It is indeed horrifying, and the particular products I'm thinking of are indeed from a series of gaming headsets. There are other categories of headsets, speakerphones and the likes that are equally awful, though, which is why I see the problem as universal to products targeting Windows:
There is no scrutiny to stop this idiocy, and the average consumer has no idea why this is bad, and no idea that those blue screens were because of a headset.
Having a connection to said company, I'd rather not name them though.
> There is no scrutiny to stop this idiocy, and the average consumer has no idea why this is bad, and no idea that those blue screens were because of a headset.
Yeah. Microsoft doesn't exercise any control and the result is hardware manufacturers force bogus software down the throats of Windows users. The Linux community can count on Linus Torvalds and the kernel hackers to provide that scrutiny and people trust Linux a lot more as a result.
I always cite capcom.sys as an example of why random companies shouldn't be allowed to write drivers:
That's horrifying. What headsets are these? Gaming headsets? I wouldn't trust that industry with kernel mode access to my compurer.