158 Pages of Microsoft's Dirty Laundry

KrispyRasher writes "Even internally, Microsoft couldn't agree on what the base requirements to run Vista were, but that didn't stop it from inaccurately promoting the OS as running on some hardware. 158 pages of Microsoft internal emails reveal scandalous truths about the squabbles that took place in the lead up to Vista's launch."

If you think 158 pages is a bit much..

[Idaho (12907)]

Microsoft execs on Vista problems [nwsource.com] is an excellent summary of the affair so far.

This class action suit isn't looking too good for Microsoft, I would say (though I'm not a lawyer, fortunately)

Re:If you think 158 pages is a bit much..

[da5idnetlimit.com (410908)]

We already don't Read The "Fine" Articles...
You really expect us to read 158 pages of emails ?

You must be new here !

8p

Re:If you think 158 pages is a bit much..

[drseuk (824707)]

Fools! If it'd been 6,000 pages of emails, they could have got ISO to certify "Vista not crap" as a standard.

Re:If you think 158 pages is a bit much..

[gormanly (134067)]

Yes. The people who believed the sticker were really uninformed, that's why the lawsuit could succeed. They looked at the info provided by MS and thought they were informed, that their new PC they were buying would be able to run Vista when it was released

Many people - including Mike Nash, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management - thought that were well informed in advance of purchase by the sticker on their machine that said "Vista Capable", then they tried to run Vista and it sucked. They trusted Microsoft to set reasonable minimum requirements and got screwed.

Of course, Microsoft's minima have always been over-optimistic at best, and all techies know that just because they tell you XP Pro requires a 233MHz Pentium MMX and 64MB of RAM, or Server 2003 Enterprise Edition requires a 133MHz CPU and 128MB of RAM, it doesn't make it a good idea to try it. Joe Average shouldn't need to consult his resident geek about whether the sticker is lying

Someone senior at MS should take the rap for this. If you're going to sign off on a set of minimum requirements for any software why would you not make sure to spend at least a week using it on a box with that spec? If it runs like a dog, bump upwards. No excuses, Mr Allchin...

Re:

[rtb61 (674572)]

Talking about responsibility, how about M$'s responsibility to it's share holders. What about all that advertising, press releases and even SEC rtaements upon which investors based their investment decisions. The Operating system is meant to be M$'s flagship product, it's main source of profits and revenue.

These emails paint a wildly different picture of the future financial viability of Vista and the revenue it was meant to generate versus M$'s public disclosures. A clear case of fraudulent misrepresenta

Sinofsky really worries me

[Kupfernigk (1190345)]

A VP in Microsoft buys a Sony laptop with 915 graphics and a Brother multifunction printer? I've suggested elsewhere on these pages that Microsoft management may not always be of the same high quality as their scientific and engineering staff, but two such misjudgements from one exec is worrying. Especially as one assumes that the guy didn't do it for lack of cash.

Re:Sinofsky really worries me

[gbjbaanb (229885)]

And why wouldn't he? The laptop carried the "Vista Capable" sticker, so you'd think it was capable of running Vista, and every piece of hardware comes with drivers for Windows, that's just a given.

Of course, with what we know now, he should have asked around first "Hey guys, does Vista Capable mean it can run Vista? Can I get drivers for a popular piece of commodity hardware?".

I'm sure he believed the hype from MS on this worryingly dodgy OS.

(disclaimer: I have a MSDN copy of Vista Ultimate, and even I'm thinking of going back to XP.)

Re:

[budgenator (254554)]

I got a new HP desktop as a gift, 3 GB ram, AMD dual core 6000 and "powered by nvidia" runs Vista fine and ran Vista exclusivly for two weeks then started dual-booting arch linux. Vista didn't have any noticeable performance or stability problems, I think Linux does run faster but not hugely so it could be I'm more comfortable in Linux. Some friends of mine have HP laptops with Vista, loaded up a bunch of games from Best Buy and the machines are sluggish feeling and very unstable. All told I wouldn't recom

Re:

[Billly Gates (198444)]

It is very slow and I/o intensive and offers little benefit over Vista.

I have a dual core laptop and one program can make Vista feel very unresponsive even if there are two processors. When I downgraded to XP the system still felt responsive and the otehr CPU took things over quite well.

Also on a notebook Vista will just pound on the hard disk randomly for hours at a time for no reason. Running MS resource manager I found out it was running disk defragmenting and registry backup programs very slowly in the

Re:

[gbjbaanb (229885)]

OK. I am a Windows developer, and have been for ages - Windows suddenly became good with NT4 when everyone I knew and worked for decided to migrate from proprietary unix systems to NT.

I've run every Windows OS since then really.

So, I installed Vista a few months after it became available. It looks nice, I have aero and the sidebar going with a couple of gadgets and I've even grown used to the 'search instead of start menu'.

Things I havn't got used to: the changed Control Panel, it *still* confuses me that '

Re:

[Tassach (137772)]

You (and many others) are assuming that "microsoft exec" means someone involved with the engineering side of the business. Any large (or even medium sized company) software company has lots of positions that are completely non-technical: HR, legal, facilities. Furthermore, software development is only one of many lines of business Microsoft is in. Would you expect someone who manages graphic artists to know (or even care about) the inner workings of an operating system?

Intel 910? It's a MS incompetent devs

[Wolfier (94144)]

Intel 910 works mighty fine on Compiz-Fusion with almost all eye candies enabled.

If Aero cannot work well on Intel 910, it's probably because Aero is an incompetent pile of junk compared to Compiz.

Re:Intel 910? It's a MS incompetent devs

[ashridah (72567)]

Actually, you'll find it's because Aero demands decent pixel shader support to do the blur effect underneath the titlebar (aka, glass). That's the difference between compiz and aero, basically. Aero uses a bunch of pixel shaders, and thus, limits itself as to what cards can do everything. Compiz uses basic transforms (in most cases) instead, and runs on more hardware as a result. (Note, hardware accelerated alpha blending isn't texture-mapped blurring. The latter's a bit more complex)

Which looks better is a matter of subjective opinion. Glass looks nice to me, but then, I only ever have high-end video cards. Some of the compiz effects are nice as well, although quite a few just bring a system to it's knees just as easily as Aero will, and some compiz effects seem fairly pointless. A lot of it is asthetics, although compiz does have some handy ones as well as just visually appealing ones.

ash

The bigger problem is Vista running

[kurt555gs (309278)]

Of course the truth was stretched by M$. I like the part where they favor their buddies at Intel and say Vista runs well on low end chips, just to help an investor report.

The larger problem is even if you have the next thing to a super computer, Vista is still Vista. Doing mysterious DRM checks while copying files at a rate that would embarrass a TRS-80 Model 1, and all of the other issues of driver incomparability.

Vista is still prone to viruses and Trojans in no small part because M$ still lets it run as root and not need physical password entry to install or run a program.

Before any of the M$ fanbois out here start modding this down, go download the latest Ubuntu, install it on your "Vista Capable Machine" , try using it for a while, then honestly look and see if it isn't superior for desktop use than Vista.

I think you will be surprised.

Or, for those that think you have to pay for software in order for it to work, go over to an Apple store and try OS X.

After doing either of those 2 things, then see if you can come up with some reason, other than monopolistic domination and pre-installation as a reason that anyone would want Vista.

I am glad to say that Vista really is the new Edsel.

"M$ fanbois out here start modding this down"

[Britz (170620)]

This is Slashdot. You get modded up for mocking Microsoft and BSD and modded down for mocking Linux.

You will get flamed AND modded into oblivion if you as much as critisize Apple. And I really don't want to find out what would happen to you if would start mocking Apple. I never EVER heard from those guys again.

Re:"M$ fanbois out here start modding this down"

[TClevenger (252206)]

That's why I metamoderate every time I am offered it on Slashdot. I often find posts that are improperly modded down (i.e., an "Offtopic" on an on-topic post about a heated subject), and have metamodded appropriately.

I almost never moderate, but I'm fanatical about metamoderating, because abusive moderation happens all the time.

Vista is slower than XP even when XP is *Virtual*!

[JimMarch(equalccw) (710249)]

It's even funnier than stated.

A year ago a friend and I bought near-identical low-end laptops: Celeron single-core 1.6 CPUs, Intel 945 graphics, etc - one Acer (mine) and one Toshiba. These were $400 Best-Buy-sale-o-the-week critters. Both shipped originally with Vista Home Basic. We set them up with 1gig memory each (533) - they had shipped with 512 and Vista was utterly unusable.

At 1gig we tested both with MS-Office 2003. He still had Vista. I had Ubuntu Feisty 7.04, Innotek Virtualbox 1.52 I believe it was, and Windows XP running as a virtual machine with 512megs of it's own RAM leaving 512 for Ubuntu.

The Ubuntu/XP mutant combo spanked the Vista box - severely - in everything but boot time as my rig had to boot two OSes in succession.

At that time getting Office '03 to work in Wine was a no-go. It's at least possible now I've heard, and that might be even faster. But regardless, Vista with one gig should have been able to keep up with virtualized XP running in 512...it wasn't even close.

Need I mention that I rapidly converted my bud to Ubuntu/XP?

Re:

[Kelz (611260)]

I took your advice (a few days ago actually) and tried installing Ubuntu. LiveCD didn't work. Alternate CD installed it but X wouldn't work. Recompiling X wouldn't work. Looked at forums and after 3 hours of trying to figure out what was wrong it appears that my hardware may be too new for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu loads now, but I can't actually log in because it boots me out a second later. I'm no expert, and I've no idea how to fix, and forums are useless. I wanted it to work; I wanted to think it might be ready

Re:The bigger problem is Vista running

[EvilRyry (1025309)]

Even the cancel/allow is perfectly fine for most cases. If you are in the admin group it will ask you for the cancel allow which supposedly runs isolated from other apps so that they can't push the allow button for you. If you're not in the admin group, then it prompts you for admin credentials. Its really not that bad of a system except theres no "yes, and leave me alone for the next few minutes while I actually try to get some stuff done with out this freaking thing harassing me every time I try to change a system setting" option.

Re:

[zakezuke (229119)]

"Even the cancel/allow is perfectly fine for most cases"

And somehow Sunbelt Kerio Personal (formally Tiny Firewall) were somehow able to implement similar features, yet Microsoft couldn't get it right.

Come to think about it, Microsoft has always had a blind spot for some simple concepts. Yes, No, No to all, Yes to all. Which ever option I needed they always neglected to put in the menu.

Re:The bigger problem is Vista running

[ehrichweiss (706417)]

"Come to think about it, Microsoft has always had a blind spot for some simple concepts. Yes, No, No to all, Yes to all. Which ever option I needed they always neglected to put in the menu."

Abort, Retry, Cancel, Fail?
A
Abort, Retry, Cancel, Fail?
R
Abort, Retry, Cancel, Fail?
C
Abort, Retry, Cancel, Fail?
F
Abort, Retry, Cancel, Fail?
grrr
Abort, Retry, Cancel, Fail?
<ctrl-alt-delete> NO CARRIER

Re:The bigger problem is Vista running

[WhatAmIDoingHere (742870)]

Their "service packs" are the 10.5.x updates. Those are free and add features on top of bug fixes. Something Microsoft has promised the Vista Ultimate customers and failed to follow through with. The 10.x updated are the updates you're thinking about, and they're released every couple of years. We just got Leopard after 2-3 years of Tiger. They're not just bug fixes or UI changes, unlike Microsoft, when Apple says "we're going to add a new file system and change the OS in x, y, and z ways, they change them. Vista is XP with a new hat and a STD.

Re:The bigger problem is Vista running

[Cal Paterson (881180)]

Mplayer has always had dvd sub support...at least, for as long as I can remember, and I remember many years. There are also subtitle OCR programs, though some are better than others, and some aren't very good at all. Even if you don't like the unix ones, virtualdub is very well supported through wine, and has been for, again, as long as I can remember.

I don't know what media player classic is, however, but there are lots of good media player programs for unix, and they all share the same libraries with every other player out there. If you're trying to say "Call me when Ubuntu is Windows XP" you're never going to be satisfied, but Ubuntu does all the things you mention, with the exclusion of XFI, which is a terrible SPU anyway.

"Vista-ready" is not binary

[G4from128k (686170)]

Although I'm not a MSFT fanboi, I can see how defining compatibility is not easy. Although a given OS certainly will not run on ancient hardware or hardware lacking key features, the required MB of RAM, GB of disk, and GHz of CPU are all subjective requirements once the hardware is above some minimum spec. I know that I've run OSes on hardware that were below the recommended spec and found them quite usable (for my purposes). Add the fact that the company must set the required hardware spec before finishing the OS and its no wonder that MSFT picked a spec that some find unbearable.

I'm not surprised by the internal squabbles or that the company would pick a spec that's lower than what some engineers argued for.

The best part, IMHO...

[by Anonymous Coward]

...is the discussion over the miserable driver situation. They eventually conclude that IHVs didn't expect them to ever ship Vista, and that the IHVs also didn't trust Microsoft enough to work hard at getting their drivers working on the Vista betas because they expected subsequent changes to Vista that would break the drivers and negate all the effort.

These guys honestly seem perplexed that the IHVs don't trust Microsoft. I find that utterly hilarious.

HP is enraged, Walmart upset

[goombah99 (560566)]

My favorite part [informationweek.com] of the e-mails was where they show how they massively screwed HP and ignored Walmart. I suspect they will wind up paying for this one way or another in vendor credibility.

This retreat took at least one OEM, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP), by complete surprise, as this late-January 2006 e-mail showed:

In our August 7x7 with HP you both [Jim Allchin, Co-President Platforms & Services at the time, and Senior VP Will Poole] committed to HP that we would not move off the WDDM requirement and HP made significant product road map changes to support graphics for the full Vista experience. Ramano [John Romano, Senior VP of HP's Consumer PC Group] specifically told Jim that HP will invest in graphics if MS would give him 100% assurance that we would not budge for Intel. This goes beyond desktop for HP as their mobile guys moved off 915 early for the same reasons.

it doesn't just work

The problem with the "Capable" program is that the customer who buys a "Capable" machine and Vista retail does not know that "Vista Capable" != everything just works. The bar for getting such a sticker was/is too low or the marketing around the sticker was/is not specific enough as to what it actually means; Vista installs, runs but there is no actual submissions of systems going through any sort of "Vista Capable" experience validation (as opposed to what happens in the actual DFW [Designed for Windows] Logo program).

Microsoft's current predicament might be best summarized by this e-mail describing a February 2006 meeting:

Wal-Mart was very vocal today regarding the Windows Vista Capable messaging. They are extremely disappointed in the fact that standards were lowered and feel like customer confusion will ensue. ... They also went so far as to say they wish Windows Home Basic was not even in the SKU lineup. ... Please give this some consideration; it would be a lot less costly to do the right thing for the customer now than to spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem.

Re:

[El_Oscuro (1022477)]

An old saying from the Army, which definitely applies to software development:

"There is never enough time to do it right, but always time to do it again."

Runs great.....

[edwardpickman (965122)]

on an 8 core 6.5 with 12 gig of ram.

Re:Runs great.....

[Rigrig (922033)]

Don't worry, this will be fixed with SP2

Maybe 2008 is the year...

[pieterh (196118)]

A lot of things are going wrong for Microsoft right now...

  - "Vista Ready" is starting to mean a huge liability
  - The EU seems determined to make Microsoft stick to the rules
  - MS's OOXML effort is running into real resistance
  - Apple keeps taking more and more of the desktop and laptop market
  - The EEE PC has finally turned Linux into a mainstream "feature"
  - Trying to buy Yahoo has made MS look really weak in Internet services
  - Its "we'll sue Linux for patent infringement" FUD is convincing no-one
  - It's being sued persistently by patent trolls in the USA

I'm just wondering if 2008 will be the year that sees Microsoft humbled by the market and its own inability to deliver products people actually *want* to use.

A whole lot of people are going to sing and dance in the streets if things do go badly wrong for Microsoft. They don't have a lot of friends left, unless they're willing to buy them.

Re:

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS- (624050)]

Microsoft will always have office to generate refenue, for what it's worth...

Re:Maybe 2008 is the year...

[SpinyNorman (33776)]

Office is certainly a cash cow, but the the document format lock-in that keeps it so is disappearing. Things like OpenOffice have pretty good interopability and Microsoft seem to be getting increasingly forced to open up their standards.

Don't forget that Google is also sticking it to them on this front. For 95% of home users Google Docs (supports MS .doc, .ppt, .xls formats) is all you need. I guess it's karma from killing Netscape that is coming back to Microsoft.

http://docs.google.com/ [google.com]

Re:

[malevolentjelly (1057140)]

Where are all these people? I'm yet to see any major organization academic or corporate that I've come across think twice about updating to Office 2007- OpenOffice is just something the IT guy brings up in passing- which is usually ignored.

In fact, Office 2007 is just excellent. You can generate simply beautiful documents and presentations extremely fast with it. I use OpenOffice at home, so I've dealt with the fact that it's an okay viewer/editor but for what it's worth everything I make on it looks like u

The problem with Vista is that people don't care

[CPE1704TKS (995414)]

What Microsoft feared most about Google has become true now: The application stack has shifted up, and now the web browser has become the new OS. No one cares about Vista because no one needs a new OS anymore. All they care about is getting their news and email, IM'ing and watching youtube. Flash and AJAX have completely supplanted the OS.

The only reason why you need a new OS is for new features, but frankly, no one needs them. The only reason why people use an OS these days is to interact with local files, but the vast majority of people only care about 2 types of files: MP3s and digital photos. Even Word documents are becoming marginalized now. So what's the point of a desktop search for newer kids these days, when they stick everything online now?

Because of the lack of importance of new OS features, that's why other OSes like Mac OS are gaining steam, because Windows isn't as essential as it was 10 years ago. It's a perfect storm of good for Apple, they are becoming ever-increasingly "cooler", and the need for Windows is diminishing, so people can still get their email and watch youtube and still get the same experience. This is also why everyone is still using XP, a 7 year old OS, without any complaints. No one cares, and it scares Microsoft to death.

They shit the bed in their attempt to make Vista relevant and they lost their one-and-only chance. I'm sure Vista will be adopted eventually, but it will probably take another 5 years because it is as popular as XP is now.

Re:The problem with Vista is that people don't car

[Splab (574204)]

if no one cares about Vista how come theres a class action lawsuit in progress?

That would require at least a few caring about the Vista they bought.

Re:The problem with Vista is that people don't car

[node 3 (115640)]

The class action lawsuit is from people who bought a new PC (hence the "Vista Capable" claim) with Vista. What they wanted was a new PC, not Vista in particular. Vista was probably given very little consideration other than "the newest version of Windows? Sure, sounds good".

Then they got it home and found how bad it runs. Much worse than their last, less powerful PC.

So it's not really so much about them caring that Vista runs like crap, it's them caring that their PC that they just bought runs like crap.

Really, Vista is the biggest "meh" in computer history.

Re:

[jkrise (535370)]

I'm sure Vista will be adopted eventually, but it will probably take another 5 years because it (Vista) is as popular as XP is now.

I would wager that XP is about 10 times as popular as Vista now... at the very least. Application (in)compatibility is the single biggest problem for corporates, while for home users... as you said, Vista brings nothing new since a browser and Flash is all that home users need. I think Vista will take much more than 5 years to get adopted... by which time its successor should

Limited point of view...

[MyNameIsFred (543994)]

...the web browser has become the new OS...the vast majority of people only care about 2 types of files: MP3s and digital photos. Even Word documents are becoming marginalized now...

Many companies for various reasons - safeguarding proprietary information, trade secrets, etc. - have no desire to store their business documents on "Google's servers." Nor do I expect that to change in the near future. And while your assertions about file formats may be true for home users, it certainly is not true for many

Re:The problem with Vista is that people don't car

[Renderer of Evil (604742)]

As much as I want to believe how this "cloud computing" has supplanted the local one, it's not the case. Online services are in their infancy.

Okay, maybe email, but most of the stuff that deals with productivity is very much a client-side affair. Have you tried editing a picture in an ajax-y environment? It's a mess. The bandwidth isn't there and the browsers are retrofitted to perform functions no one really anticipated.

Audio/Video editing, image manipulation, or tasks with large files will keep the local

Re:The problem with Vista is that people don't car

[sydbarrett74 (74307)]

I'm sure Vista will be adopted eventually, but it will probably take another 5 years because it is as popular as XP is now.

And by then, Windows 7 will be out. Let's face it: Vista is nothing more than the Son of Millennium Edition. Very few people adopted that steaming turd, preferring instead to wait for XP to show up a year or so later. Same thing will happen with Vista. Much as Microsoft would prefer that everybody go out and buy a new system, many people are going to wait on the sidelines because their current systems are Good Enough(tm). When they do upgrade in the next several years, they'll have lots of options: a flavo

train crash in slow motion

[arabagast (462679)]

Been reading the pdf the past days, and altough it seems as if there was many sensible voices over at microsoft, they had to much of a momentum forward, making it hard to change directions midcourse. it's really a pain reading those letters knowing what vista ended up at. I'm just hoping to find a reference like "this is ME all over again" somewhere in those letters, would have been so nice to hear that from the horses mouth :)

and btw: it's 158 pages, not 185.

Microsoft could have done plenty...

[argent (18001)]

Microsoft is always in something of a no-win position when it comes to minimum system requirements. If it specifies huge hardware needs, then the opportunity to sell upgrades is reduced since most existing PCs can't handle the new version. If it sets a minimal baseline platform, then it's difficult (though arguably not impossible) to add any features that make upgrading worth the hassle and risk.

It would have been easy to add features to make Vista worth buying: make it modular, make it simpler, make it more rather than less reliable, and make the features that reduce Windows security optional, and look at what your best competitors were doing.

* Make the HTML control optional, rewrite the control panel applets and other shell components that need it to work without it, and change the tight binding between rendering and access control. Provide a "legacy" wrapper for it so that old programs can use the insecure API, but make THAT optional as well.

* Make the DRM optional. Vista without DRM would still use the old XP drivers and remain compatible with XP, but wouldn't have the components to run the latest encrypted media, so give us the option... Basic Vista or Video Vista. If you don't install Windows Media Player, you get WMP 2.0 and a WMV3 codec so you can play most video, but if you want to play HD-DVD you need to take on the full thing.

* Bundle Interix with ALL versions of Vista. They could call it "A better UNIX than Linux".

* Remove the crippling in Terminal Server, allow multiuser use over networks. If you can't afford to upgrade all your computers to Vista you can use the old ones as terminals to your Windows Home Server.

* Bundle Visual Studio, in the package, the way Apple bundles XCode and all free UNIXes bundle their compilers. Windows is the last hold out of the horror of the '80s... the compiler-less OS.

These might not sell to home users, but it would sell to business, and don't forget that what got Windows into the home for a lot of people was the fact that they were using it at the office.

But this would all be diametrically opposed to Microsoft's "we know better than you what you want, and that's *our* OS, not yours" policies. Hell, even Apple gave up on the idea of unbundling access to UNIX from Rhapsody, and if it's not too scary for APPLE users it's not too scary for Windows.

Too little, too much

[Monoman (8745)]

The thread on this subject the other day had an good comment from a former MS employee. Vista works well if you do the following

1. Turn of Aero
2. Switch to Classic mode/view whatever it is called (makes it look like Windows 2000)
3. Go into System properties and set to optimize for best performance.

A friend tried it on two systems (one is a new quad-core) and is much happier now. So where does that get you? Basically, system that looks like Windows 2000, performs like XP, and has the underneath the cover features of Vista like "enhanced" security, searching, etc.

I haven't tried Vista yet because of the lackluster performance and no compelling reasons to run it. Knowing it can be setup to run faster is nice but I still can't see anyone spending money on Vista just to turn off all of the eye candy.

I'll stick with XP at work and Ubuntu & XP at home for now.

Re:

[jcnnghm (538570)]

I was in a similar situation as your friend, but I feel like I got considerably better results by reinstalling XP and installing Launchy [launchy.net]. The only Vista feature that I thought was worth having, after disabling Areo and putting classic mode on, was the searchable start menu. Launchy provides the same utility under XP, but performs better than the vista search.

Wow, Wall*Mart

[xtracto (837672)]

When even Wall*Mart tells you to do what is best for customers...

a Microsoft employee, wrote that Wal-Mart is "extremely disappointed in the fact that the standards were lowered and feel like customer confusion will ensue. They would like to see Microsoft reconsider the program and allow for the use of 2 different logos; one that is strictly a Windows Vista Home Basic Capable, and the other Windows Vista Capable."

She continued, "Please give this some consideration; it would be a lot less costly to do the right thing for the customer than to spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem."

That snippet was really insightful. Shit, Microsoft *should* have made those two stickers (Vista Home Capable and Vista Others). When they announced that there would be 6 different versions of Vista everybody *knew* it would bring problems...

Quote from the article

[nxsty (942984)]

Microsoft's own most senior executives were completely bamboozled by the "Vista capable" labelling scheme. "I personally got burned by the Intel 915 chipset on a laptop that I PERSONALLY (e.g. with my own $$$) [bought]", said Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management, who bought a "Vista capable" laptop, only to find it couldn't run the Aero interface. "I now have a $2100 email machine," he concluded.

As opposed to a $2100 email machine with aero?

Do Gamers Have an Option?

[Death_Aparatus (571087)]

Unfortunately for me, I am a gamer. Serious PC gaming is still pretty much stuck on the windows platform. They tried pushing us to Vista with DX10 and when they EoL XP, they will have succeeded. I, for one, will be taking a closer look at Wine on my Ubuntu partition. I just hope it really works as described. Does any one know of any other linux gaming solutions? I suppose I do still have an itch for nethack every once in a while.

Graphics drivers

[ragnarok (6947)]

Check out page 47 of the PDF. There's a pretty interesting table showing the percentage of crashes attributed to each graphics vendor. Nvidia is way out front, with 25% compared to less than 10% for ATI.

One more demonstration of the basic truth

[Master of Transhuman (597628)]

Microsoft does not sell software.

It sells lies.

"Upgrade"

[Lonewolf666 (259450)]

"Upgrade" implies that the new version is significantly better.
Vista is
-worse in performance
-maybe better in security (UAC is a nice try, but reportedly many people just switch it off because it is too annoying)
-has DX10 (whatever you think about it...)
-has more eyecandy if Aero is available
By pushing a version without Aero at all, Microsoft have thrown away (for that version) one of the two things thing that would immediately signal "Hey, I am new and shiny". That sort of mistake is quite untypical for them. It would not be the first time that Microsoft sells something that looks good and later turns out to be an unreliable POS. But selling something without "bells and whistles" factor is new for them.