Newsletter Archives

• New NVIDIA driver for Windows 7

  Posted on March 3, 2009 at 04:49 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  NVIDIA just posted a new video driver for those of you who are taking Windows 7 for a test spin. I’m using it right now, and it’s working very well indeed.

  I’m a bit surprised because Microsoft didn’t change anything in the driver model between Vista SP2 and Windows 7 – so an update to the Windows 7 driver should be the same thing as an update to the Vista driver. That’s the theory anyway.

  That said, I have had a few problems with the NVIDIA driver running Windows 7 Beta 1 (build 7000). It’ll be interesting to see if they persist with the new driver.

  By the way, those of you who are running the Windows 7 Beta understand that it isn’t really a beta, right? I though that was kind of a given. Microsoft doesn’t do open betas – never has, at least since the days of Word 2.0. All of the open betas nowadays are what we used to call “marketing betas”. Microsoft doesn’t release betas to the public in order to ask for comments/suggestions about features. Microsoft releases marketing betas so people have a chance to get an early look, convince their companies to wait for a newer and better product – and in some cases garner bragging rights. As its name implies, a marketing beta is driven by marketing, not the development team.

  MS picks up a few bug reports from the marketing betas, but they’re generally not terribly useful.

  So those of you who are clicking the “Send Feedback” link that’s ubiquitous in Windows 7 should know that the feedback you’re sending will affect Windows 8, some day. The Windows 7 team is waaaaaay beyond the point where it can change anything substantive. My guess is that the only significant change in the past few months has been in the changes to User Account Control elevation, which I wrote about in Windows Secrets Newsletter.

  Ed Bott has a good analysis on his ZDNet blog. Ed’s been beta testing Microsoft software since Moses set the standards for manly hair styling. Guess I’m pretty long in the tooth in that department, too.

  Windows News marketing beta, NVIDIA, windows 7 beta