One thing which has always annoyed me about Windows is its inability to pick up and recognise nvidia raid sets (created by the nvidia raid bios utility). Windows XP and much earlier versions of Windows Vista I beta tested (CTP’s 50 and below) required that you have a 3rd party driver provided by the motherboard manufacturer. Having this nvidia raid driver (usually called nvraid) hanging around on a floppy drive was always inconvenient. I had long removed floppy drives from my computers years ago because I just didn’t need them. With Windows XP I would slip stream the nvidia raid drivers into a Windows XP installation using nlite so that I wouldn’t have to muck around with the normal F6 business during windows startup.

Skip forward to the present day of Windows Vista release January 30th. Windows finally just recognises my nvraid array. Such a little thing yet such a big win in convenience.

Most drivers have proven to be ok in 64 bit Windows Vista so far. Windows Vista (at least the 64 bit incantation) still lacks the driver maturity of Windows XP, but this is something that will come with time now the official launch was witnessed on January 30th.

My main gripe has been with Nvidia. Of all companines, I would have thought Nvidia would be ahead of the game when it comes to Vista driver support. Sure, they have had beta drivers throughout the Vista CTP relases and RTM release but I would have expected their graphics driver to be much more mature than it is come launch date.

The current Vista 64 bit driver; ForceWare Release 100 - Version 100.59 continues to throw up a version mismatch error when trying to launch the control panel. It worked once when I firt installed the driver, to never be seen again.

Since Telstra lifted the artifical cap placed on adsl 1 many service providers have begun to offer 8mbit plans. Once Internode (my current service provider) brought in 8mbit plans I upgraded from my previous 1.5mbit plan.

Internodes policy dictates that they garuantee at least 1.5mbit up to a maximum of 8. Currently, the highest my line syncs at is about 3.4mbit. After several emails with Internode support and a Telstrs technicain giving the all clear on the phone line, it looks like I may have little options left to rectify the less than desired connection speed.

The Telstra technicain did not mention anything regarding rim’s or cmux’s , but Internode suspect that I may be on a rim or cmux (common causes of limited 3mbit connections). I have ruled out line filters and modems on my end, Telstra gave the proverbial ‘all clear’ on the telephone line and Internode have given the ‘We can only garuantee a conneciton greater than 1.5mbit up to a maximum of 8mbit’. Whilst less than desirable, my connection falls under that.

I will continue to follow this up with Telstra but I may have few options available.

Will I stay on the

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