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HP's Fury At Vista Capable Downgrade
More documents are coming out in court proceedings over the Vista Capable debacle. Internetnews.com has good coverage of HP's fury over Microsoft lowering the requirements for a Vista Capable sticker, at Intel's request. "Intel officials may have been pleased that Microsoft lowered standards for obtaining the company's Windows Vista Capable logo program sticker, but the same can't be said about HP's execs. 'I can't be more clear than to say you not only let us down by reneging on your commitment to stand behind the [device driver model] requirement, you have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money in the process,' said one e-mail from Richard Walker, the senior vice president of HP's consumer business unit, to [Microsoft executives]." PCPro.co.uk follows the trail of accusatory emails inside Microsoft from there: "HP's email prompted then Microsoft co-President, Jim Allchin, to send a furious email of his own to company CEO Steve Ballmer. Allchin's email suggests the decision to lower the requirements was made in his absence by Ballmer, following 'a call between you and Paul [Otellini, Intel CEO].' 'I am beyond being upset here,' Allchin wrote to Ballmer. 'What a mess. Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft destroyed credibility [sic], as well as my own credibility shot.' Ballmer, in turn, blamed another Microsoft executive, Will Poole, in a rather erratically typed reply to Allchin."
Many users don't feel comfortable doing an OS install themselves. HP in the past used to sell laptops with SUSE preinstalled. If you're pissed at Microsoft, a letter won't do anything. You're still preinstalling Vista on every computer.
Offer a new line of openSUSE laptops with all the hardware configured and working out of the box (wireless, webcam, etc) and that will send a message to Microsoft.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Jim,
I most certainly did not... *picks up chair*
It was *throws chair* Will Poole who made the decision. Blame him.
Sorry I have to run. My anger management class starts in 5 minutes.
Steve
This sounds more like high school than execs and CEOs... Sounds like you guys lost credibility a long time ago.
Wait...Microsoft had credibility with system-requirements to destroy?!?
And thrown a chair at Allchin.
At least he's emailing now.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Hard to argue with HP for being pissed off about this one. The PC market is cutthroat, so making an investment in higher priced integrated and/or discrete graphics chipsets, only to discover at the last moment that your competition has just been given the green light to undersell you with relaxed requirements has got to hurt.
MS was in a lousy position there, with no way to please everybody; but their handling of the situation was surprisingly inelegant. Lots of confusion and behind-one-another's-back talking to partners. I wonder if they messed up, or if they figure that HP et al. will just have to suck it up. One also wonders, at this point, if it wouldn't have been better for MS to just pay Intel to dump the 915s(either literally, or into low-end "emerging markets" products).
It doesn't have the graphics power to run Aero. Intel instructed Microsoft to remove that as a requirement for the "Vista Capable" sticker. Microsoft agreed, despite previously telling ATI, Nvidia, and HP that they would not remove that requirement, even for Intel.
Is anyone else enjoying this or is it just me? I mean, this is like some kind of geek bitch-slap fight.
only stepping stones on the path to more money.
Then you should have stuck for what you believe and refused to sell underpowered vista machines.
You don't seem to understand what HP "believes in" -- it is making a profit.
When all the other vendors are able to sell underpowered and consequently underpriced vista machines with the same labeling as yours, then hardly anyone is going to buy your comparatively overpriced system. The majority of consumers are not capable of distinguishing between the intel 915 and 935 motherboard chipsets at the retail level. But they are able to recognize a $50 price difference.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What's even more ironic, is that if they hadn't come up with Vista-Capable, these notebooks would have been stuck on XP. Seeing how a large number of users specifically downgraded to XP on a Vista purchase, I can't see how selling these machines with XP only wouldn't have been (truly) a feature.
Then you should have stuck for what you believe and refused to sell underpowered vista machines.
I believe that's what they did. Problem being, MS lowered the bar at the last moment after HP was already selling their machines, and everyone else undercut them with less-than-adequate machines. And being as Joe 40oz doesn't know the difference between the systems, he's likely to go with the latter, thus HP loses a ton of money.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The person at the top is ultimately responsible.
Ballmer is the Ringo star of the software industry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are you under the impression that MS is the only place where this happens? Personal experience tells me that absurd requests for features from high-profile customers, and sales guys who over promise is a problem most anywhere else.
I just don't think most places have the luxury of having a well planned, development driven process.
As much as I'm usually pretty down on MS, I'm just not convinced they're any different in this case.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It's not sales that were hurt, it was the bottom line. HP clearly is indicating that they were following an earlier, more rigorous set of hardware requirements as they pushed out their new lines, and then suddenly Microsoft changes the rules and a low-end video chipset is given the thumb's up, meaning HP's competitors can push out cheaper computers with that precious "Vista Ready" sticker on them, undercutting HP (not that HP didn't push out some pretty crappy notebooks that perform underwhelmingly under Vista).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, that's "Microsoft Works".
Their own managers got screwed by this. From Information Week:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100310
In another e-mail, Microsoft Windows product manager Mike Nash said even he was fooled by the campaign: "I personally got burned by the Intel 915 chipset issue on a laptop that I personally" bought "with my own $$$." Nash said he purchased the Sony laptop "because it had the Vista logo and was pretty disappointed."
"I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine," Nash complained.
Nothing new here. Another day. Another episode demonstrating that there are no ethics or leadership at the top of this company. Just a bunch of ignorant whores.
According to Intel, the i915 chipset does not have a native hardware scheduler and hence cannot fully support the WDDM design. I believe there were alpha versions of WDDM drivers for i915 but they only supported a subset of WDDM features and were scrapped early in the project.
:)
I reckon it is actually possible to have full WDDM on i915, but the performance would be absolutely horrible because the scheduling would have to be done in the driver - and we all know how zippy Intel drivers are
When the vendors are starting to play the "Vista yay" games while everyone else is rolling back Vista to XP at first opportunity.
Example: NVidia fucked over the consumer by making their newest stereo3D drivers not just Vista-only, but also by removing LCD shutter support (meaning you're limited to color-distorting anaglyph red/blue glasses, or really crapass zalman monitors).
check it out.
Next time I upgrade, unless they fix this, NVidia will not even be considered.
Because HP had already made an investment in a more expensive (capable) product line based on the promises of MS. Now HP would have to compete against vendors offering less-powerful systems that could be also advertised as "Vista Capable", even though not actually capable according to the original definition.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
HP made one of the classic blunders and believed something that Microsoft had promised them. They then spent all sorts of money to engineer all their low end systems so they would be get the vista capable sticker. After HP had spent all the money, then Microsoft lowered the requirements so all of HP's competitors would also get the vista capable sticker with out having spent all of the money.
The moral of the story is never believe anything anyone who currently works for Microsoft says to you. It might be wise to never believe anything anyone who has ever worked for Microsoft says.
How did you fail THIS badly?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
How did you fail THIS badly?
I'm guessing lots of practice
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
Uhhh... I believe there was a contractual agreement. I don't know how much you know about contract law, but even verbal agreements are contracts; they are simply more difficult to nail down if there is a problem than written contracts. That's why verbal agreements are usually just a few words and a handshake, something along the lines of "HP promises to use Vista, and Microsoft promises to not lower the requirements for the Vista Capable logo." shake hands, and done. It's completely binding, but chances are it was done in written form anyway.
Hence the reason they are in friggin court dude.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
HP is angry that they listened to MS on hardware specs initially, and then MS changed it's mind in backroom deals with Intel, which ultimately convinced people to buy computers that weren't actually ready for Vista. HP got bit hard because they invested in a higher level of hardware than Intel was providing, and all the other manufacturers could undercut it by going with the cheaper stuff leaving HP to scramble.
Just because it wasn't necessarily illegal to screw over HP like that doesn't mean HP has any less right to be angry at backroom deals.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I've noticed there are an awful lot of Steves in the industry. Ballmer, Wozniak and Jobs, plus a handful of others that I probably don't know about. I think Jobs and Wozniak (and others) should hold a vote to make Ballmer change his first name to something else. I'm sure he embarrasses them.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Windows 7 is built on top of the Server 2003 codebase, same as Vista, so don't expect a miracle.
Vista Basic can run on fairly low specced machines if you don't have too many services running - I bet it would run on my 8 year old desktop PC (which does have a gig of RAM and a $25 DX9 capable card, so it probably could even run Aero). The requirements skyrocket is if you want to run everything and want Aero.
Windows 7 will likely have a smaller base memory footprint unless you run older applications on it because they plan to move to the virtual machine paradigm (like how OSX machines could run OS9) to support legacy applications. Legacy libraries won't be hogging memory unless they're needed and there should be less compatibility issues because developers will be forced to work with the same API functions rather than falling back on legacy ones when writing new code.
The performance of XP vs Vista is not really that huge of difference - maybe 2%-5% for most things (I get about an 80% hit for OpenGL in a Window, however, which is odd because context switches should only give about a 20% hit at most, but I haven't checked recently and it's possible new drivers and/or SP1 fixed this). Part of that is likely more services running or tuning that needs to be done on the OS. I don't think it's that big of deal. My main problem with Vista is other issues (it nags too much, I've had to reinstall Vista 5x now due to it not liking updates, some things like network shares are painful to configure, some things that shouldn't have been changed or renamed were, etc - I have not had driver issues, but some people have).
This kind of thing is precisely why a third party should decide on hardware requirements for an operating system. Otherwise, marketing is sure to get in the way of the facts. If only Microsoft had realized this sooner... not only would they have avoided ticking off a business partner, but they may have been more inclined to improve some of Vista's benchmarks so that more machines were "actually" capable of running Vista. But now, they are left with a failed OS and a few less friends. Better luck with Windows 7. HP shouldn't be complaining too much though... they sold plenty of machines as "Vista capable" that had no business running Vista. Selling a machine with half a GB of RAM, and running Vista? There's no excuse for that.
Year after year, I maintain the feeling that Windows is teetering on the brink. The immense army of Microsoft's R&D organisation is employed to add "differentiators", i.e. more features, rather than less, so you'll always have planned obsolesence. This is inconsistent with getting the price per unit down to where it's competitive in the TCO equation they're selling to. At the Enterprise back office, it's still perceived by most of our customers that a Windows server solution is easier to plug together in a scalable way with the fewest possible high-end engineers. Because of this perception (aided by a very good single-source support portal in MSDN with a lot of expensive polish) many of our Enterprise customers see a Windows desktop -- at whatever level of evolution -- is the client of least resistance. This amounts to a lot of technology knitted together with a glue consisting of 1 part content, 1 part support, and 1 part marketing polish.
As far as overall quality and ease, well, you and I know different.
To make Linux prevail across the Enterprise will require a differentiator, something that can compensate for the immense marketing engine that is MSFT. This will have to be not just a convincing alternative, but a convincing argument that is driven home.
A couple of holdouts keep MSFT on the cliff instead of off it. A diminishing yet prevalent feeling of product consistency across the board (reinforced by their consistent portal graphics, I kid you not), the immense momentum of the installed product base and the fact that the users' home devices can run World of Warcraft on that platform and no other.
The cost equation is at present very much in favour of a Linux desktop + **Nix back end. Unless we somehow counter that marketing engine, however, we'll never be able to give the beast that last push over the cliff. And we'll need to do it in some other way than they do -- remember, it took a year-after-year consistency for Volkswagen to break the tailfin aristocracy of the 1950's car makers. Of course by that time planned obsolescence had reached absurd levels and people were ready for the change.
Maybe that's our marketing message -- "Do you really need the tailfins? Or would a simple, economical desktop do the job?"
If any marketing types out there have the links, it would be great to see some of the old VW beetle adverts. Inspirational simplicity.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
[...]MS's anticompetitive^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H incentive[...]
Are you aware that you can erase an entire word with ^W instead?