Microsoft e-mails detail Vista woes
As happens every year or so, some juicy Microsoft e-mails have surfaced as part of litigation that the software maker is party to.
In this case, Microsoft is being sued over a program in 2006 that labeled some PCs as Windows Vista Capable ahead of the products mainstream release in January 2007. As part of the discovery process, a number of e-mails have emerged with Microsoft executives discussing various problems with Vista as it came to market.
In one e-mail, Steven Sinofsky writes to Steve Ballmer that three factors were to blame for early Vista challenges.
First off, he said, “No one really believed we would ever ship so they didn’t start the work until very late in 2006.” He added that his Brother home printer didn’t have drivers until after Vista’s commercial launch.
Secondly, he said, major changes to the way Vista handles audio and video caused headaches, particularly for those upgrading from XP. Finally, he said, many Windows XP drivers didn’t really work under Vista. “This is across the board for printers, scanners, wan, accessories (fingerprint readers, smartcards, tv tuners), and so on,” Sinofsky wrote. “This category is due to the fact that many of the associated applets don’t run within the constraints of the security model or the new video/audio driver models.”
Sinofsky noted that Microsoft executive Orlando Ayala had stuck with XP because there was no Vista driver for his Verizon mobile wireless card. “The Vista Ready logo program required drivers available on (January 30). I think we had had reasonable coverage, but quality was uneven as I experienced,” he wrote.
News.com colleague Tom Krazit is looking into this issue in more detail, but the e-mail also notes pressure that Microsoft faced from Intel to list certain integrated chipsets as Vista capable even though their Vista readiness was limited.
“The ‘915′ chipset which is not Aero capable is in a huge number of laptops and was tagged as ‘Vista Capable’ but not Vista Premium (ready),” he wrote. “I don’t know if this was a good call.”
Sinofsky expressed surprise that Microsoft didn’t get more complaints to its support lines, but said that he did not take that as a sign of satisfaction.
“I think we have a lot of new PCs, which helps and the hobbyist people who bought (packaged copies of Windows) just know what to do and aren’t calling, but I know they are struggling,” he said.
I’ll be pouring through more of the documents and should have more details soon.
Source: CNET News.com - Business Tech
