Microsoft Plans to Make Plug-and-Play Smarter

USB_device All devices need drivers to get identified by the operating system. If you have the latest OS, like Vista… you probably won’t come across any troubles with plug and play because it ships with a lot of drives which we need for our day to day use. New device roll out each day and since Vista isn’t future ready, those future devices will fail to identify themselves correctly.

Microsoft has come up with a plan, which will probably make all future devices compatible with older operating systems. As per the new patent filed by Microsoft, the plan is to embed a small flash memory component which will hold drivers for the operating system, instead of operating system holding the drivers for the device. Whenever such a device is plugged into the system, the operating system will automatically install the drivers and detect the device correctly.

The drivers in these devices are updateable, which means the operating system can update the drivers automatically, provided you have an internet connection.

Sounds great! Sometimes, devices are shipped with driver a disk. This disk often gets lost or damaged. This patent should eliminate that problem as well. I’m wonder why didn’t anyone think of this earlier? Not that of a rocket science in this age.

[Via: istartedsomething]

This post was published by on March 27, 2008

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://prosperitywriter.com/ Prosperity Writer

    well its nice that microsoft is doing something about the flaws of their OS products. good news for me, i’m still using xp.

  • http://www.tecfre.com Kanak Bhandari

    Hey this is really a great option. But this should be allowed for wide usage among all the plug and play devices. I wonder whats there to file a patent for this ??

    I am wondering why chinese didnt think of this earlier, they were the first one to come up with usb option in dvd players , tv in mobile phones etc. :)

  • http://retodon8.net/ Retodon8

    That sounds a whole lot like USB was originally advertised. Remember videos like the one where a boy is invited by his friend to play some games, he brings his own joystick/gamepad, plugs it in, and it just works? I expected it to work like the article describes. Of course everybody (who saw those commercials) was let down when USB eventually hit the market, and you still needed to install drivers.
    (I didn’t even remember that anymore, until recently I found aforementioned video again on YouTube or GameTrailers or something like that.)