Posted 05/11/2009 at 11:05:05pm

  
I really am getting sick and tired of this hardware compatibility/interoperability nonsense.  Once, this was for the want of proper engineering solutions--unwritten drivers, bugs, hardware limitations etc.--but now it's seemingly for surreptitious and nefarious reasons such as forcing users into accepting unwanted upgrades, or for more sinister reasons such as collusion between software and hardware manufacturer so that they can control PC users' habits.

This 'Stereo Mix' issue smells to high heaven as if it's in same vein as others.

Recently, Dell has been selling PCs, especially laptops, that cannot be DOWNGRADED from Vista to XP as the Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) Bus Driver for High Definition Audio (SP33867) is not properly supported by Microsoft and no one supplies an appropriate replacement XP driver for the RealTek HD Audio chip.

Thus, we have the ludicrous and ridiculous situation of where XP installs AOK on these Dell laptops EXCEPT for the audio (of which there is none--forget High Definition audio, there's not even a whisper of low definition mono).  Of course, this suits Microsoft who is very eager to sell you a Vista O/S [and you will have already bought one with the laptop anyway], but it begs the question of why it is only the audio as they could have crippled the downgrade in many other ways.  At an earlier time--before HD audio and the HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface)--Microsoft would have been very keen to have its O/S work on as much hardware as was possible, so what has changed?

Seems to me that under cover of darkness a big repugnant rat comes out and urinates all over the delicate works, you mightn't catch him in the act but you can smell him everywhere.

Can anyone shed more light on this?  What facts do we actually know about the RIAA's involvement and or why are hardware manufactures becoming so complicit in locking users out of their PCs or in forcing them to accepting certain hardware functionality only on their terms?  (Not long ago the exact opposite would have been true, they would have wanted to offer as many functions as was possible and make them available to users in the most flexible way.)

What we need is a site or a hardware compatibility page here on this site that lists, and where possible, provides quick references or fixes for all of these artificially concocted aberrations, which collectively waste many thousands of users' hours not to mention forcing them into accepting unnecessary and expensive upgrades.

If nothing else, it would expose complicit hardware manufacturers such as the likes of Dell and the word would soon get around about what hardware NOT to buy.


Any ideas, anyone?