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Microsoft, Sony Clash Over Vista Turbo Memory

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the why-can't-we-just-get-along dept.

Anonymous writes "Sony is claiming that the current release of Vista does not support Intel's Turbo Memory technology, but Microsoft has dismissed the allegation. If Microsoft is telling the truth then all is well. But if Sony is right, Microsoft has opened itself to being sued for deceptive marketing practices."

3 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Sony is not dying .. by rs232 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Sony is dying because of the way they've been treating their customers lately"

    "By attacking one of the few companies more hated than them, they're trying to re-direct some of their bad karma"

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SNE&t=6m

    was: Re:Its all marketing...

    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
  2. Re:So, sue me by arthurs_sidekick · · Score: 5, Informative

    In all likelihood, buckets of money. Compare MS' or Sony's ADVERTISING budget to the ENTIRE budget allocated to the DOJ's antitrust division:

    • MS: $945M (reportedly)
    • DOJ: (2003) $140M

    My google-fu on financial info breakdowns for publicly traded companies is obviously weak, but Nintendo said they were going to spend $200M on marketing the Wii *alone*, so it's likely that Sony's advertising budget for the PS3 ALONE is on the order of the entire allocation for the DOJ's antitrust division.

    --
    "Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
  3. Intel and Microsoft Marketing at it's best by kungfoolery · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to several articles regarding this subject, the questionable utility of Turbo Memory is not the fault of MS alone:

    http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31976/135/

    TG Daily reports that Intel's showcasing of Turbo Memory included benchmarks that's anything but real-world applicable: "The benchmark appeared to slam several pictures at lightning speed into Photoshop, something that would play to the strengths of flash memory because the pictures would already be stored in flash for fast opening by Photoshop. Realistically though, we think the average user wouldn't capture dozens of pictures and then open them all in Photoshop in one fell swoop."

    Which leads to an Anandtech article showing that in many cases, performance suffered as a result of Turbo Memory implementation - particularly with boot and hibernation times. Now these are cases where users are MOST likely to notice performance differences.

    Finally, in the cases where Turbo Memory would seem useful, it appears that HP discovered that using far more versatile, ubitquitous flash solutions such as SD and USB drives (not to mention just adding regular system memory (what a concept!)) yielded similar and more economically sensible results: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6188522.html

    Maybe if Vista didn't need such obscene amounts of memory, this wouldn't be an issue; but I digress.