Twisted Vista: Microsoft, Intel 'capable' of selling-out consumers?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 01 March 2008 08:10

Opinion and Analysis

Putting customers first seems to have been the missing ingredient in the tale of Microsoft and Intel reaching a ‘deal’ on assigning ‘Vista Capable’ status, resulting in the purchase of computers that were Vista compatible as far as ‘Vista Home Basic’.

The full story of Microsoft’s dealings with Intel over the inclusion of the 915 chipset as an acceptable base hardware minimum, despite its inability to run the vaunted Windows Aero graphical interface, is now all over the Internet.

Rather than go through all he-said, she-said emails, take a look at CNET’s story for some of the background emails, and take a look at Computerworld’s story outlining Dell’s concerns.

That said, it is ironic when one of Microsoft’s own executives buys a ‘Vista Capable’ machine, only for it to lack the grunt to do video editing or other multimedia work, with the complaint that a brand new Sony Vaio US $2100 computer was little more than an ‘email machine’.

Of course plenty on the Internet suggested Linux could have been loaded onto that computer instead, or perhaps even Windows XP, returning speed and graphical power back to the box, but that’s hardly a good look when you work for Microsoft and want to toe the company’s Vista line.

The story is also one of an obviously disorganised Intel at the time, likely still reeling from AMD’s dominance in certain processor areas, a situation that is certainly no longer today as Intel long ago regained the processor performance crown with AMD firmly back on the backfoot.

The kerfuffle of the “Vista Capable” and “Vista Premium Ready” stickers on new computers came at a time in history when Vista was still in beta and Intel allegedly had yet to properly transition to new, more Vista compatible integrated graphics chipsets.

Vista was running late, not working with lots of existing hardware and software, and the Christmas/end-of-year holiday sales season was approaching without a new version of Windows to sell to consumers.

So, how can the rather ‘basic’ issue of figuring out whether a computer is truly Vista capable, or Vista-barely-capable, be so badly mishandled? Please read onto page 2.