An updated Windows XP driver for the wired Xbox 360 Controller was made available via Microsoft Update recently.

Does this new driver offer configuration options in Game Controllers in the Windows Control Panel? Make the Xbox Guide button do something when pressed? Allow the shoulder triggers to be used as buttons? Create dead spots in the controller's thumbsticks and shoulder triggers?

If they're there, they're hidden.

All this update appears to do is make the player 1 quarter of the Xbox 360 controller's circle of light light up. (Presumably if there are multiple wired Xbox 360 controllers connected to one computer, a different quarter will light up on each controller.)

I don't play many computer games. Sitting hunched over a computer desk for hours at a time is not my idea of fun. I am willing to do it for adventure games and Solitaire, but not anything else. And with adventure games like Shadow of Destiny (Shadow of Memories), Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit), and Dreamfall proving the genre can be done on consoles without compromises, I have fewer reasons to use my computer for games.

But it's also why I have a wired Xbox 360 controller connected to my computer. I don't buy every game console, and not every adventure game on consoles is on a console I own, but they're all available for Windows. Because these games are designed with consoles in mind, they're designed with gamepads in mind, and are often painful to play with a mouse and/or keyboard.

After reading many on the Internet declare the Xbox 360 Controller the best game controller ever, and thinking that the left thumbstick rather than the directional pad in the primary position makes more sense for contemporary games, I decided early this year to choose it over a competing computer gamepad from, say, Logitech or Saitek.

The Xbox 360 Controller might be the best game controller for consoles, but for computers it borders on unusable.

The lack of configuration options in Windows for the Xbox 360 Controller limits the controller's usefulness. Console game developers can assume they know what kind of game controller their users are using. Computer game developers don't know which gamepads their users have, how many buttons their users' gamepads have and where those varying number of buttons are placed, or even assume their users have gamepads, so gamepad support in computer games is often token or non-existent..

Some computer games will allow you to configure every button as you please, but many have fixed gamepad controls--which is awkward if the game you're playing is designed for a gamepad with a different button configuration--or no gamepad controls, including some games originally designed for consoles. Other computer gamepads account for these problems by allowing users to configure buttons on a per-game basis within Game Controllers in the Windows Control Panel and/or emulate a keyboard and/or mouse, but not the Xbox 360 Controller. If you have an wired Xbox 360 Controller and you play a computer game with weak or no gamepad support, you have to live with weak or no gamepad support.

But even if the wired Xbox 360 controller's Windows driver had button configuration options, the controller would still be short two buttons. The Windows driver does not see the controller's shoulder triggers as buttons, and thus the shoulder triggers cannot be used as buttons in computer games. With many games in the past decade designed with eight primary buttons in mind (usually four face buttons and four shoulder buttons), this is a problem.

Technically the wired Xbox 360 controller is short only one button, but that additional button, the Xbox Guide button, cannot be used in Windows XP. The instruction manual mentions that this button does nothing in Windows XP, but who reads instruction manuals? Windows Vista will make this button do something (albeit it won't be used for gameplay), but until the vast majority of Windows users upgrade to Windows Vista (not for years), this button will be the subject of many tech support calls to Microsoft.

Finally, the lack of dead spots in the thumbsticks and shoulder triggers makes the the Xbox 360 controller almost broken in Windows. Thumbsticks and triggers (on any game controller) do not return to the exact same positions every time they are let go. Because the Xbox 360 Controller does not give these parts dead spots, every position is active and games sometimes act as if they are pressed when they are not.