Using windows 2000 for the

Using windows 2000 for the past few months at work and for the past month at home has continually surprised me. It was released in February of this year, and six months later, almost all the hardware on my computers either run beta software drivers or can't run in windows 2000. A recent trip to Fry's for a modem revealed that on a wall with over 40 modems for sale, only one box mentioned windows 2000. One. The OS was in beta for over a year before it, but companies still seem to be scrambling to write drivers for it today. And now Windows Me is  set to release in less than a month, but I hadn't seen a beta for it until about four months ago, so I seriously doubt there will be much support for it when it gets released.

Is windows development progressing too quickly these days? Are companies forced to do so much work to get drivers written that they can't do it without a couple years of lead time? It's almost as if Microsoft's doing more harm than good for itself by releasing all these new OSes in a hardware market that can't seem to handle it. Are they innovating too quickly?