If technology is all about progress, not being stagnant, then why do they make you buy new Ethernet cards for new software? The new Ethernet card is going to do EXACTLY THE SAME THING as the old one, but because they want to rip you off, they change up the protocol a bit so you need to buy a new one to use a new driver. What a waste.
Technology takes one step forward but businessmen take it 5 steps back, that's about how well progress is going on the hardware side of things. Good businesses earn money through innovation, not ripping off people by duplicating the same old stuff. For example, I'd gladly buy a gigabit Ethernet card to upgrade from my 10/100 one, because a gigabit one is actually a step forward. I'd gladly buy a new graphics card because it's faster than my current one, a new TV card if it actually has a better picture, a new hard drive if it's bigger/faster, a new printer if it prints better pictures, etc. But buying the same exact thing just so businesses can get their stupid cash flow moving is nonsense. In an industry that is supposed to move forwards, I'd like to see them moving forward rather than remaking old stuff to cash in on it.
I have some other network cards at home (Linksys, D-Link, and like 5 more of these awful Netgear ones that don't work) so I'll try them when I get home, hopefully those will work in Vista. My motherboard has a working Realtek one but I'd like to have all the hardware working.
I'm installing Vista now (finally got a 32 bit DVD) and trying to do an upgrade from XP (where everything works). Maybe the drivers will stay installed, maybe not.
What really gets me is that the Netgear card's XP driver comes with XP, so I figured if Microsoft cared enough to have a driver for it included on their XP disc that it'd at least maintain compatibility. Does Microsoft write the drivers on their discs or do they just get drivers from OEM's for common hardware and put it on the disc?