Driver Store
The introduction of the driver store in Windows Vista changes how Windows recognizes and stores driver files. A full description of the driver store is beyond the scope of this paper; however, if you are a driver writer, you should be familiar with its implications. More information can be found online in the WinHEC 2006 presentations and on the MSDN Web site.
Client-Side Rendering
Windows Vista will ship a new client/server printing enhancement, called Client-side Rendering, which causes print driver rendering to occur on the client machine by default when a Windows Vista client is connected to a Windows Vista print server. The goal of this feature is to increase server performance and scalability while reducing printing issues that are caused by a driver mismatch between the client and the server.
During the comprehensive testing of this feature with existing Windows XP print drivers, Microsoft observed several cases where print drivers functioned in a way that was different from what was expected. Specifically, drivers relied on components, registry settings, or other configuration data that was not transferred during point and print. To alleviate these issues, the print subsystem can automatically fall back to standard, enhanced metafile (EMF)-based printing in well-known failure conditions. Windows Vista also supports the ability to disable this feature on a per-driver basis at installation time. However, due to the diversity of print driver implementations, some failure cases may not have been addressed in our current implementation.
Print driver developers should evaluate their current driver set, both in box and out of box, against the current beta test versions of Windows Vista by using the Client-side Rendering path for point and print connections. Testing should cover all possible architecture combinations of Windows Vista client to Windows Vista print servers.
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