Windows XP, Vista, Starter 7, Trouble Connecting to wireless networks

Because I am often working with wireless networks I have discovered that Windows XP, Vista, and Starter 7 (Often found on netbooks.) will not connect to WEP wireless networks using an ascii (plain text) passkey.

I have found that the culprit is because the Windows OS refuses to encrpyt the passkey from ascii to hexadecimal format when trying to connect. The solution/workaround is to manually enter the passkey in hexadecimal format when setting up the connection.

I am unsure as to whether this also affects older versions of Windows, or that this will be corrected in future releases.