Lawyers for plaintiffs in a case brought against Microsoft over Vista’s marketing have claimed that Microsoft was not telling the truth when it put the “Vista Capable” logo on PCs that would only be capable of running Vista Home Basic. Lawyers claimed that even Microsoft’s director of marketing, Mark Croft, had become confused about the meaning of “Vista capable” when giving evidence.
IMHO, they are quite correct. If a PC says “Vista capable” of course I expect it to be able to run any version of Vista. It should rather say clearly it can only run a specific version if the other ones are out-of-bounds.. But then again, how to define what is “Vista capable” anyways? Heck, I guess I could install Vista even on my aging laptop (P4-M, 512mb RAM and GF4 Go) and as such it is Vista capable..but it sure as h*ll would not be able to run it even barely useably!
/guess I could install Vista even on my aging laptop (P4-M, 512mb RAM and GF4 Go) and as such it is Vista capable..but it sure as h*ll would not be able to run it even barely useably!//
Actually, if you turn off Aero, it would probably run pretty well.
With only 512mb RAM? I veeery much doubt that.. I could of course try but not gonna buy Vista just for that.
Sorry, tested on AMD Athlon X2 3600+. With that amount of memory it runs like crap, about 30 secs between login and the desktop
The other versions aren’t out of bounds. The plaintiffs attorneys are incorrect. If a system is Vista Capable (your P4-M would be such a system assuming it is ACPI compatible, the CPU is at least 800MHz, and it has adequate storage), it can run any Vista SKU — Ultimate will run just as well as Basic. It is only a guarantee that the system meets the minimum requirements — hence the full text of the sticker being “Designed for Windows XP — Vista Capable”.
Vista’s requirements, as well as the logo requirements, were published in 2004 (if not 2003), at least 2 years before its release, and the requirements for Glass (PS 2.0 GPU) — what plaintiffs are complaining about — were likewise published back then. I built a system back then in preperation for the Vista beta (A64 3500+, 2GB RAM, Geforce 6600 GT SLI). The lowest spec’d system I have (1GHz Duron, 768MB RAM, Geforce 5500) was also used for beta testing, and is currently running Vista Ultimate w/Glass.
The plaintiffs may as well be complaining that they can’t watch/record TV on the system even though that’s one of Vista’s premium SKU (and XP’s w/ MCE) features. A problem they would also have if they simply bought any system w/ a “Designed for Windows XP” logo or the “Designed for Windows XP — Vista Capable” they’re complaining about, rather than actually checking the specs against the published requirements.
The whole point of the sticker/certification program is to save consumers the hassle of checking the specs.
I get your point, and I agree with it in principle. But in a forum like this, frequented by tech savvy users, it may be difficult to relate to the Joe Average’s of the world.
A lot of people on this board take hardware for granted, but there is a significant segment of the population that would consider a $599 laptop at Best Buy to be something of an indulgence; it’s a bit arrogant to expect that Joe Average is going to surf the web and research his purchase, most likely he has been saving up to buy and wants to spend his hard earned dollars where he sees the best value.
This is the same segment of the population that listens to Best Buy et al. sales reps as authoritative figures. It’s easy for us to laugh and say “caveat emptor”, but then we take our knowledge and experience for granted.
MS, regardless of how they try to spin it, exploited this “technologically-naive” segment of the market in a co-ordinated effort with their major OEM partners to help stave off stagnant sales due to Vista’s delayed launch. “Buy this system now, run Vista when it’s released!” but leave out the part about not being able to use most of the features MS is advertising for Vista.
I’m not sure that these particular plaintiffs have grounds, but MS should be spanked regardless. This is the first time they’ve intentionally released crippled versions of Windows in a mass market, so while the onus is on the consumer to become informed, there is a moral responsibility on behalf of MS to make an effort towards ensuring customer satisfaction.
They knew these “Vista Capable” systems would only run the basic version, they should have changed the branding to indicate this. I suspect the Tier-1 OEM’s are just as culpable in this, since they were complaining the loudest about the lack of Vista being available last holiday season.
Yes, technically, MS can probably argue their way around this. But it doesn’t make it right.
So the consumer can’t be held responsible for their negligence? If they are making a multi-hundred dollar purchase, you would think they’d use at least a little common sense. BTW, the Compaq 572US laptop I’m typing this message on was less than $599 when it was purchased earlier this year, and it is running Vista Home Premium x64 w/ Glass.
Vista Basic is no more crippled than XP Home. It is a superset of XP Home and is targeted at single-PC home users that don’t want to pay for the extra features of the premium SKUs.
These people are complaining about the lack of a feature that wouldn’t be available to them even if Microsoft didn’t release the Basic SKU. They simply don’t meet the GPU requirements for Glass. If MS only released Vista Home Premium, the plaintiffs would still have the same issue. They would simply be using a pre-installed Vista Home Premium with the same Vista Basic UX because they are hardware limited. They can install any version of Windows and that fact won’t change. Vista Capable is an assurance of having a system that meets the minimum specs to run the OS, not an assurance that you can run every feature of the OS.
Having to check the product requirements against your planned usage is something that hasn’t changed since the first PC shipped. The logo alone was never a guarantee that the system met the requirements for your planned usage — only that the hardware was compatible with the OS.
To reiterate. These Vista Capable systems are not tied to Home Basic. They do NOT only run Home Basic. The plaintiffs’ argument is simply not factual. They can run any Vista SKU they want. It just won’t have Glass unless they upgrade the GPU.
Edited 2007-12-01 07:49
I agree with you, and I think this “Vista Capable” thing is one of the biggest reasons Vista is considered by many to be a moldy lump of poo.
People go out and buy new desktops and laptop with Vista on them, and they aren’t powerful enough to fully run the OS. One of my relatives bought a new machine with Vista on it and Vista only scored his machine a 3, I believe. If you buy a new computer with Vista on it, it should be able to run every feature in Vista. When it can’t, people get pissed off.
Cant say I feel sorry for them (Microsoft),they went overboard on the versioning scheme and now its come back to bite them in the a@@.
And to the poster who said that a 512mb Vista Aero-less would run pretty well, I beg to differ.From experience one would have to run it in classic mode to feel any real difference and I was using 1Gb of ram.Comparably XP-SP2 with that same ram count in classic mode wasn’t perceptably slower either.So there was no real performance gain from Vista using that configuration IMHO.
“Cant say I feel sorry for them (Microsoft),they went overboard on the versioning scheme and now its come back to bite them in the a@@. ”
Yeah the fact that they make billions from artificially raising prices though crippling versions of their OS ensuring a raise in revenue, with a less successful product. I’m going to be losing sleep for them.
The strange thing about this they could have done a “Vista Basic Approved”
We should have seen this coming with the stupid XP “starter edition” for the emerging markets.People in the emerging markets are not going to buy crippled versions anyway when they can get a pirated full version for next to nothing or even free.Its Microsoft’s more supportive customers in the developed world who are being shafted by these shenanigans.They should have just come clean with two versions,home and pro and be done with it.
+1 you up by the way.
Edited 2007-12-01 02:35
Interestingly, I just found out that our IT dept did some preliminary tests; a 512MB Aero-less system would be sufficient for booting Vista and maybe light web surfing or checking email, but may God help the poor bastard that tries to actually install and run applications.
The majority of our desktops globally are roughly 1.8G/512MB systems, they run XP fine but we won’t be touching Vista any time soon. Apparently Microsoft has been trying to convince us to move to their thin-client version of Windows since we use a lot of citrix apps, but that’s not going to happen.
On the flip side of the coin, systems with 1+GB of RAM and decent graphics, even if integrated, are going to become the norm over the next year, so for consumers the point will eventually become moot.
For enterprise customers, though, I suspect it’s a different story. Heck, we’re still running some of our desktops without SP2 because of compatibility issues with a couple of legacy apps.
I imagine the consumer market will migrate to Vista the same way they migrated to XP, despite the initial barriers regarding hardware requirements. I suspect, though, that MS is going to find it harder going with the enterprises than they did in the past. Organizations have invested considerable sums over the last few years towards not only incorporating XP, but building up a proper management/security infrastructure to support it, they’re not going to let go of that very willingly.
Just my 2c…
elsewhere said:
“Apparently Microsoft has been trying to convince us to move to their thin-client version of Windows since we use a lot of citrix apps, but that’s not going to happen.”
You might be interested in Sun’s offering.
We can’t use this as we’re mostly an Apple shop, but it looks like heaven compared to constant re-installs of Windows and the associated, necessary apps after the latest meltdown (user or malware).
Virtual Desktop Webcast:
“Hosting desktop environments on servers in the datacenter provides a more secure, manageable and operationally efficient desktop model. Using VMware Infrastructure software, many desktops can be isolated, secured and hosted on a single server. Sun VDI Software provides secure access to these “virtual desktops” securely over the LAN or WAN from a wide variety of client devices such as traditional Windows PCs or laptops, Mac OS X and thin clients from Sun and other vendors.
http://www.sun.com/datacenter/consolidation/virtualization/vmwarevd…
hylas
Edited 2007-12-03 22:36
Nobody seems to remember the Vista launch…perhaps because it was so long ago. Even certain *cough* moderators spread misinformation on Vista’s inability to perform on modest hardware.
Many people have been suffered with this, the only sensible thing is for Microsoft to give users hardware that is Vista capable, even though some of the technology is *still* not there yet, and a reasonable cash sum…say $10 for each hour they have owned there hardware. I would suggest the removal of any Microsoft trademarks for a set period say 5 years, and a ban on advertising, as they have shown an inability to use this in an acceptable way.
They’ve apparently gotten too big even for themselves.
I was chatting with one of our consultants today about the very notion that Vista requires too many resources despite the user being paused almost every step of the way for approval to even look at the desktop.
Vista is today what Apple was way back when Jobs got fired the first time around.
If only they’d get out of the application business and concentrate more on the OS, they’d have a decent product – just imagine the paperclip helper in the Control Panel!
…blah…
Edited 2007-12-01 00:03
Actually, I’ve always felt that if Microsoft got out of the OS business and focused on applications, they’d have better products.
Pretty much every business unit within that company has to tie back into Windows somehow; MSN, MSO, XBox, Media, etc. It would be interesting to see how well they would do if they were free to develop for an open market, rather than be constricted by trying to exploit whatever the latest technologies in Windows are in order to encourage platform upgrades.
MS is a rich company with a plethora of pretty brilliant developers, it would be nice to see what they could really accomplish if they were set free.
Just a pipe dream…
Hello… Microsoft do not sell computers.
The way the original document was worded, it read like the manufacturers present their computers to someone at Microsoft who will test them to make sure they can run Vista before putting a sticker on them saying it can.
If a manufacturer places a Vista capable sticker on their PC, how is this a fault of Microsoft ?
Once again US lawyers are showing they have not got a clue about the computing industry.
There is a saying,
“For things you do not understand, leave well alone”
Edited 2007-12-01 17:46
In the end what will the ‘end consumer’ get out of this deal?
I can tell you absolutely nothing, what will the lawyers get well most likely pad their wallets with the consumers winnings and then maybe the people who brought forth the suit may get a coupon for Windows Vista…
At one point in time, lawyers were needed much like Unions however like everything else the only ones winning are the lawyers. They see a jackpot with Microsoft paying them off to go away and then giving the people some vouchers or a new computer. It is just ridiculous this country has now become a sue happy culture. Just my rambling about how muddled the entire industry becomes when frivolous lawsuits are engaged.
If someone purchased like another person had stated a basic machine with low specs it is not going to be able to run all of the features of a bloated out operating system. Technology changes so fast hardly anyone can actually keep pace with the advancements. And the price of technology continues to drop as new advancements pave the way.
Basically so every (mass produced) machine in theory should have stated ‘on the sticker’ saying I can run Vista Basic or I can run Vista Premium and so on. I just find this whole concept absurd and it costs tax payers a lot of money in the end. Because the cost of these lawsuits are paid by the same consumers who brought the lawsuit forward. The cost result in higher prices on software they purchase because of additional rewriting of the technical writing. I do not use MS products at home or in the office however someone as to eventually be an adult and be responsible for what they buy and know what they are purchasing.
I just get aggravated by this entire legal entity that is based off one concept ‘frivolous lawsuits’…