HP's Fury At Vista Capable Downgrade

More documents are coming out in court proceedings over the Vista Capable debacle. Internetnews.com has good coverage of HP's fury over Microsoft lowering the requirements for a Vista Capable sticker, at Intel's request. "Intel officials may have been pleased that Microsoft lowered standards for obtaining the company's Windows Vista Capable logo program sticker, but the same can't be said about HP's execs. 'I can't be more clear than to say you not only let us down by reneging on your commitment to stand behind the [device driver model] requirement, you have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money in the process,' said one e-mail from Richard Walker, the senior vice president of HP's consumer business unit, to [Microsoft executives]." PCPro.co.uk follows the trail of accusatory emails inside Microsoft from there: "HP's email prompted then Microsoft co-President, Jim Allchin, to send a furious email of his own to company CEO Steve Ballmer. Allchin's email suggests the decision to lower the requirements was made in his absence by Ballmer, following 'a call between you and Paul [Otellini, Intel CEO].' 'I am beyond being upset here,' Allchin wrote to Ballmer. 'What a mess. Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft destroyed credibility [sic], as well as my own credibility shot.' Ballmer, in turn, blamed another Microsoft executive, Will Poole, in a rather erratically typed reply to Allchin."

Re:Somebody help me understand this . . .

[lupis42]

It doesn't have the graphics power to run Aero. Intel instructed Microsoft to remove that as a requirement for the "Vista Capable" sticker. Microsoft agreed, despite previously telling ATI, Nvidia, and HP that they would not remove that requirement, even for Intel.

Re:DRA-MA

[jornak]

I'd say it's a bit more like preschool. I didn't do much finger-pointing and tattling in high school.

Re:Ooh for pete's sake

[compro01]

Then you should have stuck for what you believe and refused to sell underpowered vista machines.

I believe that's what they did. Problem being, MS lowered the bar at the last moment after HP was already selling their machines, and everyone else undercut them with less-than-adequate machines. And being as Joe 40oz doesn't know the difference between the systems, he's likely to go with the latter, thus HP loses a ton of money.

Re:What does this all mean?

[MightyMartian]

It's not sales that were hurt, it was the bottom line. HP clearly is indicating that they were following an earlier, more rigorous set of hardware requirements as they pushed out their new lines, and then suddenly Microsoft changes the rules and a low-end video chipset is given the thumb's up, meaning HP's competitors can push out cheaper computers with that precious "Vista Ready" sticker on them, undercutting HP (not that HP didn't push out some pretty crappy notebooks that perform underwhelmingly under Vista).

Re:Ooh for pete's sake

[fahrbot-bot]

Then you should have stuck for what you believe and refused to sell underpowered vista machines.

It wasn't that, but (paraphrasing TFA) MS had promised that a higher graphics capability was required for Vista and HP structured their offering around this. Then MS backpedaled for Intel and said the lower-powered 915 chipset (w/integrated graphic) would quality as "Vista Capable" allowing other vendors to sell cheaper systems advertised as such (that could really only run Vista Basic) which would compete against HP models that were really Vista Capable - in the truer sense.

HP had already made the investment in a more expensive product line based on the original MS promise. Now they would have to market against vendors offering cheaper, less-capable systems that could be advertised identically as "Vista Capable".

MS Execs taking a beating

[frog_strat]

Their own managers got screwed by this. From Information Week:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100310 [informationweek.com]

In another e-mail, Microsoft Windows product manager Mike Nash said even he was fooled by the campaign: "I personally got burned by the Intel 915 chipset issue on a laptop that I personally" bought "with my own $$$." Nash said he purchased the Sony laptop "because it had the Vista logo and was pretty disappointed."

"I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine," Nash complained.

Nothing new here. Another day. Another episode demonstrating that there are no ethics or leadership at the top of this company. Just a bunch of ignorant whores.

i915 = No hardware scheduler = no WDDM

[phatvw]

According to Intel, the i915 chipset does not have a native hardware scheduler [intel.com] and hence cannot fully support the WDDM design. I believe there were alpha versions of WDDM drivers for i915 but they only supported a subset of WDDM features and were scrapped early in the project.

I reckon it is actually possible to have full WDDM on i915, but the performance would be absolutely horrible because the scheduling would have to be done in the driver - and we all know how zippy Intel drivers are :)

Re:Somebody help me understand this . . .

[fahrbot-bot]

And why did this suck for HP, exactly?

Because HP had already made an investment in a more expensive (capable) product line based on the promises of MS. Now HP would have to compete against vendors offering less-powerful systems that could be also advertised as "Vista Capable", even though not actually capable according to the original definition.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"credibility [sic]" ??

[DaveV1.0]

It has [sic] after it because the fragment is unclear. Who's credibility did Microsoft destroy; it's own, it's partner's, or someone else's? The fragment should have an object such as "Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft destroyed their credibility." or "Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft has destroyed it's credibility, as well as my own credibility is shot."

Basically, that sentence has a number of grammar issues.

Re:SUSE laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has worked for HP and that has joined their internal Linux mailing lists and discussion groups I can tell you without a doubt that you are dreaming if you think that will ever happen.

There are people inside HP (VPs) *cough* Tony Redmond *cough* that lobby so hard for MS that you would think MS is actually paying their salary.

Besides HP is not about to ditch one of their number one sources of revenue any time soon. MS could pull this and any other amount of similar stunts and HP will still be there.

For this new HP it is all about the money.

Re:Eating Their Own

[PitaBred]

HP is angry that they listened to MS on hardware specs initially, and then MS changed it's mind in backroom deals with Intel, which ultimately convinced people to buy computers that weren't actually ready for Vista. HP got bit hard because they invested in a higher level of hardware than Intel was providing, and all the other manufacturers could undercut it by going with the cheaper stuff leaving HP to scramble.

Just because it wasn't necessarily illegal to screw over HP like that doesn't mean HP has any less right to be angry at backroom deals.

Re:SUSE laptops

[D'Sphitz]

Here's the emails [techflash.com] the story mentions but fails to link

Re:SUSE laptops

[mewshi_nya]

I just bought a laptop from Compaq (HP spelled differently) and Ubuntu works out of the box with everything except the little button to uh... turn off the touchpad I think...?

I don't know; I never ran Vista long enough to find out.

Re:SUSE laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the links the submission missed:

• PCPro article [pcpro.co.uk]
• The Microsoft mail trail [techflash.com] (PDF)

Re:SUSE laptops

[quanticle]

Really? I've checked my oil and changed flat tires, but I learned both of those things by reading the owners manual for my car, not from the driver's education classes that I was required to take to get my license.

Re:SUSE laptops

[the_womble]

I'd buy one. You'd probably buy one, too. But almost everyone else in the known universe wants Windows on their computer.

I have installed Linux for other people. I think an earlier comment was right - Linux's biggest problem is lack of consumer awareness, which comes down to lack of marketing.

Look at the reasons Mac owners say they prefer Macs. No malware is one of them. Linux is at least as good on that count. I actually think Linux GUI's are pretty good and better than Windows: but that is a matter of opinion. The examples here work for me (Mandriva 2008.1 KDE).

Of course having said that marketing is the problem, I do not have a solution. No one owns Linux, so no one has an incentive to pay the bills - the same reason that colas get better marketing than fruit juice.

Re:My complaint about Slashdot

[dimeglio]

Since we're waaaaay off topic anyways... You probably mean evolution through natural selection. Hopefully you'll reproduce in sufficient quantity to prove this theory is right.

Re:My complaint about Slashdot

[beav007]

Evolution is not a belief, it is a scientific fact

No, it is a scientific theory.

Re:SUSE laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree...My wife wanted to know what Linux meant and why Ubuntu is different. Stupid me started explaining what an OS was, and she glazed over, so I handed her my Ubuntu laptop and told her to download one of her games and play. She opened firefox, went to big fish games, downloaded an exe, and for some strange reason she couldn't install it. She may not know what a kernel is and really what an OS is but she manages to get around on the WINDOWS computer, download games, play them, and do what she likes to do...Then I told her you need to download Wine apply the animated cursor patch then go to to terminal type in wine....well no I didn't really do that last part...but you get the point.