Microsoft: even your "junk" is "Vista Capable"

Microsoft cuts price for boxed Vista - Executive: Company 'botched' marketing of computers as 'Vista Capable'

Excerpt:

A federal judge recently said consumers could pursue a class action suit against Microsoft for labeling PCs as "Vista Capable," even though many were not powerful enough to run all of Vista's features, including the Aero interface.

Company e-mails produced in court chronicle Microsoft settling on a plan to market a wide range of XP-based PCs as "Vista Capable" after company officials realized in early 2006 that 30 percent or fewer of computers on the market could run the full-fledged version of Vista with Aero.

That realization apparently caused computer makers like Dell Inc. to worry that people would stop buying PCs for almost a year — until Vista launched.

The e-mails also showed Microsoft lowering the bar for "Vista Capable" to protect Intel Corp.'s sales of some widely used chips that weren't powerful enough for the full Vista experience.

Microsoft employee Anantha Kancherla was particularly blunt in his March 2006 response to a question about whether a certain PC configuration would be considered "Vista Capable."

Based on objective criteria that exist today for "capable," even a piece of junk will qualify," he wrote. "For the sake of Vista customers, it will be a complete tragedy if we allowed it."

According to the e-mails, Jim Allchin, the executive in charge of Windows at the time, wasn't involved in the decision to brand a wide swath of XP computers as "Vista Capable."

Upon learning the details, Allchin wrote, "We really botched this.


Comment: I'm amazed that even a 1 gigabyte MacBook runs Leopard so well (recently purchased for my spouse!). Leopard has it all over Vista (I am keyboarding this from a 2 gig Vista workstation!) in performance and look and feel. Some PC/LAN engineers (that I know) suggest that 4 gig or 8 gig is necessary to for decent Vista performance. Meanwhile look for Windows XP SP3. With XP such a stable operating system, why move up to Vista?!