TA,
You are right thats its taken a long time to get the ndis drivers up to scratch, but is that more resistance against the approach than anything. Now that linux x86 has the functionality it benefits everyone.

if it comes down to working out the ABI for a Symbian binary vs working out the chipspec for the entire PVR I know which I am going to choose.

The symbian driver talks in strictly defined functions and seems the logical step backwards from the chip interface.

We gain the benefits of the library and let the binary driver deal with the nitty gritty.