[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Microsoft E-mails Detail Internal Fight on 'Vista Capable' here

[hawhite]

It was obviously a business decision and not a solely technical one. I just wonder what the other side of the argument is. Someone had to argue for relaxing the requirements.

I don't know if I feel that the case makes sense. I think it was clear what sticker meant what? The customer has to take a certain level of responsibility for their purchases. If there is a label on the side with information that says x and y; you can't look at it and pretend it says z.

[TechieXP]

No one even reads the stickers and as MS said, the system requirements are on the box. And yes consumer should take soe responsibility, but they never will bec they take advantage of the customer always being right. I had a Dell that had teh 915 and even as an IT guy I knew Vista would run poorly on a system that didn't have a dedicated graphics card. Since most of those systems had 128MB shared memory with your system, your system would be fighting with which program was going to get top spot, the OS or the game. y system could snatch as much as 250MB of y systes orty for graphics, but even games like SimCity 4 I could max out the graphics even with Aero turned off. And this is why there has been issues in Vista as far as perforance. Under-powered systems trying to run Vista when they should have been using XP. This was one time MS should have stood up for dumb consumers who don't read, vs Intel getting paid money for hardware they made know Vista needed better perforing chips.

[TechieXP]

Hey intel, my keyboard is performing badly thanks to yout inferior 915 chipset that is on my desktop at work. See all these typos...? its your fault.

[TechieXP]

The main problm i noticed is Capable vs Compatible. Bec they are similar in meaning ost people associate it to ean the same thing. When it comes to technology the meaning is very different. So for the not so sart consumers - compatible means when the system was designed for a particulat OS, the hardware inside takes into consideration the specs needed to run the OS. Capable simply means just because it can, doesn't mean you should an you can expect hardware hiccups. If your PC has a sticker on it, that says Designed for Windows XP, that means - THIS PC IS DESIGNED TO RUN WINDOWS XP and INSTALLING WINDOWS VISTA IS NOT RECOMMENDED. If your system is Designed for Vista then without an doubt you can run an earlier OS on it, providing you ca get drivers for your hardware, but again it doesn't mean you should. Some hardware like video cards and sound cards have functions that may only be avail in a newer os, which means you can expect a difference in a lesser os like XP compared to Vista. It just like if you live in the middle of God's Nowhere and you have to travel up a hill that always has snow on it, that even though you can buy a truck that doesn't have 4-wheel drive, you can't expect it to work as good as one that does. MS ca no more provide a reseolution for ignorance than any other company. I think MS prices Windows so high to prevent the dumb fro buying it. Just like with buying a house. If you only make 60,000 a yr, and you could afford a $300,000 home before, why do you think you can now. And just bec you didnt actually read the contract, that it is the banks fault when they come to take their house from you. That's why IT guys get paid so uch money for what we do. Bec we need to get paid to deal with pc owners home and business alike who have no idea what they are doing. Problem is, just liek the they will find someone to blame other than there lack of brain. In this case MS is going to have to take more heat.

[TechieXP]

And again thanks Intel, thanks to y boss giving me an underpowered pc that was DESIGNED to run WINDOWS 2000 and I stuck XP on it, my pc isn't 'capable' enough to keep up with my keyboard strokes and it is causing me to mistype words.