Mac, "It just works" amazingly does

So I've switched routers today...

Where my internet was supplied by cable, feeding into a top of the range Netgear, seven aireal wireless cable router, I now find the house using an older standard one aireal ADSL router/modem...

Fine, as the speed of the connection has gone from 2 - 8mbps (although we don't actually get that, even in central London)

However, today is a sad day for Windows... what where Microsoft playing at?

although wirelessly Vista has no problems connecting to the new router - and actually offered better signal than the linux counterpart, the Win/Mac desktop, plugged in by RJ45 Ethernet connection has lead to a mine field.

Although my windows machine performed flawlessly with the expensive cable router, it seems for some reason to refuse to fully connect to the internet via the older ADSL router. This problem had been blamed on the drivers for the LAN adapter, but updating those didn't seem to make a difference.

So, in an effort to prove the problem was with the router/cable I booted up the Hackintosh... If anything was going to FAIL it would be the OS with the least debug/maintainance options, however Apple pulled a doozie on me.

The Hack connected...

Apparently 'It just works' - annoying to say the least, but kudos to the Mac, we have to give credit here, Mac and Linux could connect to the older router where Vista had problems...

It seems the problem is NIC controlers where Vista dosn't have some of the older ones... a simple fix, but you have to question MS's logic - it knows it's onto a good thing with it's new OS but is dosn't think to make sure it works with older tech... Lets hope they fix this by windows 7 (which looks great) because you just lost a point to Apple Mac of all things... serious shame on Windows!