When you connect a supported gadget, like in this case the Epson Artisan 800, you instantly see the icon with its shiny black case and colorful printout. There was no download, this stuff was already cached somewhere. The icon at first had a yellow alert badge, but after a quick troubleshoot wizard, the badge changed to a happy green check mark.

There are three components of Device Stage: An icon in Devices and Printers, an XML page with links to services and apps, and an icon in the taskbar with a nice tidy pop-up menu of device options.

The icon in the Devices and Printers page, which you can easily reach from the the Start Menu. If you can't find your device anywhere else, it will at least be here. If your gadget is not plugged in, its icon is slightly translucent. If it is, you see a clear shiny device. Click on the icon once, and a contextual ribbon at the top of the window changes to give you device specific options. (For the Epson all-in-one, it was "Start scan" "See what's printing" "Manage default printers" etc. For a mass storage device, it's "Browse Files" and "Safely Remove.")

Double-clicking the icon in the Devices page brings up the services page, essentially a webpage that lives in your computer, and can launch both websites and apps. The look and feel is developed by the device manufacturer, though I'm sure there's a nice Microsoft template if needed. As you can see from both its contents and the following, cool taskbar icon, this page is the sort of thing that would probably used most when the gadget is first bought, and forgotten about later.

The taskbar icon is the ooh-aah part of Device Stage. Right click it (or click and swipe upwards) and you get a series of "Tasks"—essentially a summarized version of what the big XML page offers, with some more specific commands too. Printers are pretty obvious, but it will be really fun to see what people can do with cameras and phones, not to mention totally specialized devices like a Slacker portable radio or a Chumby.

Speaking of Chumby, devices don't need to connect via USB. They can connect via the network or Bluetooth, and are given the same rich metadata treatment.

I did notice one thing in particular that probably won't be "fixed" in the final release: Even though the Epson menu offered all of the Artisan 800's functionality, some of the functions brought up error messages like the one you see below. I didn't run the install disc, and I am assuming that the .EXE apps that the launcher couldn't find were ones I needed to install from the Epson's CD. This makes sense: The richer the experience offered by the device manufacturer, the more likely it is that they will try to make you install more of their software. It's too bad that, as far as I know, you can't customize these jump lists, though, because I would love to see a pop up that only had the crap I care about.

Up top, I made a gripe about products only working if they're supported. If they're not supported, they get generic icons and you see the old AutoPlay pop-up from Windows systems past. In other words, it sucks—like this—when they're not supported:

Don't get me wrong. This isn't a complaint about how few gadgets are currently supported by Windows 7 Beta. The list is here, and it's small, but you know damn well it's going to get longer and longer and longer, every week if not every day.

What I am saying is that I have mixed feelings about what Device Stage will mean to consumer electronics companies. One one hand, companies would do well to stop messing around with their own silly proprietary crapware for say, alerting me when I need printer ink, or downloading the photos from my camera. The Device Stage interface, as you can see below, is an elegant way to facilitate those kinds of menial tasks.

On the other hand, though, I hate for this to become some kind of gear mafia. Back in the day, PlaysForSure's website listed a bunch of compatible music players, but it didn't list all of them. People going to the site would have been swayed to buy officially supported hardware, even if it wasn't the best. I am sure in this case that Microsoft will upload all of the content of all those who participate, but I would hate for people to be choosing devices just because of their ability to talk to Windows 7—an inferior printer, say, having a better Win 7 interface than a superior model.

The ideal solution is for all makers of decent gadgets pay some dude $50 to write the stupid XML code for it to appear in Device Stage—I'm told it's ridiculously simple to submit data. Then it would be a given that a hot new device will just show up. But will there be awesome gadgets that—because of inattentiveness on the part of their makers—end up looking like ass in Windows 7? The chances are good. [More Windows 7 at Gizmodo]

UPDATE: I received the Device Stage package for the Nikon D90 (what Steve Ballmer used to demo Device Stage at CES). Here's a gallery of screenshots from that, showing similar functionality. I did have some trouble getting it to load the user's manual, but that is probably something that can be fixed before the official Win 7 launch.

Mobile GPU drivers were so scarce because those drivers are very customized, from hotkeys to smooth suspend and resume functions on each individual laptop. As a result, many advanced users have had to scour forums for drivers hacked together by other users, and that's not the most reliable way to upgrade or update software. So it's great to see Nvidia offering broad support for driver updates on their own site, especially since they say they've been hard at work to ensure compatibility and retention of features across all manufacturers. Hopefully these official releases will be more stable than the unofficial hacks. [Notebook Review via Engadget]

Also, Windows 7 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit, just like Vista is, so don't expect a 64-bit revolutionary OS that forces all developers to go 64-bit. Steven also admitted that marketing and communications mistakes were made with Vista insofar as they revealed too much to the public too soon, and when features were cut, developers were upset. Expect a much quieter run-up to Windows 7's launch this time. Yes, that was the problem with Vista. [CNET]

On the one hand, Daniel says "They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance. They were sarcastic, ironic and asked me if I wanted something from them, as if I were expecting something. It was my protest against them and would like to see how far it would go."

On the other hand, Creative does have a legal right to protect their software, and if they want to force users to upgrade in order to get proper functionality, it's their right to do so (even if it is somewhat of a dick move). Daniel himself admits that he crossed the line, both with asking for donations and this:

Reversing ALchemy was also wrong, I know. But I reiterate, what is the point of improving ALchemy and changing for it, when it requires an improved driver? It was my protest against Creative.

To Creative's credit, they do realize the error of their ways and are being more acceptive to new forms of development. But Daniel's not without his faults here, which seems to be something glossed over on recent accounts of the situation. In the end, the posts are back up and people can go ahead and get their cards working on Vista, which is probably the most important thing any of us will take away from this mess. That, and the fact that John Stamos has aged quite well. [The Register]

Creative's statement:

We have read the strong feedback about Creative's forum post regarding driver development by Daniel_k and other outside parties. Creative's message posted on our behalf by our Company spokesperson tried to address our concern about the improper distribution of certain software which is the property of other companies. However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties. The huge task of developing driver updates to accommodate the many changes in the Vista operating system and the extensive testing required, including the lengthy Vista certification requirements for audio, makes it very difficult for Creative to develop updates for all past products. Outside developers have been very helpful to Creative and our customers by developing updates for many of our Sound Blaster products, and we do support and appreciate these efforts. This however does not extend to the unauthorized distribution of other companies' property. We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers.

But here's the problem. Printers don't get outdated nearly as fast as computers, and as long as it's still working, you expect it to still be supported within a reasonable time frame. Four years is reasonable. HP's updated this particular model number for Vista, which is actually also a problem since many users have cited printer driver compatibility as a reason why they don't want to update to Vista.

In Matt's case, there are some open source drivers and scanning suites available so he can get scanning to work under Leopard. It may require a bit of trial and error, since open source drivers/suites aren't exactly as install-and-forget as the official ones, but it beats having to buy a new printer. [Consumierst]

Some of our top engineers have investigated video performance on our devices and have discovered a fix that they claim will dramatically improve performance for common on-screen tasks like scrolling and the like. Their fix would help most of our recent touch-screen products including the Touch family of devices and TYTN II / Tilt, Mogul / XV6900. The update is in testing and we hope to release it soon. However this fix is not a new video driver to utilize hardware acceleration; it is a software optimization. Video drivers are a much more complicated issue that involves companies and engineers beyond HTC alone. We do not want to lead anyone to believe they should expect these. To explain why we are not releasing video acceleration instead of the optimization I offer you our official statement... "HTC DOES plan to offer software upgrades that will increase feature functionality, over the air wireless speeds and other enhancements for some of the phones being criticized, but we do not anticipate including any additional support for the video acceleration issues cited in customer complaints. It is important for customers to understand that bringing this functionality to market is not a trivial driver update and requires extensive software development and time. HTC will utilize hardware video acceleration like the ATI Imageon in many upcoming products. Our users have made it clear that they expect our products to offer an improved visual experience, and we have included this feedback into planning and development of future products. To address lingering questions about HTC's current MSM 7xxx devices, it is important to establish that a chipset like an MSM7xxx is a platform with a vast multitude of features that enable a wide range of devices with varied functionality. It is common that devices built on platforms like Qualcomm's will not enable every feature or function. In addition to making sure the required hardware is present, unlocking extended capabilities of chipsets like the MSM 7xxx requires in-depth and time consuming software development, complicated licensing negotiations, potential intellectual property negotiations, added licensing fees, and in the case of devices that are sold through operators, the desire of the operator to include the additional functionality. To make an informed decision about which handset suits them best, consumers should look at the product specification itself instead of using the underlying chipset specifications to define what the product could potentially become."

[Phone Mag]

Nvida [via Crave]

The square-headed club is adjustable, too, so you can distribute its weight to compensate for your weaknesses. There's no word on whether there is any adjustment for overall terrible golfing technique. Just for the record, we're not thinking Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer in the world because of the clubs he uses, nor was Ansel Adams a master photographer because of his brand of camera. That's one badass-looking club, though. – Charlie White

Product Page [Callaway, via Bogey Lounge]

Many of the gamers claim their 8800 cards don't work when playing games under Vista, or in some cases, the games won't even play. Nvidia has responded by saying yeah, sure, we're on it.

"Over the coming weeks NVIDIA and our partners, along with the industry will continue to update Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add feature support." —Director of PR for Nvidia, Derek Perez

Nvidia Responds to Complaints About State of Vista Drivers [Ars Technica via Crave]
NvidiaClassAction

Where Are the GeForce 8800 Series Windows Vista Drivers? [DailyTech]

RadarSync is supposedly going to act as a Vista driver depository that makes it easy to find the drivers you want. We suspect something like this will be very useful for at least a couple of months until manufacturers get their acts together and update their drivers for legacy products to Vista. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Vista]

Oh, well. Isn't that frequently the problem with graphics cards? The drivers trail the technology, sometimes by a long shot. But in the case of the GeForce 7950 GX2, even without that new driver, the $650 card is still a speed burner. – Charlie White

Quad 7950 driver to come at the end of summer [the Inquirer]

"Apple OS X" appears on Dell's driver downloads [Engadget via Wired]

• I don't think settings are persistent
• More settings, e.g. trigger deadzone, button remap
• Force feedback may elongate effects
• Force feedback (DirectInput-style interface) emulator may need more work
• Preference pane currently only tests rumble motors, by creating a force feedback interface but then just using the Escape functionality
• Driver needs to handle more possible errors.

Mac OS X Driver [Tattlebogle via Digg]