As you may have read previously in this blog, Microsoft is facing a class action lawsuit over the “Vista Capable” program. The discovery process of that lawsuit forces the software giant to produce some internal emails relating to the Vista Capable program. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has published extracts of some of those emails, along with a link to a a PDF file containing a more extensive email exchange. The contents of these e-mails are absolutely shocking at times. For example, it turns out that although Intel’s 915 chipset (the chipset found in the vast majority of low end PC’s) was initially rejected as compatible with Vista, MS execs flatly admit that “In the end, we lowered the requirements to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded” and “We are caving to Intel. We worked the last 18 months to drive the UI experience and we are giving this up.”
Wow.
The emails also reflect a lot of frustration among senior Microsoft personnel about Vista’s performance problems and hardware incompatibilities, and even retailers asking hardware vendors such as HP not to put Vista Capable stickers on their hardware because the stickers were confusing.
So far this story seems to be only floating around the blogosphere and in Seattle (where Microsoft is located), but if this story gets wide coverage (as in CNN, MSNBC, Fox News), people’s opinions about Microsoft are really going to nosedive. Perhaps Apple will use Vista’s problems in a commercial or two? Oh wait, they have.
Microsoft Cuts The Price Of Windows Vista – So What?
Posted in Commentary with tags Microsoft, Sales, Vista on February 29, 2008 by itnerdI woke up this morning to the news that Microsoft had cut the price of retail copies of Windows Vista to stimulate upgrade sales. Analysts were stunned by the move calling it “unheard of,” but I’m not surprised. Why? If you look at Microsoft’s quarterly earnings since Vista came out, Microsoft has sold most of it’s copies of Vista with new computers. The sales of the retail copies of Vista have always been low when compared to the sales of retail copies of XP. So a price cut was coming sooner or later.
The next question is why are Vista’s retail sales numbers down? While I believe that part of it is the perception (reality?) that Vista isn’t all that good, I think it’s because nobody is really upgrading per se. In the past, people would go to Best Buy and buy the latest OS from Microsoft and throw it on their computer. Today, few people are upgrading because they likely don’t have the hardware to run Vista’s advanced features like the Aero interface, so it’s easier to buy a new computer. That translates in to boxes sitting on the shelves of Best Buy that they have to move somehow. Another reason to cut the price.
Of course, none of this solves Vista’s main issues. Lack of compatibility, heavy hardware requirements, among others. Maybe Microsoft should fix those before cutting the price. That would help sales.
Incidentally, I found a site that wants to Save XP from extinction (it disappears on June 30th of this year). Perhaps Microsoft should take note?
Leave a comment »