Microsoft 'Vista Capable' Settlement Cost Could Be Over $8 Billion

[safan80]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/24/1721216


The thing I dislike about software devs is that they are always too afraid to set any hardware requirements because they might lose some possible income so they cut corners. Microsoft in this case should of ignored intel's POS graphics chipset. How long has the AMD64 cpus been out and how many apps are AMD64? the transition from 16bit to 32bit seemed smoother.


documents from the "Vista Capable" class-action lawsuit against Microsoft indicate the software giant could be on the hook for as much as $8.52 billion in upgrade costs. "[University of Washington economist Keith] Leffler came up with his total upgrade costs by calculating how much it would cost to upgrade each of the 19.4 million PCs with 1 GB of memory and graphics cards or onboard chipsets able to run Aero, according to Keizer. Leffler put the maximum cost of upgrading the desktops at $155, while positing that the notebooks' integrated graphics would be more tricky to replace and would cost between $245 and $590 per unit. The total price tag for Microsoft would thus range from $3.92 billion to $8.52 billion and in some cases would include complete replacements of notebooks that could not be feasibly upgraded, Leffler testified. Microsoft in its response argued that giving litigants 'a free upgrade to Premium-ready PCs would provide a windfall to millions.'"

[tiro_uspsss]

that'll teach 'em :sofa:

[Knight]

Why does anyone need to run Aero? Windows made Vista like most games; a changeable performance level so that the game can work on new and old hardware. :shrug:

[Brother Esau]

Good they should go after Microsoft for that B.S making people upgarde their entire system (Vista Compatible) and Vista did not work on 2/3 of them and if it did it made people regret getting Vista thats for sure. It was a total nightmare when that first happened with Vista release made allot of money but there was only so much you could do for them as Band aids usually fall off or are just that Band AIds.

[krogen]

I always thought "Vista Capable" meant that the PC/hardware is able to run Vista, as in it meets minimum hardware requirements.

I guess it will go down to what "Vista Capable" really means.

IMO, Microsoft will win this one.

[Salsoolo]

8 billion , thats alot of cash!

[ex2cib]

vista basic is still vista right?

vista not running the aero theme is still vista....

this is just another case of some stupid consumer making an uninformed purchase, and trying to make a few extra dollars from their stupidity.

the vista compatible sticker is just that "compatible" , meaning it can run vista. it never said anything about running it well

[Eastcoasthandle]

I think what some are forgetting is that Vista capable was suppose to include the use of Aero. Sure, you can disable it but it's still part of the package. Thus the reason why they could add it to the cost of a proper upgrade.

[Speederlander]

:rolleyes:

The only people who will make money off this is the lawyers. No one will get any "upgrades", no one will get any settlement. Just a lot of lawyers will be rich(er).

[dengyong]

:rolleyes:

The only people who will make money off this is the lawyers. No one will get any "upgrades", no one will get any settlement. Just a lot of lawyers will be rich(er).

I agree.

[Anemone]

All this means is that Win 7 will cost $100 more for each level than Vista. If you think this money doesn't come right back out of your own pockets, your not thinking...

[twilyth]

That assumes you have no choice but Windows. Linux looks a lot better as MS jacks the price up. :)

[Salsoolo]

That assumes you have no choice but Windows. Linux looks a lot better as MS jacks the price up. :)
if i could game on linux, id have linux installed long time ago.
i think directx is kind of a monopoly :rolleyes:

[Speederlander]

if i could game on linux, id have linux installed long time ago.
i think directx is kind of a monopoly :rolleyes:

And game manufacturer's don't want multiple platforms if they can avoid it. DirectX means standardization and less programming resources required.

[shiznit93]

I'm not usually the one to defend MS but I fail to see the big issue here. With enough ram and a decent cpu Vista runs great. I had a laptop with a 1.6ghz core 1 dual core 1 meg cache cpu and intel gma 950 and had no problems running Aero. It came with 1gb of ram but I knew that ahead of time so I had a 2gb kit waiting, Vista is very rough with just 1gb unless you have a high tolerance for hard drive thrashing. I eventually gave it to my dad but it was my first and only laptop, it had Vista on it, and I loved it. Start-search made not having a real mouse much easier, every app or file was a couple keys away.

If the OEMs decided to put Vista on crappy computers, why is that MS' fault? Did they authorize the sticker despite the bad hardware?

[halo112358]

IMO, Microsoft will win this one.

I kind of doubt that, especially with Balmer denying he had any knowledge of altering the specs and then evidence revealing that he was directly involved. The courts hate that kind of thing.

That, and M$ is _pro_ at losing class action suits.


If the OEMs decided to put Vista on crappy computers, why is that MS' fault? Did they authorize the sticker despite the bad hardware?
Basically, yes.

[Morais]

And game manufacturer's don't want multiple platforms if they can avoid it. DirectX means standardization and less programming resources required.

Thats not true, directx will never be a standard, since is platform dependent.OpenGL is what I could call a standard.Same libraries, less code modification to change platform.

[Speederlander]

Thats not true, directx will never be a standard, since is platform dependent.OpenGL is what I could call a standard.Same libraries, less code modification to change platform.
No, it IS a standard since 99% of all gaming computers in the world (the items under discussion) run windows.

In theory, sure, OpenGL is more general. But in reality, DirectX is the standard for almost every gaming PC on the planet.

DirectX is the definition of a standard.

[m^2]

Vista is very rough with just 1gb unless you have a high tolerance for hard drive thrashing.

:rofl:

[safan80]

Thats not true, directx will never be a standard, since is platform dependent.OpenGL is what I could call a standard.Same libraries, less code modification to change platform.

yeah but with the way DirectX is they've (MS) got a monopoly with the pc gaming market. If the game devs used openGL and the Linux/Unix (not counting the Mac OS X) based OSes had AAA games microsoft's OS share would not be so high. yes openGL is a standard and is used in a lot of apps but it's lost to directx in terms of market share when it comes to games even though it supports the same stuff.

[TurboDiv]

2 to 8 billion $... If that settlement goes through i feel Microsoft might be chopping a lot more than 5000 workers...

[safan80]

2 to 8 billion $... If that settlement goes through i feel Microsoft might be chopping a lot more than 5000 workers...

oh whatever.. I bet they'll keeping their H1b visa employees. microsoft is still making money they're just using the economy as an excuse to lay American workers off.

[kevikev]

oh whatever.. I bet they'll keeping their H1b visa employees. microsoft is still making money they're just using the economy as an excuse to lay American workers off.

Yep, 4bn profit on 16bn in revenue is still 25% profit margin :)

[chunkylover77]

That assumes you have no choice but Windows. Linux looks a lot better as MS jacks the price up. :)

When every game that comes out says Linux Live Gaming on it then it is a viable alternative. Right now it's nothing but a computer nerds resume strengthener.

[naokaji]

Yes, some of the computers sold with vista capable stickers cant run vista with all the bling turned on, so what?
If you spend several hundred $ yet can't be bothered to do some research on the product first it's your own problem.

[Shintai]

Only in america. Must be one of the top10 dubest lawsuits.

I just dont get it. Those PCs run Vista fine. Just no bling bling.

[m^2]

Shintai, did you run Vista on a machine with 1 GB RAM?
I had to for some time. I spent a few hours optimizing it as well as I could (I was limited by the owner, so not to the max). No bling left. And still it was almost unusable.

Usually I don't bash Vista for speed because I know the only machine I run it on wasn't good enough. But it was within system requirements. They are set too low.

[Chad Boga]

the transition from 16bit to 32bit seemed smoother.
:ROTF::ROTF::ROTF::rolleyes:

[Shintai]

Shintai, did you run Vista on a machine with 1 GB RAM?
I had to for some time. I spent a few hours optimizing it as well as I could (I was limited by the owner, so not to the max). No bling left. And still it was almost unusable.

Usually I don't bash Vista for speed because I know the only machine I run it on wasn't good enough. But it was within system requirements. They are set too low.

I can also run Vista without any problems on a 512MB machine with 915 chipset. I dont see your point.

[Salsoolo]

Only in america. Must be one of the top10 dubest lawsuits.

I just dont get it. Those PCs run Vista fine. Just no bling bling.
they want to suck money out of m$ as usual

[Starscream]

vista basic is still vista right?

vista not running the aero theme is still vista....

this is just another case of some stupid consumer making an uninformed purchase, and trying to make a few extra dollars from their stupidity.

the vista compatible sticker is just that "compatible" , meaning it can run vista. it never said anything about running it well

nope.

the mistake MS made was making 2 diffrent ''Vista Ready'' stickers.

One said: ''Vista Ready'' and the other said ''Vista Ready Basic''
So a Vista Ready sticker without basic means that the PC should b capable of running Aero

[acidpython]

Shintai, did you run Vista on a machine with 1 GB RAM?
I had to for some time. I spent a few hours optimizing it as well as I could (I was limited by the owner, so not to the max). No bling left. And still it was almost unusable.

Usually I don't bash Vista for speed because I know the only machine I run it on wasn't good enough. But it was within system requirements. They are set too low.

Oh come on now, i know that isn't true. I'm running vista home premium. 7100 nvidia integrated graphics, 1GB of RAM, E2140 and it runs fine with currently 18 tabs open.

Turning aero off drops RAM usage to much lower levels. Tweak it further and you got much more room to play with.

The only downside is the searching of indexs isn't as fast as a PC with more RAM

[T_Flight]

Maybe MS will countersue for the damages in legal fees on this suit.

AMD64? Who cares?

This is about minimum system requirements. Yay for frivolous suits jacking up the price of our OS's. Pretty sure it won't happen this time. Just another example of people looking for free stuff.

[Shintai]

Maybe MS will countersue for the damages in legal fees on this suit.

AMD64? Who cares?

This is about minimum system requirements. Yay for frivolous suits jacking up the price of our OS's. Pretty sure it won't happen this time. Just another example of people looking for free stuff.

The suits dont jack up the price. MS does. 24billion$ profit on 60billion$ revenue. The CFOs biggest issue is not to balance the books. But to figure out what to do with the money while try stop laughing.

[m^2]

I can also run Vista without any problems on a 512MB machine with 915 chipset. I dont see your point.

Strange to hear from a person for whom 4Gb is just not enough. (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3321729&postcount=31)


Oh come on now, i know that isn't true. I'm running vista home premium. 7100 nvidia integrated graphics, 1GB of RAM, E2140 and it runs fine with currently 18 tabs open.

Turning aero off drops RAM usage to much lower levels. Tweak it further and you got much more room to play with.

The only downside is the searching of indexs isn't as fast as a PC with more RAM

I feel surprised. I know what I've seen, it was terrible. I've heard people who said that 2 GB is not enough for Vista, but never that 1 GB is OK.
Next time I'll take it into account.

[Shintai]

Strange to hear from a person for whom 4Gb is just not enough. (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3321729&postcount=31)



I feel surprised. I know what I've seen, it was terrible. I've heard people who said that 2 GB is not enough for Vista, but never that 1 GB is OK.
Next time I'll take it into account.

Perhaps you should notice what I do. Sure 512MB aint enough if you gonna run browsers, 2 game clients, media player, media center, webserver etc etc the same time. Along with disable the swapfile.

Only strange thing is you couldnt be bothered to read the post you linked.

My old 32bit laptop with Vista doesnt use more than 300-400MB.

[freeloader]

I can also run Vista without any problems on a 512MB machine with 915 chipset. I dont see your point.


What a crock of :banana::banana::banana::banana: if I ever read it! I'd love to see anyone try to run Vista with 512mb. Sure you can, if you have an infinite amount of time to accomplish some task. Vista ran like :banana::banana::banana::banana: on my wife's Dell laptop with ATI 1150 graphics/1gb RAM. Turning off Aero, it's performance just became acceptable.

[Shintai]

What a crock of :banana::banana::banana::banana: if I ever read it! I'd love to see anyone try to run Vista with 512mb. Sure you can, if you have an infinite amount of time to accomplish some task. Vista ran like :banana::banana::banana::banana: on my wife's Dell laptop with ATI 1150 graphics/1gb RAM. Turning off Aero, it's performance just became acceptable.

4200rpm laptop disk? Also turning of aero shouldnt do much if anything for it.

[Anemone]

Imo this is a stupid lawsuit, for an undeserving cause. Meanwile rather than causing a company any pain or suffering, said company simply passes along the costs (including legal defending fees even if they win) onto us, the consumers, so in the end we end up paying for said issue. It's one thing if it's likely to win, or serves some higher cause, but to take money out of my pocket because of the idiocy of not understanding the underlying meaning of a sticker, is theft.

A company is going to target a given bottom line #. If they fail to reach that number, whether due to legal costs or whatnot, they will cut/raise prices until they meet it. Layoffs are no longer done only when losing money. They are done when stockholders are not given the desired profit levels. Whether those levels are realistic or not is a subject of much debate. But sadly this entire lawsuit and others like it that seem, to me, to be unjustified, simply end up costing more jobs and taking more money out of the pockets of all consumers. I doubt the folks who initiated it, gave that much thought.


ps: I am neither an employee nor an investor in MS - but this case is indicative of many that go on and is wasteful, while fixing nothing.

[freeloader]

4200rpm laptop disk? Also turning of aero shouldnt do much if anything for it.

5400 RPM/ dual core AMD 1.8ghz. Ran like total crap. It didn't run decently until I installed 2gb in it.

[T_Flight]

Imo this is a stupid lawsuit, for an undeserving cause. Meanwile rather than causing a company any pain or suffering, said company simply passes along the costs (including legal defending fees even if they win) onto us, the consumers, so in the end we end up paying for said issue. It's one thing if it's likely to win, or serves some higher cause, but to take money out of my pocket because of the idiocy of not understanding the underlying meaning of a sticker, is theft.

A company is going to target a given bottom line #. If they fail to reach that number, whether due to legal costs or whatnot, they will cut/raise prices until they meet it. Layoffs are no longer done only when losing money. They are done when stockholders are not given the desired profit levels. Whether those levels are realistic or not is a subject of much debate. But sadly this entire lawsuit and others like it that seem, to me, to be unjustified, simply end up costing more jobs and taking more money out of the pockets of all consumers. I doubt the folks who initiated it, gave that much thought.


ps: I am neither an employee nor an investor in MS - but this case is indicative of many that go on and is wasteful, while fixing nothing.

Excellent Post!

It doesn't just cost us by paying for it in high OS prices. It costs us in taxes too. We get to pay for the Courts time, paperwork, and the trainwreck of bueracracy that these cases cause.

They need to start enforcing the laws on frivolous suits. On top of that, they need to make them pay...pay back every dime it costs the courts in wasted money and time, and the Judges time. The Courts are not free.

[Brother Esau]

oh whatever.. I bet they'll keeping their H1b visa employees. microsoft is still making money they're just using the economy as an excuse to lay American workers off.



Look at that Evil Bastard

[CmB]

Look at that Evil Bastard

Is he dodging eggs and maybe something a little harder? Or maybe he just crapped himself?:shrug:

[knissel]

this sounds like a bunch of qq bs

[Speederlander]

Shintai, did you run Vista on a machine with 1 GB RAM?
I had to for some time. I spent a few hours optimizing it as well as I could (I was limited by the owner, so not to the max). No bling left. And still it was almost unusable.

Usually I don't bash Vista for speed because I know the only machine I run it on wasn't good enough. But it was within system requirements. They are set too low.

I just configured a friend's laptop. It had a celeron(!!) and 1GB. After I turned off the bells and whistles it ran fine.

[Eastcoasthandle]

Just because you can disable Aero, etc doesn't mean it's not part of the features Vista can offer. Remember, the stick reads Vista Capable which doesn't specify which version of Vista. Now had the sticker said Vista Home Basic Capable maybe things would be different. To me, this amount of ambiguity along with other concerns is what lead to this lawsuit. In any case like this the outcome will be interesting.

[Speederlander]

Just because you can disable Aero, etc doesn't mean it's not part of the features Vista can offer. Remember, the stick reads Vista Capable which doesn't specify which version of Vista. Now had the sticker said Vista Home Basic Capable maybe things would be different. To me, this amount of ambiguity along with other concerns is what lead to this lawsuit. In any case like this the outcome will be interesting.

There's only one outcome. Lawyers will get lots of money and the costs will be passed. :shrug:

[Eastcoasthandle]

We cannot predict the future outcome of this. And the reality is we really don't know how things will develop because of this.

[Speederlander]

We cannot predict the future outcome of this. And the reality is we really don't know how things will develop because of this.

Based on the fact that just about every similar lawsuit in the last 20 years just ends up enriching the lawyers, yeah, we can make pretty educated guesses.

[Eastcoasthandle]

As with any guess like that one variable can change everything. We will have to wait and see how things develop.

[tenebre]

all lawyers should be killed :)

[acidpython]

Strange to hear from a person for whom 4Gb is just not enough. (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3321729&postcount=31)



I feel surprised. I know what I've seen, it was terrible. I've heard people who said that 2 GB is not enough for Vista, but never that 1 GB is OK.
Next time I'll take it into account.

I semi-agree with you. I've seen vista be bad, and the worse offenders are Dell and Acer, with HP falling a little behind them. They chuck tons of services and programs that use up tons of RAM. The average person will run resource heavy stuff and not know it.

However uninstalling those, and turning off aero seems to clear everything up.

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/4194/usageyx1.jpg

IMO, the above is a lot more then the average user. In conclusion, i blame the people chucking preloaded junk not M$

Just turned on aero, can run it pretty flawlessly as well with about a 100mb increase in RAM usage

[Soulburner]

In all of the Dells that I've ordered, they come very light. Not sure how old the systems you guys are talking about, but Dells in the last 2 years come pretty much setup with the "basics".

[m^2]

I semi-agree with you. I've seen vista be bad, and the worse offenders are Dell and Acer, with HP falling a little behind them. They chuck tons of services and programs that use up tons of RAM. The average person will run resource heavy stuff and not know it.

However uninstalling those, and turning off aero seems to clear everything up.

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/4194/usageyx1.jpg

IMO, the above is a lot more then the average user. In conclusion, i blame the people chucking preloaded junk not M$

Just turned on aero, can run it pretty flawlessly as well with about a 100mb increase in RAM usage

I know how bad can manufacturers be, but that was not in my case. Barton (2800?), 1 GB RAM, graphics card a little newer than the CPU. No junk installed, except for somewhat cleaned Vista.

Really slow and that's not only my experience, there were 2 users and admin; admin liked it (but never used), we both considered it to be terrible.

[ewitte]

Lol I'd hate to even run XP with 512MB. Sure if you have a high tolerence for latency Vista would seem to run fine with 512MB but when its twice as responsive with 1GB and 4 times as responsive with 2GB why not upgrade? I mean it costs like $20 for 2GB or $35-45 for high performance chips (DDR2 quotes). Even today with all the patches I got a laptop for my wifes family VERY noticeable results going from the default 1GB to 3GB. Lol I've always hated HDD thrashing main reason I just threw so much cash at going to SSD.

[acidpython]

In all of the Dells that I've ordered, they come very light. Not sure how old the systems you guys are talking about, but Dells in the last 2 years come pretty much setup with the "basics".

free trial of mcaffee and object dock on a laptop with 1GB :(

m^2, i'm not sure what was the problem with your setup. But i can only tell you my experiences.

[m^2]

m^2, i'm not sure what was the problem with your setup. But i can only tell you my experiences.

I know pretty well what was the problem because it disappeared when we installed XP on the machine.:D

[Kingcarcas]

Our family computer with an X2+ Geforce 6200+ 1GB runs just fine with aero enabled. Then again it might have to do with a vLited Vista install....

[[XC] Lead Head]

What a crock of :banana::banana::banana::banana: if I ever read it! I'd love to see anyone try to run Vista with 512mb. Sure you can, if you have an infinite amount of time to accomplish some task. Vista ran like :banana::banana::banana::banana: on my wife's Dell laptop with ATI 1150 graphics/1gb RAM. Turning off Aero, it's performance just became acceptable.

My 2.4GHz opteron 165 ran vista very well with 1GB of ram, with nothing tweaked as well. Sometimes it did get a bit pokey, but for the most part it ran just fine, just as fast as my XP install on the same machine. I now have 1.5GB of ram, and I find Windows 7 to be very responsive, more so then Windows XP.

On the other hand. my Sisters dell laptop, configured the same as your wifes, except it had 2GB factory, is unbearably slow. I personally blame it on all the crap dell installs. I disabled every start up item, uninstalled the stock AV and some other junk, and it became acceptably fast. I can imagine that a fresh install would be quite peppy. It also doesn't help the integrated 3D can barely handle aero. Flip-3D was a slide show

[Sparky]

What a crock of :banana::banana::banana::banana: if I ever read it! I'd love to see anyone try to run Vista with 512mb. Sure you can, if you have an infinite amount of time to accomplish some task. Vista ran like :banana::banana::banana::banana: on my wife's Dell laptop with ATI 1150 graphics/1gb RAM. Turning off Aero, it's performance just became acceptable.

I ran vista pre-SP1 on a single core @ 2.2GHz and 1GB of ram for a week with Aero on (I was doing a bunch of RMAs and hardware testing so my normal 2GB and dual core weren't in use at the time). Did have an X1950XT. It was a tad on the sluggish side at times but it ran ok otherwise.

[moiraesfate]

Sorry, I think Vista is right on this issue. It always costs money to upgrade, thats the nature of computers. Moaning about it isn't going to change a thing.

[halo112358]

Try turning down what Vista is superfetching into ram, I noticed on my 4gb vista machine that at any time 3.5gb of ram was in use (even if I wasn't running any intensive tasks). When I did load something resource intensive the machine would furiously swap to disk to free up ram, basically it was wasting time swapping out what it had earlier prefetched. I configured superfetch to only bother prefetching boot time data and the machine pages to disk a good deal less.

[TRG]

To my opinion Microsoft deserves to pay the full price..

Just walk in some laptopshop, or browse to some onlineshop, and look for a new but cheap laptop. Big chance you'll run into a 1.6 GHz laptop with 1 GB and VISTA pre-installed. Of course AERO has been turned on, numerous anti-virus (NORTON etc) and other third party has been installed, and on top of that, the slowest harddisk available will serve all those files.

Then ask the selling guys (or mail the webshop) if this is a good laptop.. "O Yes, all our modern laptops are equipped with the much more convenient and much faster VISTA".

In the end they just sell $hit to you, because VISTA will run so slow that lot's of people will think that their computer is broken. I've seen this been happening several times, and I think it's the same as selling a car that won't go faster than 40 miles a hour.

Vendors want to make money, they lie to customers, and Microsoft is the cause because of their AGGRESSIVE bundled software/hardware deals. They didn't set a proper limit for hardware, so every new hardware set will be equipped with VISTA, no matter if it is un-workable. The option to choose for winXP has been made as hard as could ever be possible. They should be burned for selling bad products and forcing software on hardware that isn't capable for it.

[Shintai]

To my opinion Microsoft deserves to pay the full price..

Just walk in some laptopshop, or browse to some onlineshop, and look for a new but cheap laptop. Big chance you'll run into a 1.6 GHz laptop with 1 GB and VISTA pre-installed. Of course AERO has been turned on, numerous anti-virus (NORTON etc) and other third party has been installed, and on top of that, the slowest harddisk available will serve all those files.

Then ask the selling guys (or mail the webshop) if this is a good laptop.. "O Yes, all our modern laptops are equipped with the much more convenient and much faster VISTA".

In the end they just sell $hit to you, because VISTA will run so slow that lot's of people will think that their computer is broken. I've seen this been happening several times, and I think it's the same as selling a car that won't go faster than 40 miles a hour.

Vendors want to make money, they lie to customers, and Microsoft is the cause because of their AGGRESSIVE bundled software/hardware deals. They didn't set a proper limit for hardware, so every new hardware set will be equipped with VISTA, no matter if it is un-workable. The option to choose for winXP has been made as hard as could ever be possible. They should be burned for selling bad products and forcing software on hardware that isn't capable for it.

So you are basicly blaming Microsoft for what the OEMs are doing? Toolbars, AV, trial SW and random other garbage they get a dollar per PC with?

In that case I blame the recession solely on you.

[TRG]

Good point. But my filosofy is that Microsoft is letting them do it without trying to set up a proper protocol for the best hardware/software set that should go with VISTA. And because of their aggressive VISTA selling, lot's of OEM's don't have any choise. And I blame them for that. Of course lot's of OEM's only make it worse by including lucrative extra software bundles.

When I look at the Apple system (I don't use Apple FYI), I see that Apple has set strict rules for hardware and software that can go together with their OS.

[[XC] riptide]

all lawyers should be killed :)

Ha. I lol'd at that! :)

[MaxxxRacer]

This is such a BS lawsuit. It said vista capable, just not how capable. Personally I have aero and the desktop manager exe completely disabled in vista. the system just runs smoother without it.

[T_Flight]

I really do hope that Microsoft agressively countersues for the damages in legal fees on this one. It would probably make the news and cut down on some of these frivolous suits. I wonder if the lawyers to this party bringing this suit warned them of that beforehand?

[[XC] Lead Head]

Good point. But my filosofy is that Microsoft is letting them do it without trying to set up a proper protocol for the best hardware/software set that should go with VISTA. And because of their aggressive VISTA selling, lot's of OEM's don't have any choise. And I blame them for that. Of course lot's of OEM's only make it worse by including lucrative extra software bundles.

When I look at the Apple system (I don't use Apple FYI), I see that Apple has set strict rules for hardware and software that can go together with their OS.

Because apple is the ONLY ONES who sell OSX equipped desktops and laptops. Of course they as a hardware manufacturer and software developer are going to try and make their systems run and as smooth as possible to promote their products. They also have a lot less to worry about in regards to anti-virus and the large amount of trial junk thats available for windows.

Microsoft is not a PC hardware developer, they just sell the software, it is up to the OEM to decide what gets pre-loaded. Microsoft doesn't care, and they can't do anything about it either. Limiting what can be pre installed would also be limiting what could be installed later on.

[B.E.E.F.]

What a crock of :banana::banana::banana::banana: if I ever read it! I'd love to see anyone try to run Vista with 512mb. Sure you can, if you have an infinite amount of time to accomplish some task. Vista ran like :banana::banana::banana::banana: on my wife's Dell laptop with ATI 1150 graphics/1gb RAM. Turning off Aero, it's performance just became acceptable.

I'm running Vista on a T2080 (Dual Core Pentium 1.7ghz) and the Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics. It runs very nice and I tweaked it so Vista will only take 400-450mb of RAM by itself. Aero enabled. Disabled transparency, gadgets, and some wasteful services to increase battery life.

Take a look at the link in my sig and read through the Tutorials section.

[mcbalaban]

It's poetic effin' justice.... It's the M$ marketing campaing coming around and biting them into their arse.

Let's face it, the ONLY part of Vista which was responsible for the whatever sales they are getting and at the same time was the ONLY part of Vista being paraded all over the place, was Aero.
To Joe Average in the outside world (as in far from XS) Vista = Aero, period. Switch Vista into "Performance Mode" and they won't be able to tell it apart from Win 2000.
Microsoft played up the wrong part of Vista and got itself a bunch of IT-illiterates on its hands, but to be honest, I'm not sure what sales they'd be getting if thay hadn't played it up.

In the end, Speederlander is right, no one will benefit from this apart the lawyers. :(

[Brother Esau]

all lawyers should be killed :)

I agree they are all Parasites that Profit from others sufferance:down:

[m^2]

Switch Vista into "Performance Mode" and they won't be able to tell it apart from Win 2000.

Until they see UAC.:D

[Bobsama]

IF you're too stupid to disable UAC, it's best that it's kept on. That's 100% always the first thing I do--UAC dies.

[m^2]

I've had to live with it. I needed to work as admin, because some app needed admin rights, but I wasn't allowed to turn UAC off.

Yeah, using a single letter password greatly enchanced my security.