On our way back from Fry’s, I was musing upon the installation I was going to have to do with this new networking equipment.   So I had to ask the million dollar question…why do we need special drivers for network adapters any more?  Isn’t the whole concept of a network adapter pretty much cut and dried at this point?  Don’t we pretty much know everything an adapter needs to do?

How about I plug the card in and it just starts working?  Wouldn’t that be swell?

Of course, I’m probably oversimplifying things somewhere, somehow, and I’m not aware of just how complicated things really are.  But you know what…I bet it’s doable.  I don’t think the status quo is acceptable here.  Remember when wireless wasn’t built into the operating system and network vendors were all making their own control panels and other crapware?  That sucked.  And installing their drivers sucks too.

There is no reason why I should have to install drivers to get a network adapter up and running in this day and age.  We need a standard around this that makes installing a network adapter as easy as plugging in a USB flash drive.  From a usability standpoint, it should have happened a long time ago.