Windows 7 drivers become available commercially

By Jal Desai | In: technology news, windows 7 | Posted On September 1, 2009

As October 22 is closing in, this is bound to happen. Folks at Dell have started deploying Windows 7 drivers for some models of desktops and laptops. Although one can say its a good and an early start. This was published officially on one of Dell’s blogs:

We've listened and recently, we have started posting Dell Certified Windows 7 drivers at www.support.dell.com/Windows7 where you will find the first set of drivers for many of our commercial systems.

We will post additional drivers once they pass rigorous testing and certification standards--please check back if there is something you don't see. For customers without dedicated IT staff interested in evaluating Windows 7, check out Windows Update.

Picture courtesy: Dell

What others are doing?

Dell initiated and was first to commercially deploy Windows 7 drivers which is quite encouraging. I checked HP’s website to check out what are their plans on providing support to the Windows 7 platform. Unfortunately, HP stated on its website that currently it won’t support the test versions of Windows 7 and would take steps forward in this direction only after the official launch of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009.

Snapshot taken from HP.com

Lenovo, on the other hand, seem to be following the middle policy. This is what the Lenovo’s FAQ/Announcement section declared some months ago:

Drivers:

Drivers for Windows 7 Beta are currently in development. As drivers are made available, they will be posted to the following page:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/WIN7-BETA.html

Please understand that there is no set schedule for various driver releases. Until drivers are released, you may or may not be able to get all of your on-board hardware or docks / ultrabases working on various systems.

Well, we cannot say the latter two took entirely a bad decision. Of course, two companies never think the same way.

Patience my friend, patience!

Many users of Dell were a bit disappointed to learn the fact that Dell has not yet made available the Windows 7 drivers to many of the popular desktop and laptop models. For example, at the time of this writing, Windows 7 drivers are not available for Vostro 1310 and Vostro 1400, whereas they are available for Dell E6500. However, one needs to have some patience as drivers for more and more models will be made available eventually. As for those who have HP laptops, the driver support will be made available after October 22, 2009.

So the verdict is that, Dell is the first one to jump in the Windows 7 bandwagon by providing its first set of Windows 7 drivers to its users and that is it! But no one is going to get deprived of them because very soon, as October 22 nears, Windows 7 drivers will be made available for the rest of the models.