”It exposed how terrible device manufacturers are at writing drivers.”
In their defense, Windows Driver Model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Driver_Model) may make it possible to wring the last bit of performance out of a system, but it doesn’t make it easy to write a driver. Its documentation also was somewhat of the type “once you know what this page tries to tell you, you will be able to understand it” variety.
It also didn’t help that new hardware frequently introduced new sleep state levels at the time.
In their defense, Windows Driver Model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Driver_Model) may make it possible to wring the last bit of performance out of a system, but it doesn’t make it easy to write a driver. Its documentation also was somewhat of the type “once you know what this page tries to tell you, you will be able to understand it” variety.
It also didn’t help that new hardware frequently introduced new sleep state levels at the time.