTAL control on firmware images below the OS I/O.
A firmware should be true to identity with a 'witness' provided by the manufacturer, on committing the update.
[New-System|User to personalize later, through the OS, preferentially].
If Samsung not co-working on the issue, then those machines should be dismissed from the Update Program.
The user updating|refreshing the BIOS|UEFI to the latest use to help a lot.
Damaged Peripheral Firmware is just a nightmare -as is now, for every OS-!
On the other hand, my Asus G51 gets locked into a perpetual reboot and can't find any storage media during the Win 10 upgrade. I really don't expect them to release new drivers and BIOS for a six year old machine. I wish MS would stop trying to push the upgrade because their compatibility check obviously isn't taking the BIOS into account.
"...my Asus G51 gets locked into a perpetual reboot..."
THAT'S the UEFI problem.
Update UEFI, trough their own tools.
Never there. But my guess is that Windows Update will continue after this firmware UPD.
Helpful also to enter UEFI setup and Set to 'Secure Boot' and Unset the 'Compatible-Mode'. Clean, refreshed BIOSes don't have this problem.
"Well I have upgraded an Asus EEEpc 1008HA (from mid 2009) to Windows 10, no problem. I just upgraded a 10 year old Core 2 Duo (P965 chipset) as well, no problem."
I just tried that tonight on Asus EeePC, an X101CH. Windows 10 refused to install because Intel didn't supply upgraded video chipset drivers. At least now I know I won't get hoodwinked into an unintended "upgrade" by closing a requester window and finding close means yes instead of no.
In light of this, I'm a little surprised at the existence of this story. Surely the Windows 10 "upgrade" should refuse to install if there's not a full set of compatible drivers available, especially network drivers.
Same issue on a (whisper it) Mac Mini.
Disabled the Intel driver, installed at a ridiculously low resolution, when it came back it seemed to have magically found an updated driver, reset the resolution.
Made sure to select custom install, disabled the "phone home" options - the ones that are user settable at least. Was still dismayed that Microsoft decided that it should delete Minesweeper and XP Mode.
"Of course if you want to avoid support for your hardware going away, best bet seems to be running Linux. Strange how we got to that state".
Speaking as a lifetime Unix user, and an occasional Linux device driver writer, and as sometime who recently had to take a hammer to his wife's computer after it announced that it was going to 'upgrade' to Windoze 10 in 5 minutes...
Not quite. Keeping up-to-date with kernel changes is a major, major, PITA. I did a PCIe driver a few years ago, which was originally for 2.4.7. There were significant or major changes in so many kernel versions that I lost count - 2.4.10, 2.4.17, 2.4.22, 2.6, whatever, not to mention the whole v3 and 4 thing. The only way to keep on top of it is to select a major distro - something like RHEL6 - and try to support that.
The kernel people will update a few selected drivers (which I've never heard of) when they make a change, but the rest of us are on our own, with little or no usable documentation.
I was wondering why Linux hadn't "conquered the world", seeing as we have, decades of Windows tepidity. Displacement Activity has given a first hint. Direction.
I might add the eternal baseline advice: if things seem to need changing, it might really be MS working your brain. They want you to think that their technology is worth emulating.
My EeePC 1015PX initially upgraded to Win10 OK (from Win7 Starter), sans webcam/mic and Asus specific Power Management nonsense.
Unfortunately six months on, and after the last Win 10 upgrade, it now locks up completely and spontaneously at random intervals - something to do with the Wifi I think as I sometimes notice it'll lose WiFi connection a few seconds prior to lock up and if I slam the lid down and get it to hibernate in time, it is sometimes good for a little while and I don't lose all my work when I open the lid again and save what I can.
I've tried quite hard to like Win10, but I think this little netbook is destined for Mint or Lubuntu...
I thought maybe this might mean buying a Samsung was a good idea, though I'd been thinking of a Lenovo "retina" style screen laptop.
I'd probably put Linux Mint on whatever new laptop I buy, unless MS brings out a new OS with the best bits of NT3.51, XP and Windows 7.
Trouble is, you (almost always) have to pay for Microsoft's malware whenever you buy a new machine, before you can throw it away and install a decent OS. I wish I could build myself a new laptop as easily as I can build a new desktop. That would help my anger management no end.
I seem to recall that somewhere in the fine print, the license agreement says "If you are not going to use or do not want or in any way are not satisfied, you can return the software license for a full refund of the software price.
Microsoft says:
How Can I Return a Product for a Refund?
•Return the product within 30 days of purchase date.
•Provide a copy of your original sales receipt, credit card statement, or canceled check.
•Provide complete contact information, including your street address (sorry, no PO boxes), city, state or province, ZIP or postal code, telephone number, and e-mail address (if applicable).
•Uninstall the software product from your computer and any storage devices and delete any backup copies.
•Include all related media and manuals.
•Provide the name and location of the retailer from which you purchased the product.
•Explain briefly why you want to return the product for a refund.
•Send the product, its original packaging, and all related materials via traceable means to our Return Center. For tracking and security reasons, all returns must be sent by FedEx, FedEx Ground, UPS, DHL, or insured U.S. mail with delivery confirmation.
Disagree.
I own an ageing RF710 (one of THE first core i7 laptops).
Its had: a new battery, new CD rom. new speakers ( i vacummed dust off and sucked the paper out of the speaker!) new ram upgrade, new intel wifi / bt card and last month, fresh from Sammys own UK parts distributor a new top chassis including keyboard and glide pad and all the associated electronics.
Thats pretty decent spare availability AFAIAC.
Its never skipped a beat. Best laptop i've ever owned.
This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.
-The Fifth Elephant
(Sorry, your post just reminded me of this)
It's more of a proof to never buy a Samsung computer, since it won't invest a penny in the lifecycle of its products.
Agreed. As much as I usually find Microsoft is to blame for these sorts of problems, this is an occasion where Samsung seem to be the ones suffering from Cranial-Rectal Insertion. As if my experience with their products hasn't already convinced them to put Samsung on my do-not-buy list (abandoning the Note8 tablet well before it's end-of-life, deciding to sit on warranty repairs for 3 or so weeks before they even look at them, and the shoddy engineering of their flat-panel TVs or at least the ones I've had the misfortune to set-up and troubleshoot), this will definitely make me avoid whenever possible. Would probably be better to buy a cheapass Hisense product, since it won't be any worse in quality while being loads cheaper.
My Note 4 is more computer than phone, so I'm not OT. Works perfectly, regular OS updates, excellent build quality. And gets the inevitable question from fanbois, "It's got a pen, too?" Yep, and it talks to the machine if you leave it behind. I'm OK with Sammy stuff.
I can understand that a company the size of Samsung must really struggle to write drivers for it's hardware 10 months after an Operating System has been released. Clearly this has nothing to do with profit motive and Samsung would just love their customers to upgrade to Windows 10 for free than buy a new PC.
OK, if they'd just brought out a new version, Update at your own risk, maybe.
If they'd tried to help punters with ACCURATE lists of supported hardware, maybe.
If they'd even offered a "check my hardware for compatibility" maybe.
If they'd offered a trial live DVD, even a download of the same, maybe.
BUT THEY DIDN'T, DID THEY? THEY'VE PUSHED AND CONNED AND MANIPULATED IN EVERY WAY THEY KNOW HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO "UPGRADE".
I'd say they've MADE themselves responsible.
Off topic - anyone know how many feet Slurp have left for target practice?
I was pestered into upgrading our Sammy to win10 and it kept on blue screening. It was then that it dawned on me that perhaps, just perhaps, computing is still in the dark ages when it comes to actually working easily. Checking the samsung website told me that I couldn't upgrade my specific model. So, quick uninstall later and I'm left with the incessant requests to upgrade to win10 - aarrgh - I hate computers !!!!
Was the message my laptop displayed to me over the weekend. Needless to say I shut it down immediately and used the other (Linux) laptop to Google for what the virus was I'd somehow installed.
Turns out the virus was called Windows 10 and this was a 'normal' update message from it upon unsleeping, having downloaded some updatey crud...
Utter wankery.
Edit: Not a Sammy lappy, an ASUS Gamer Republic one I recently got for audio work with Reaper, etc
I asked for the upgrade on my PC nearly a month ago and finally gave up waiting to receive any notifications or a download of the update and had to go to the MS site and kick it off manually.
The upgrade went without a hitch and was done in about an hour (excluding the download).
So, as ever with this sort of thing, YMMV...