Ballmer Ordered To Testify In 'Vista Capable' Case 235
alphadogg writes "A federal judge in Seattle has ordered Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to testify in a class action lawsuit against Microsoft that alleges the company misled consumers in a marketing campaign for its Windows Vista operating system in which computers sold with an older Microsoft OS were labeled 'Vista Capable' when in fact they could only run a basic version of Vista. Ballmer has unique personal knowledge of facts surrounding the case, therefore he must face questioning, Judge Marsha Pechman of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle ruled, according to court documents released late Friday."
Re:So? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
You must be new here. :P
Here's the point of the plaintiffs: Vista is advertised to have all these nice features. Aero was one of them. Vista Basic does not run Aero because the machines cannot support it. It was not evident to most consumers that Vista Basic was the most stripped down version that could not do this because it was in the fine print. It didn't matter the cost of the machine per se. It was the video chipset that mattered. Mike Nash, VP of MS, bought a $2,100 computer that could not run Aero.
Premium Ready (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ballmer in court (Score:3, Informative)
Enough with the chair throwing. It's getting old!
Re:But it still runs Vista. What's the problem? (Score:4, Informative)
So even though it could run Vista, people are mad they couldn't run themes that require more hardware?
Yes. They advertised Vista as having all these cool bells and whistles in terms of the user interface, and when people thought they were getting that and found out that they weren't, they were pissed. Moreover, Microsoft had very specific hardware requirements that they posted to the OEMs. After many of the OEMs busted their asses, spent tons of money, and re-tooled their product lines to meet the requirements, Microsoft changed them last minute (the day before release) for Intel, who had a flagship chipset that didn't meet the certification requirements. That (though of course IANAL) is the real legal issue here; whether Microsoft misled their partners with this whole "Vista Capable" program.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Actually these machines *didn't* come with a version of Vista. They came with a sticker claiming they are capable of running Vista with no specific of which version of Vista they would be capable of running. As a result, this sticker meant different things to MS marketroids than it did to consumers who found the stickers misleading; hence the lawsuit.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
You bait them with pretty pictures and a new user interface, then you switch it out with something that looks and feels just like XP. Even their new marketing campaign (mojave) pushes the UI with the "participants" talking about how great everything looks. I have yet to see a vista commercial that talks about the technical merits of the operating system, because your average user doesn't understand or care about indexed search or file systems etc.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Although I agree with the justice of going after them for misleading statements, I reckon all-in-all these people are better off, having got a PC with XP rather than being forced to wrestle the leviathan.
I think you misunderstand.
This isn't about whether a computer shipped with Vista or XP, this is about how a computer was labeled.
Microsoft has a qualification process that decides what sticker you're allowed to put on your PC. If your machine meets the requirements you are allowed to brand your computer as "Vista Capable".
Microsoft intentionally lowered the requirements for their sticker program in order to include computers that probably should not have qualified.
This means that there are people out there who bought computers intending to run Vista on them, and thought that the machine was capable of running Vista, and were then disappointed to find out that they could only run a very limited version of Vista.
You can certainly argue that XP is a better OS than Vista, and I don't think you'll see a whole lot of people disagreeing with you around here. But the fact of the matter is that people expected something that they weren't getting.
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
But according to one Mr. Josh Bancroft, I remember that the Intel 915 was indeed capable of doing the Aero as well... and that Vista Beta actually ran Aero on the 915. This changed when Vista was actually released though.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2007/04/02/video-why-intel-915-graphics-dont-have-a-wddm-driver-for-vista/ [intel.com]
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=451104&cid=22395296 [slashdot.org]
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
The sad irony is that MS lowered the standards to get Vista onto machines that could not support Aero. The original assumption that no one would buy these machines if consumers knew that they could not upgrade from XP to Vista. Considering the negative experiences that many of them consumers had on these machines, many of them don't want Vista nowadays.
This is certainly true.
I've got a Vista machine at home... 64-bit, dual core, 4 gigs of RAM... Runs fine. I might very well be better off with some other choice of OS, but I don't have any genuine issues running Vista. It is at least functional.
I've seen clients bring in Vista machines that are barely functional. They complain about how slow the machine is, how hard it is to do any work. These machines have the bare minimum hardware necessary to boot the OS. They've got 1 GB or less of RAM, a crappy on-board GPU, and some kind of underpowered budget CPU. And these people are miserable with Vista.
If Microsoft had required manufacturers to ship computers with decent hardware you wouldn't be seeing nearly as many people complaining about Vista.
If we applied this logic to games.... (Score:1, Informative)
"But I like it when the roads have that always-wet look and reflect everything to an unnatural degree! But it runs too slow like that! *goes sue happy* How dare you market a game with motion blured commercials that my system can't even manage!"
Is the Aero interface really worth suing over?! Isn't there any reasonable computer user left who thinks... "a simple google search would of enlightened these suckers"???
I have a measly 2.4 Ghz Northwood with a NV7600 and 1 GB of RAM. Aero runs slightly worse than the XP interface(same hardware). I still disable both and go with Windows Classic(order of magnitude more responsive). I'm sure these systems are (more than) capable of running Vista under Classic interface. I guess someone would have to teach(read: do it for) them.
Final thought: I r teh st00pid! Giv meh m$$ney plox. I can haz laur suite?!
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
and the article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080211-vista-capable-scheme-was-panned-at-microsoft.html [arstechnica.com]
Mike Nash, currently a corporate vice president for Windows product management, wrote in an e-mail, "I PERSONALLY got burnt. ... Are we seeing this from a lot of customers? ... I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine." Jim Allchin, then the co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, wrote in another e-mail, "We really botched this. ... You guys have to do a better job with our customers."
Re:Ballmer in court (Score:4, Informative)
Same thing after I figured it was spyware/malware related and reverted from the system restore partition HP provides (since you don't get disc media anymore)
Vista Capable at the low end of the spectrum is at best a complete lie.
Re:Ballmer in court (Score:3, Informative)