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Microsoft Had Doubts About the 'Vista Capable' Label

Posted by Zonk on from the marketing-will-make-it-all-better dept.

dionysus writes "Last April, Microsoft was sued over its 'Vista Capable' labeling, and in hearing last week, attorneys for the plaintiffs presented evidence that Microsoft employees were skeptical about the 'Vista Capable' marketing. Some of the most damning evidence comes from Microsoft executives: '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."' The judge in the case is currently considering the plaintiffs' request to make it a class-action lawsuit."

6 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. Vista = dogfooding? by WolfTheWerewolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perhaps they should have forced it upon employees for more "real-world" testing first?

    1. Re:Vista = dogfooding? by jimicus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know something? I bet they did.

      But Microsoft have a reputation for not only encouraging their developers to run the latest and greatest version, but also giving them the best hardware with which to do it.

      I wonder how many developers actually had easy access to a laptop with less than 1GB of RAM to run Vista on, let alone tried it.

      Wild speculation, so mod me how you like.

  2. Re:A $2100 email machine? by CFTM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And that's the sound of the point that the VP was attempting to make flying over your head.

  3. Too many editions! by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many versions of the same system do you really need? Having created over six versions of the same operating system, Microsoft should have been aware that there would be confusion. Are people in the company so oblivious to the "Keep it Simple" approach? Generally a desktop and a server edition should suffice, and anything being marked a 'ready' should be indicating the expected experience and not the rationed experience.

    A computer allowing me to experience 10% of what the new OS can provide me, is not ready in any shape or form. Games labelling gets this right, why shouldn't hardware? Are we dealing with crooks or incompetence?

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  4. Re:What happens... by Adams4President · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At first I thought this post was meant to be funny (I actually laughed). Certainly, I and most /.ers are capable of doing this. But you can see by that post why Microsoft still has nothing to fear from Linux...even "user-friendly" Ubuntu. "get the latest beta driver"?? "install by hand in text mode"?? "start sshd and do it remotely"?? You might as well ask the typical user to perform brain surgery on himself.

  5. Re:What happens... by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The typical user does not install the OS he uses.