Trent • User • The Register Forums

Ballmer's bid to swerve 'Vista Capable' row comes unstuck

Tuesday 25th November 2008 11:32 GMT Trent

MS and the Aero perception

As Ron said "Maybe someone can help me remember -- Back in 2006, did anyone *know* what versions of Vista would be released?"

Probably not, but MS did tout and brag up about the wonderful GUI and the aero desktop. If there was one thing that customers perceptions of vista were.. it was AERO. And it was AERO that capable was not capable of.

But I agree with one thing, that the capable compaign did in fact keep sales up in 06. VIsta had been long coming and sales would have probably dropped off considerably in the last two quarters of 06 had they not done the capable campaign. This was really pretty evil on Intel's and MS part in this. They knew the drawbacks of what they were doing and they knew the customer would have a really poor vista experience. Especially when many of these machines only had 512 megs of ram. That, IMHO, is not vista capable. Have you ever seen a machine run vista on 512MB of ram? Its pathetic. Yet MS and Intel put a bunch of low spec machines with 915 chip sets and a vista capable stickers. Vista, should not install on that kind of machine period. They did it for short term profits and to keep the last two quarters strong in 06. MS really needs to burn on this one. Although the experience did teach them a lesson and they are probably going to do right with seven. They still need to take responsibility for what they did

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Microsoft nobbled ‘Vista-Capable’ for Intel

Saturday 15th November 2008 23:58 GMT Trent

MS doing well litigating this case

MS's lawyers are doing a good job in litigating this case. But it sounds like there will indeed be a trial.. no matter how many or how good their lawyers may be. Sometimes I think Judges frown on huge Corps that throw endless teams of legal support at there whims. MS with all their might and money could not keep this from trial.. which tells me there must be some merit to the plaintiffs case.

I'll agree that Intel should be blamed as well but in this case I feel MS should take the blunt of responsibility. MS made the decision to lower the requirements. The 915 chips should have been allocated to XP systems or huge warning labels placed on those systems explaining what they would NEVER do. But MS and Intel took this into the grey area and now the courts or a jury will decide whether they crossed the grey and into the red zone. MS absolutely knew this would happen. They themselves boasting for months how brilliant aero would be and then ship a ton of 915 systems that would never be able to run it. And now they just want to shove it to the consumer. Its not going to happen.. This is going to be a huge settlement coming forward.

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Saturday 15th November 2008 19:54 GMT Trent

To the average Joe what did capable mean?

Its easy for people who read the register and other tech info to say they knew what vista capable meant. The fact is, it was not clear to the average joe who walked into a bestbuy and browsed at new laptops back in 06 seeing that sticker. I knew people that bought machines with the 915 chip and none of them understood what that really meant. And you can believe the kids that worked at bestbuy misled customers to believing those systems were totally ready for Vista.. just to sell a system. The bottom line is the big selling point for vista was its graphical interface. To add insult allot of those machines that initially shipped with XP only had 512 or a gig of ram and they ran like absolute crap when they received their vista basic upgrade disc. And MS knew these systems would not work well with vista and they basically put customer satisfaction in the backseat and thought only about short term sales of their new OS and satisfying their OEM partners. MS should and deserves to burn on this one. Sure, MS did disclose what capable meant. But they keep it low key intentionally since they knew if they advertised more agressively about the cons of vista capable.. then people would have waited for real vista systems.. And Intel and MS wanted to sell systems in O6. They intentionally disclosed in a low key the cons of capable but not enough to deter sales. And this was a 11th hour change in requirements after boasting for over a year the wonders of the new GUI. MS will loose on this one. The only way I see that they could have avoided this is if they had put a sticker on those systems explaining that they would never be able to run aero. By simply stating a system is capable is not clear that it is missing the biggest component that Vista offers.

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