Another interesting tidbit to surface from the Microsoft internal emails made public as part of the “Vista Capable” lawsuit is the revelation that Wal-Mart and other large retailers were very unhappy upon being briefed about the Windows Vista Capable program. These retailers, Wal-Mart in particular, did not like Vista Home Basic, seeing it as a crippled product that would confuse and dissatisfy customers. A Computerworld article has more details.
… I’m happy I don’t have to deal with WV i.e. Windows Vista;) No, really. Something stinky happening with MS and it’s not getting better.
It reminds me to a situation similar to this one:
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyimages/915.gif
Maybe it’s a kind of illustration to the following passage from the article:
Microsoft execs had a series of meetings with retailers to explain the ill-fated Vista Capable scheme, and the retailers were not amused. They felt that the scheme would confuse consumers, and leave consumers dissatisfied with their purchases. Retailers had previously been burned because Windows XP had two flavors (Home and Pro), and consumers had been confused.
Wal-Mart was particularly unhappy, both with the Vista Capable scheme, and more than that, with the fact that Microsoft was releasing Vista Home Basic, which is such a stripped-down version of the operating system that even some Microsoft officials don’t consider it Vista.
Finally, read the first comment added to the linked article, also very interesting. And funny. 🙂
Serves Microsoft right.This whole 20 flavours of grape kool-aid was stupid from the beginning.
There can be nothing much more miserable than using a low-end laptop with 512 Meg RAM using Vista basic. Most of the cool bits have been striped out, not that you would have the power to run them anyway.
You have probably the least intuitive modern OS and it’s so slow it will make you cry. Throw in the Windows has run out of Memory errors when you open a small spread sheet, nag screens, etc and you computing experience will be worse than running RISC OS 15 years ago.
Edited 2008-03-08 06:50 UTC
Vista is crap anyway, in whatever form you buy it in.. it’s just another way for Microsoft to get more money from the consumers. Come on… What has Microsoft done the someone else hasn’t done already or has been doing for years?
Because they have the money to jam this crap down the consumers throats that is the only reason they still exist. They are doing good for themselves, but i don’t feel they are contributing to innovation at all.. If anything they are holding it back.
Ubuntu Linux (other flavors as well > Replacement for Windows
OpenOffice > Replacement for MS Office
Pidgin > The everything IM
Firefox > The best web browser PERIOD.
Thunderbird > Best mail client.
Guess what people…. ALL FREE.. It’s time for open source.