Steve Ballmer ordered by Judge to testify in “Vista Capable” suit
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, Microsoft has a small problem. Not all manufacturers were happy about having Vista’s requirements lowered in order to support some lower end chips/chipsets from Intel. Now a judge has ordered the head of Microsoft to testify in the case.
According to Cnet, Steve Ballmer will be required to give statements to the court(s). Emails between high ranking Microsoft executives show that some were not on board with lowering the requirements. After everything was fleshed out, it was somewhat if not well known that the new lower requirements would cause problems with some of Vista’s higher end features. Namely, Aero glass.
Intel’s 915 chipset was not capable of running Aero glass, so no system with it would be able to run the new interface. This is where Microsoft decided to make a change in Vista’s marketing.
There became two levels of Vista compatibility, Vista capable or Vista ready (aka Premium Ready). Vista capable meant that the system could only run Vista Basic or the higher end versions with Aero glass disabled. Only Vista ready systems could take full advantage of the operating system.
This whole ordeal has been a thorn in the side for Microsoft. A judge ordered emails between executives unsealed a while back but the company was in trouble way before that.
We have been reporting on this whole ordeal with some regularity and it would be difficult to summarize all the issues between OEMs, Intel and Microsoft in any one post. I invite you to read some of the previous posts just to see where this has been and where it may be going. Class action lawsuit anyone or perhaps another monopoly (anti-competitive) charge?
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