Windows Vista (In)capable
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 3.3.2008
What went wrong? I’ll tell you what went wrong: Microsoft execs - starting with Steve Ballmer - don’t care enough about their customers.
Which is too bad for the thousands of smart, hard working ’softies who do.
I went through the Vista Capable lawsuit Exhibit A emails. Lots of warnings that Vista was a train wreck, that its requirements exceeded the market, that the continual changes and slips were killing OEMs and that many peripheral vendors had simply given up trying to stay in sync.
Where was Steve?
Even execs get shafted If you were confused and/or burnt by the “Windows Vista Capable” logo, you have good company. Mike Nash, now Microsoft Corporate VP, Windows Product management, said in an email:
I personally got burned by the Intel 915 chipset issue on a laptop that PERSONALLY (eg with my own $$$). . . . I now have a $2100 email machine.”
Board member and former Microsoft President/COO Jon Shirley also had Vista woes:
I upgraded one of the two machines I use a lot to Vista. The most persistent and so far hardest to fix issues are both MSN products, Portfolio in MSN Money and Music (downloads I had bought in the past).
. . . there are no drivers yet for my Epson printer (top of the line and in production today but no driver yet), Epson scanner (older but also top of the line and they say thwy not do a driver for) and a Nikon film scanner that will get a driver one day . . . . I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is a such a shortage of drivers. I suppose the vendors did not trust us . . . enough to use the beta for driver testing?
Good question, Jon. Ballmer replied: “You are right that people did not trust us . . . “.
Was it Intel’s fault?
Intel clearly put pressure on Microsoft to ease the graphics requirements for the “Vista Capable” designation. Intel VP, Software and Solutions Group Renee J. James got a lot of attention from William Poole, a Microsoft VP.
Mr. Poole seems to have been Microsoft’s primary contact to Intel’s James. Mr. Poole played an key role in strangling Netscape - based on his testimony in the antitrust trial. He knows how to play rough.
Thus John Kalkman’s email statement doesn’t quite add up:
In the end we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded.
If Intel couldn’t sell motherboards, could Microsoft sell Windows? Further, Intel’s 915 graphics performance wasn’t bad. In a November, 2004 ExtremeTech review, the 915 could do 73 fps on Halo and 60 on UT2004 - not bad for integrated graphics 3 years ago.
My reading: Vista’s hardware requirements exceeded what most consumers were buying. Microsoft bloatware overshot the market and they had a choice: lower requirements or hose the available market for Vista.
They lowered requirements. The “Intel made us do it” claim is an excuse, not a reason. The emails also show that HP had worked hard to meet the original requirements. If Microsoft cared about consumer requirements they would have supported HP over Intel - even at the cost of initial Vista sales.source:
blogs.zdnet.com
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Comments(21)
microsoft obviously dropped the ball on this one. vista is not user friendly to put it
mildly. any company that uses tactics like this cannot be trusted. microsoft should be
nailed to the wall for this. steve ballmer should be fired.
seriously the drivers support is horrible. as if we must dump our 2-3 years old mobo,
cpus and hardware to get new printers and parts supporting vista... plus manufactureers
dont want to $$$ to develop drivers for oldd parts.. ill stick with xp instead
if you dont like vista you are ignorant about computers. vista is the best os out
of
redmond to date and oh ya xp support will soon end and software developer won't
bother creating drivers for xp soon very soon so get over it and move on losers.
i agree with the post by vistatech. bunch of clueless idiots posting here who don't
know a dang thing about vista. it works great, i have absolutely zero compatibility
problems, its even more stable than xp is.
where would you be without ms? you can piss and moan all you want about ms and vista but
it is ms who makes windows and takes all the risks. you could use apple's polish windows
and enjoy your silly looking computer. or, you could wait for sp1 (have it installed,
very nice) and give people some frigging room to breath. if i recall correctly, xp at
first was craptastic too.
vista has been publicly available for well over a year now. if your hardware manufacturer
still hasn't released drivers, then you need to think about changing to a different
brand.
this has definately become a vista hate page when blogs are concidered news. i guess
this is what we can expect from here until windows 7 is released......by that time we will
hear rants about how crappy 7 is and how vista is the perfect os.
just another vista bashing article...just a few more articles containing bashing bashing
and bashing and i remove this site from my favorites...
there are lots of alternates to windows.
linux maybe? if microsoft had not been
guilty of how many anti trust lawsuits trying to snuff out competion, such as the netscape
fiasco, maybe consumers would have more choice? now, according to this article from zdnet,
they're trying to kill amd. amd could have helped provide the needed chipsets, but noooo!
instead microsoft allowed intel to supply the older ones incapable of running aero, and
thus created the vista (in) capable sticker. how long will we allow evil corporations like
microsoft to get away with it? judging by these comments here people just don't care.
i would guess that the average happy vista user would actually download indian_virgins
virus from rapidshare believing it to be a hot indian virgin.
xp users have
more sense.
come on kez we all know vista isn't the os it was supposed to be but then neither was xp
originally or 98/ 98se but now we all praise xp sp3 !
so lets give vista a
while to settle in and in stead of slagging it off why don't we look at ways of helping
each other out to inprove vista sp1 and beyond?
the only issue concerning vista
(32) has been with nvidia gpu drivers and the crack to activate but the activation hasn't
been a problem but more a pest.
paul
windows vista is an awesome os, get over xp, its rubbish!
i don't know about you but i am happy with vista. it works great. in xp, i had to
install each driver to get anything running, but not vista. vista automatically updated
all my driver. got me running smoothly. i know vista has its own special issue, but sp1
is around corner. xp will be thing of past real soon.
vista is most def not a good os for gamers and that is the main thing i am interested in.
so how can xp be rubbish? ive got the system to very easily run vista but why would i want
to, even dx10 is a load of crap and thats why microsoft have already moved on to dx10.1
weird, because my vista is faster with games. also i use x64 and its really faster then
xp. also vista is the future if you like it or not. the games need soon directx 10 and
will not be on xp. also for the people who keeps complaining about their old system/parts.
buy a new pc/printer or what ever your problem is. windows xp is also not compatible with
pentium 1 or 2. if it is compatible then its working real real slow. like vista is for you
whining people.
get over xp and use vista !
i don't get all the b!tching...i really don't. i run vista x64 ultimate on my laptop
and on my 3-year-old desktop with no issues whatsoever! furthermore, i've upgraded about
10 machines that i built 5 years ago to vista business for a client and have gotten
nothing by positive feedback. i really think that for the most part this vista
bellyaching is a factor of 2 things:
1) people who have nothing better to do
(like hold down a real it job) than to bash ms because it makes them feel better
2) pebcak
like i always tell others, don't buy vista because it's really a beta product you'll
pay full price for. the correct response is to crack vista with your favorite crack and
use it for free in protest until microsoft makes it worthy of purchase.....
i personally haven't had many issues with vista except for slow network browsing and the
slow file copy issue. other than that it runs stable on all my pc's although i still
believe it was a sloppy release. microsoft needs to plan their stuff better, for this
vista gets a b-!!!
^ that was funny!
please give pass to rar files.
ok yes vista is shiny,but also shity.i prefer xp from all the angles
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Vista is a mistake
By Jake the snake on 04.03.2008 - 02:03