Microsoft employee emails show disgust with Vista
It’s clear by now that not even Microsoft is happy with what it “achieved” with Vista. Some internal emails have been made available after a federal judge ordered them unsealed. They are being used to support the plaintiff’s position over the “Vista capable” lawsuit.
The emails point to complaints of driver and software incompatibilities during the early release of the operating system. While Microsoft may have been blamed for it; it was also partially the fault of the device vendors to prepare drivers.
Hardware that was working properly under XP either didn’t work at all or partially worked in Vista. Some devices still don’t have proper drivers. One Microsoft employee complained how his $2,100 computer was turned into an “email only machine.” This was due to poor driver support.
There is also talk of how Intel pressured the company to label systems “Vista capable” that did not support all the features of the operating system. The Intel 915 chipset was used in a few laptops and Microsoft gave it the “okay” for “Vista capable.”
Just about any computer would qualify for Vista capable. But, the 915 chipset did not support the new Aero Glass interface. Some that upgraded their systems to Home Premium or better found many features disabled on “older” systems.
Intel later released the 945 chipset was later released and did support Aero Glass but that was too little, too late. Consumers aren’t the only ones Microsoft managed to upset.
The Seattle PI has excerpts from the emails and statements from retailers that were “disappointed in the fact that the standards were lowered.” The lawsuit may have some legs to stand on now but Microsoft has teams of lawyers working on it.
It was quite clear what the difference between Vista Capable and Premium Ready was. This was explained on Microsoft’s website. It may not have been clear to your average Walmart or Best Buy shopper but the information was there. Some feel that was not enough. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Let’s just let the legal system deal with it now.
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March 2nd, 2008
Maybe you should had added the word ‘drivers’ at the end of the title?
March 7th, 2008
It’s just not surprising to hear that employees of Microsoft would be frustrated with products that are causing so many other people to have problems. At the very least, it shows that Microsoft does indeed have some people that know what they are doing (which is good news indeed for the future) and are interested in making changes to solve some issues with their products. I think they’ve been relatively good about making fixes as problems arise, but obviously the problem is that they needed to make a more tested and finished product before it was released. Hopefully in the future this will teach some sort of a lesson about the importance of finishing something before its release and not just releasing it to compete.