Same here. I normally work exclusively on macs & gnu/linux boxen, and when recently doing a stint in a windows 7 pro environment was in utter disbelief that plugging in a USB keyboard or mouse could occasionally require waiting over a minute before it became usable, often with a popup saying, "new drivers installed, you should probably restart" or similar. The environment is a bit odd - on a ship, so restricted internet and permissions, but even still. What the hell does windows need to go looking for drivers for a bog standard USB mouse???

It doesn't really know it's bog-standard until it looks up the USB VID&PID in the Windows Update database, right? I mean sure it could initialize as a basic HID device in the meantime but it would have to make you wait later when it uninstalled the HID driver and installed the new one, which seems like a pain as well.

Isn't it caused by different kernel designs? Or is it only user-space implementation that causes this? I mean how long does it take to recognize and initialize a device.