Crappy drivers...

[roadrunner]

Ah, the rants & raves section...perfect for this.

I am so sick of half-assed, poorly tested drivers. As a programmer, I do know what it takes to do something like a driver, and the huge task of testing it. But far too many companies make such a poor effort.

Creative would be the biggest problem here, I think. Their drivers are bloated, for one. And rarely updated for another. I've owned two X-Fi's; the first one I got rid of after about a week, after having too many problems with it. Alot of the issues were well-known to Creative and some still haven't been addressed.

Their Vista drivers just flat-out suck, too. And with how long they've had to get a driver out the door, have random lock-ups/BSOD's thanks to their drivers is not cool. My old machine (which didn't have an X-Fi), ran the Vista beta's perfectly, with zero problems. But my current machine, running the retail Vista, looks up/BSODs constantly with the Creative drivers installed. Oddly, the problems are worse under the x86 Vista than the x64

I've never been a fan of ATI's drivers (since CCC needs .NET ), but I will say their current Vista drivers are pretty solid, and a huge improvement over the older drivers. The current XP drivers (7.3) have a known problem with BSODing on install, which I got to witness first hand. A clean install of XP (with some minor nLite tweaking) got that mess straightened out. One thing irksome about their drivers is, again, the .NET requirement. Forgetting about that, I go to install the driver after a clean install of XP. I get the little warning about not having .NET. Opps, ok my bad. But do I get a way to cancel the install? Nope. It just blindly installs the driver, leading to some nice errors on reboot.

And now AMD wants to make CCC the main interface for everything they do


Sigh. I'm done now...

[[buck]]

LOL, after reading the title and the first few lines, I was convinced this was about crappy automobile drivers

[roadrunner]

LOL, after reading the title and the first few lines, I was convinced this was about crappy automobile drivers

Oh, I could go on and on about that! I swear I live in "The Retarded Driver Capital of The World"

[socheat]

Oh, I could go on and on about that! I swear I live in "The Retarded Driver Capital of The World"

Do you live in Columbus, Ohio too?!

[LoneWolf]

Oh, I could go on and on about that! I swear I live in "The Retarded Driver Capital of The World"

Do you live in Columbus, Ohio too?!

Ohio (at least on the interstates) is remarkably sane compared to here in Michigan. When I used to drive to Cleveland, I thought I was on another planet once I crossed state lines.

Whereas in Michigan, people drive 70-80mph in bumper-to-bumper, never use turn signals when they can just abruptly change lanes for maximum fright, and have denounced the theory that "keep right except to pass" is the epitome of etiquette and good manners.

That's not including the fact that Michigan drivers believe the yellow light works the same as a red light changing to a green light --time to move into launch acceleration, and bomb it on through the intersection.

[roadrunner]

Here, everyone thinks that you can still go for at least 10 seconds after the light changes to red. It's very rare to not see at least one person run each red light

I once saw someone run a light with a cop sitting right there; the cop did absolutely nothing

[socheat]

LoneWolf, that's interesting you say that. I lived in Michigan for my entire life until moving to Columbus last year, and I must say, I can't stand the drivers here. Maybe, I'm just one of the drivers you're complaining about

Whereas in Michigan, people drive 70-80mph

That's a GOOD thing! Especially since the speed limits on the freeways is 70mph. I'm used to that and can't stand the 60mph limits on the freeways here.

never use turn signals when they can just abruptly change lanes for maximum fright,

Same here w/ the drivers in Columbus. It's as if they think signaling is optional.

and have denounced the theory that "keep right except to pass" is the epitome of etiquette and good manners.

I'll give you that much about Michigan drivers. You're not the first person I've heard say that.

That's not including the fact that Michigan drivers believe the yellow light works the same as a red light changing to a green light --time to move into launch acceleration, and bomb it on through the intersection.

Not sure what's worse, thinking yellow is a green, or thinking red is pretty much the same as yellow as they do here. Long story short, you will always find 3 or 4 cars who think they can squeeze in across the intersection, blow the red, and end up blocking the intersection.

[roadrunner]

It should be legal to shoot stupid drivers...

...and don't get me started on drivers talking on cell phones

I always liked the bumper stick that says "Do you think you'd drive any better if I shoved that phone up you a$$?"

[socheat]

I always liked the bumper stick that says "Do you think you'd drive any better if I shoved that phone up you a$$?"

hahahahah

[roadrunner]

Go here:
http://www.stickergiant.com/

And in the search box type "phone", and select stickers as the product type...plenty more really good ones

[Wesociety]

Speaking of crappy automobile drivers...
I live in Phoenix, AZ, the #1 red light running city in the USA.

Along with the other problems we have here such as road rage, under-insured motorists and drivers with no insurance (including illegal immigrant Mexicans). All of this and more leads to high auto insurance rates for everyone the lives here.

[martini]

at first glance, i thought this was crappy drivers - the kind that is on the street. lol. anyway, i'd say the crappiest of drivers have to be ones that are heavily branded (when it comes to PC peripherals, like disc drives and similar). i'd rather go for clone drives any day - it's cheap and since a lot of companies slap on their own branding, drivers are plenty easy to find.