Microsoft News Tracker

Last week, Microsoft launched its “Vista Capable” program and very shortly qualifying PCs will start appearing in stores with a logo-ed sticker that says both “Designed for Windows XP” and “Windows Vista Capable.” The requirements for the program are summarized here:

Windows Vista Capable PCs need to pass the current certification requirements for Designed for Windows XP logo. In addition, these PCs need the following combination of essential PC hardware for good overall Windows Vista performance:

• CPU — PC systems should have a modern CPU.

• RAM — PC systems should have 512MB of memory or more.

• GPU — PC systems should have a DirectX 9 class graphics processor.

This program was planned before the recent Vista schedule slip and seems like rather cold comfort for customers planning to buy a PC in hopes of upgrading to Vista later because it only itemizes the bare minimum hardware required to run some version of Vista and provides no guarantee that Vista will actually ever run on the hardware. Ina Fried explained earlier this month at CNET:

And lest it lose any sales in the months ahead of Vista’s launch, Microsoft plans in about a month to kick off a campaign that will allow PC makers to sell PCs with a “Vista-capable” label.

One of the challenges Microsoft is confronting with Vista is that some machines will be capable of running Vista but will lack the memory and graphics horsepower to show off its most visible improvements.

That creates some marketing challenges for the software maker. For instance, some machines will be able to run Vista and thus be eligible to be sold over the next few months as “Vista-capable.” But because they lack the necessary graphics driver software, they will never be able to be sold pre-loaded with Vista, nor do they qualify for Microsoft’s basic or premium Vista logos.

The premium and basic (actually “standard”) Vista certifications are a completely different hardware logo program (gory details here) that’s actually indicative of the ability to run Vista and what level of the new Vista features (particularly the new Aero graphical user “experience”) will be realized. Frankly, buying “Vista Capable” hardware could well be a problem for unwary consumers. Most of any problems will reflect back on the PC vendor, but Microsoft will undoubtedly catch its share of the flak too.

Mary Jo Foley and Joe Wilcox have more details and commentary.

The two day EU Microsoft antitrust hearing wound up yesterday with the participants putting widely varying spins on what the outcome was. Paul Meller at InfoWorld:

Microsoft left a two-day antitrust hearing in Brussels Friday claiming it had reached a breakthrough with European regulators in a dispute that may still result in the company being fined up to €2 million ($2.4 million) a day.

But the claim of a breakthrough was exaggerated, according to two other people involved in the closed-door hearing — one person representing rival software companies and a person close to the European Commission, the European Union’s top antitrust authority.
…
Barrett “described in greater specificity than we have ever received before” ways the documentation should be “changed and improved,” Smith said. “Certainly for our engineers who had the opportunity to talk directly with professor Barrett during these two days, we finally started to get the kind of engineering guidance that we need,” Smith said.
…
Barrett has been ordered to not talk to journalists, but Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said no new plan was presented. “He is an advisor, he doesn’t make plans,” Todd said.

“There was no new plan,” said Thomas Vinje, a partner in the Brussels office of law firm Clifford Chance. Vinje represents a software industry trade group called the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, comprising some of Microsoft’s biggest competitors including Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

Barrett said at the end of the hearing Friday that his initial doubts about the value of Microsoft’s documentation were confirmed, according to Vinje.

“In his final summing up he talked about ways forward by identifying the problems Microsoft must solve. That’s not a plan,” Vinje said.

“The only plan professor Barrett has presented was in January, when he proposed that he work with Microsoft engineers to improve the documentation,” Todd said. The professor went to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, in January to begin the collaboration, Todd said.

There was speculation that the claim of a “breakthrough” was a face saving way for Microsoft to give in on the documentation issue and avoid fines. Next step is a decision by the hearing officer which is due in a few weeks.