[FlamingLonghorn]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Most of the hardware is in fact recognized by Windows out of the box, otherwise you wouldn't be able to get the initial boot completed to install the Apple provided driver package. You need bootcamp drivers for the hardware that Windows doesn't support out of the box, like the multitouch trackpad, the webcam, bluetooth, etc. The driver support is naturally worse out of the box on XP than Vista (for example, XP doesn't know anything about 9400m graphics chips, etc)

In fact, once Windows is installed into a bootcamp partition, there is nothing stopping you from using NVidia's standard chipset and graphics drivers if you want, just like a regular laptop. Apple provides drivers for the same reason as, say Dell - it would be lousy customer service to make you run around to nVidia for your graphics driver, Marvel for your network card, Intel for your wifi controller, Foxconn for the webcam, etc, etc, collecting up all the drivers needed for a fully functional system.

Heh shows you how much I know about clients I only work with enterprise stuff. I just assumed from all the complaints I hear about Windows on Boot Camp that it was some sort of sw layer on top of the hardware kind of like a hypervisor.