MSFT whatever they do, has very limited impact on some manufacturers, and
more substantial impact on others. In an ideal world, the manufacturers
would be like some AV and Vid Card companies and actively track Vista builds
and get drivers working for them. These manufacturers adhere to their own
time table and pressure for what they perceive as their market. The
situation is eggregiously inefficient.
MSFT has scores of people on Device teams of different non-intuitive names
who interestingly aren't fully aware of the impact of configuring Driver
Verifier (an inspection tool built into XP and Vista to prevent blue screens
stops--disabling deadlock detection and AV software driver inspection often
prevents a large number of blue screens without impacting the functionality
of your AV app), nor have they gotten around to for 15 or so years creating
a device manager that has any accuracy in telling you whether the driver is
corrupted or healthy--the teams told me they aren't getting this done in
Vista (they joined the club there) and they may get it done in
Blackcomb/Vienna/whatevah.
The people on the driver teams maintain contacts with the major
manufacturers, have the ability to make phone calls and get their devices
shipped to test, meet, ping etc. but it still seems to have relatively
little impact on some manufacturers who make device drivers.
The clinical bottom line on the street, on the ground is that for some
drivers you are just going to have to wait. However, if I were you
depending on your needs, I would go to forums like this one and post your
device. Many people are resourceful at using tricks and workarounds to get
drivers to work on Vista and we can direct you to sites with driver lists
that are very up to date per build.
CH