Theme for WinHEC is a drive toward simpler, broader device compliance

One of Vista's biggest faults in consumers' minds has been that so-called "supporting devices" don't truly seem to support the operating system -- turning them on the first time means fighting the OS. Microsoft wants that to change.

With much of the Windows 7 news actually having been divulged the week before at PDC, it was left for Microsoft corporate vice president and Windows chief Steven Sinofsky and his new partner, Core Operating System manager John DeVaan, to set a theme for WinHEC 2008 in Los Angeles that distinguished their efforts from Windows Vista while at the same time maintaining a respectable level of enthusiasm.

This year, the theme boils down to a pledge to meet hardware engineers halfway. Microsoft will make compliance goals simpler for devices to earn the coveted support logo for Windows 7. In turn, the company will urge engineers to pay more attention to those requirements, including the need for device drivers to stop pretending they need administrative privileges, and stop booting when the system's in Safe Mode.

In almost a direct quote from his boss Sinofsky's comments from the week before, DeVaan told attendees during yesterday's opening keynote, "When we shipped Vista, we immediately started getting quite a lot of feedback. And we took that feedback -- whether it was from reviews, or bloggers, and yes, even some TV commercials -- and as engineers we stepped back and tried to understand what it is that we should learn from that experience. We didn't have a lot of time, because we had to immediately turn around and work on finishing Server 2008 and Vista Service Pack 1." (Our thanks to Microsoft for the transcript.)

Many Microsoft executives last week -- including Vice President for Design and Development Mike Nash, to BetaNews directly -- have, in retrospect, stated they wished that the Vista support process had been handled better. Third-party engineers weren't on board, they believe.

One reason may have been the bifurcated and subdivided logo compliance language the company originally had in mind -- which was later scaled down, though which remained confusing. Most confused were consumers, who ended up seeing logos touting machines or equipment as "Vista Capable," without drawing the same distinguishing conclusions in their minds over whether that was synonymous with "Vista Ready." Some of those customers took legal action.

Though the device driver models for Windows 7 could be "tweaked" a bit for WDDM 2.1, it will not be the all-out overhaul that engineers experienced with Vista. Yesterday morning, John DeVaan emphasized that point if only to drive home the point that if the move to support Vista --and in turn, Win7 -- hasn't begun for them already, it begins today.

"In Windows Vista, we changed a lot of our device driver models and other things at low levels of the system, and it really takes a long time for that support to get created across the broad ecosystem represented by all of us here," admitted DeVaan. "For Windows 7 we have the tenet that if something works on Vista, it really should work on Windows 7. So all the work that you're doing on quality and support of Vista should transfer immediately to Windows 7, and that will make the first day of Windows 7 in the market be a lot smoother from an ecosystem readiness standpoint."

Earlier, DeVaan commented on how 95% of devices for PCs in the market today have the drivers they need to work with Vista. Somehow, some of us must have managed to have purchased precisely the 5% that don't. And frankly, even that 5% number is untenable from a consumer perspective -- a 1-in-20 chance that the device she purchases for her Vista-based PC won't work.

Sinofsky spelled out a revised goal for Win7 on Tuesday, borrowing a vision straight out of the mind of Bill Gates: the experience of seamlessly hemming the seams of the various installation experiences.

"We wanted to do a great job to enable an end-to-end device experience," Sinofsky said. "This is the idea that when you take a device from the out-of-the-box experience, unboxing, all the way through plugging it in, getting the drivers, and then using the device in a routine way, that we should help consumers complete that experience. We don't want to let them fall off a cliff, or have a difficult time figuring out how to integrate the different parts of Windows that might support that device. We want to really deliver end-to-end on the device experience."

To that end, Windows 7 will contain new on-screen features that should help direct consumers in a more encouraging manner through the initial installation process -- those features may premiere in later builds than the M3 edition distributed to engineers this week. But engineers will have to cooperate, which will mean ceasing the practice of explicitly instructing consumers to cancel the installation help features that Vista and Win7 provide -- a practice undertaken by a sizable plurality of manufacturers, if not yet a majority.

So Microsoft is widening the plank, as it were, and installing guard rails along the sides. Now it will be up to the manufacturers to finally, this time around, get on board.