HP's Fury At Vista Capable Downgrade 499
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."
SUSE laptops (Score:5, Interesting)
Many users don't feel comfortable doing an OS install themselves. HP in the past used to sell laptops with SUSE preinstalled. If you're pissed at Microsoft, a letter won't do anything. You're still preinstalling Vista on every computer.
Offer a new line of openSUSE laptops with all the hardware configured and working out of the box (wireless, webcam, etc) and that will send a message to Microsoft.
Somebody help me understand this . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
What did Intel do to make it suitable?
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're pissed at Microsoft, a letter won't do anything. You're still preinstalling Vista on every computer.
I totally agree. HP sells more Windows boxes than any other single vendor, and MS still fucked them they like they do all of their business partners. HP was neutered by Carly, they need to grow a pair back start getting self-sufficient again. They've clearly been fooled (at least) once now, will they let themselves be fooled twice?
Ring around the blame game... (Score:5, Interesting)
MS was in a lousy position there, with no way to please everybody; but their handling of the situation was surprisingly inelegant. Lots of confusion and behind-one-another's-back talking to partners. I wonder if they messed up, or if they figure that HP et al. will just have to suck it up. One also wonders, at this point, if it wouldn't have been better for MS to just pay Intel to dump the 915s(either literally, or into low-end "emerging markets" products).
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
"credibility [sic]" ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:2, Interesting)
Is that why that Video Professor guy never sells a CD "How to use Windows XP/Vista/Excel/Word/PowerPoint/Internet Explorer/on and on?"
For most home users, i.e. those who don't want to play WoW or other games, Linux certainly provides the services that are expected... It all comes back to that games issue.
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:1, Interesting)
Do big players like HP or Dell etc. really pay for MS products? Or do they just balance it's cost with third party shitware?
Shitware paying them as much as Vista license would seem rather sensible idea..
If it weren't for the HP etc. no one would be buying office and other MS crapware.
Re:What really fucking sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
It's next in line. What did you expect?
Microsoft can and will make you move forward. Forward being a relative term when we're talking Microsoft.
And I'm perfectly aware of the reasons not to use Vista. Which is why I removed it from my computer.
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:2, Interesting)
A big name like HP offers a Linux laptop that you can buy on Amazon.com and in BestBuy, and then suddenly the public will see Linux in a very different light.
As a matter of fact, they already do. [amazon.com]
Ballmer's reply (Score:2, Interesting)
"I had nothing to do with this Will handled everything I received a message that paul was going to call Will said he would handle it Paul called I had not even had a chance to report his issues when Will told me he had solved them (it did not sound like he had) I am not even in the detail of the issues. You better get will under control thanks."
Anybody want to bet that was typed on a Blackberry or equivalent?
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:5, Interesting)
Dell already offers Ubuntu, and HP historically has supported SUSE.
SUSE in the past has had package manager issues, but seriously check out openSUSE 11, or the openSUSE 11.1 beta 5. The package manager is GREATLY improved. It searches and resolves packages considerably better, packages are smaller files (LZMA compression), and dependency issues are solved much better now.
The thing I really like about Novell/openSUSE is the development efforts to make improvements themselves and push them upstream. They also backport features. openSUSE packages are just good packages. I could find a decent KDE desktop in Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, etc. but alongside the Arch KDEMod team, openSUSE arguably puts out the single best KDE desktop I've seen.
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
1 - I'm going to go on a limb and guess HP is still the number one printer seller. HP printers are easier to install in Linux than in Windows. My mom just bought a new all-in-one and hplips got everything installed right away. No driver downloads, no fuss. It just worked in under 60 seconds, including fax, scan and copy functionality.
2 - I personally have yet to come across any major webcam that doesn't work in Linux. I buy HP laptops, and every webcam in an HP laptop has worked for me in Linux. Regardless an OEM preinstall of a distro on a laptop like I suggested would mean the webcam would be setup and working out of the box.
3 - Games aren't a big part of the laptop market. However, I think we can all agree that Windows games count as a point for Windows and a mark against Linux.
4 - Tax software? Every major company has a website where you e-file online without the need for any additional software. I e-file in Firefox on Linux with no problems.
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:4, Interesting)
Any lawyers want to call BS?
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, where to begin. I'll just stick with graphics since that is the heart of this debacle, anyway.
Vista Basic is a software context, just like XP, XWindows on UNIX + likes, or non-Quartz Compositor (formerly Quartz Extreme) accelerated MacOSX contexts. Gnome and KDE are traditionally software based, but there has been some effort to add hardware acceleration on both fronts and I haven't kept up on where exactly they are at (I have Ubuntu and SuSE and neither are hardware accelerated AFAIK).
Vista Aero uses Desktop Window Manager (DWM) hardware context (specifically a DirectX 9 context) and offloads much of rendering responsibility to hardware. This is actually the root of the hardware issue where MS eased up on requirements for Vista. From what I've read, the story is something like this: originally, Vista Capable machines had to have graphics acceleration, but not necessarily hardware transformation and lighting (T&L), so Intel continued to develop software T&L in their GMA 3000 series of chips released in 2006. However, Microsoft failed to disclose that Vista would also require a hardware accelerated timer and because T&L on these Intel chips was in software, the timer also needed to be in software. Intel believed they had met all the requirements and suddenly had millions of chips they wouldn't be able to sell because MS didn't disclose one piece of necessary info and was pissed at MS, MS couldn't believe anyone was still making software T&L in 2006, and everyone was pissed at everyone else.
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
I am more interested in changing attitudes of consumers than how a company easily manipulates them.
Re:Remember folks;... (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows 7 is built on top of the Server 2003 codebase, same as Vista, so don't expect a miracle.
Vista Basic can run on fairly low specced machines if you don't have too many services running - I bet it would run on my 8 year old desktop PC (which does have a gig of RAM and a $25 DX9 capable card, so it probably could even run Aero). The requirements skyrocket is if you want to run everything and want Aero.
Windows 7 will likely have a smaller base memory footprint unless you run older applications on it because they plan to move to the virtual machine paradigm (like how OSX machines could run OS9) to support legacy applications. Legacy libraries won't be hogging memory unless they're needed and there should be less compatibility issues because developers will be forced to work with the same API functions rather than falling back on legacy ones when writing new code.
The performance of XP vs Vista is not really that huge of difference - maybe 2%-5% for most things (I get about an 80% hit for OpenGL in a Window, however, which is odd because context switches should only give about a 20% hit at most, but I haven't checked recently and it's possible new drivers and/or SP1 fixed this). Part of that is likely more services running or tuning that needs to be done on the OS. I don't think it's that big of deal. My main problem with Vista is other issues (it nags too much, I've had to reinstall Vista 5x now due to it not liking updates, some things like network shares are painful to configure, some things that shouldn't have been changed or renamed were, etc - I have not had driver issues, but some people have).
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
That could just come right back to bite them on the ass, because it might just piss off Microsoft, and the thing is, Microsoft holds all the cards.
MS will not cut off their #2 OS customer.
HP's customers are generally not in the market for a Linux computer, they're in the market for a Windows computer.
Let's say MS were to cut HP off such that HP would have to buy OEM copies of Vista/XP at full price. HP is one of the few companies that could actually make a non-geek oriented Linux PC. They could offer it as a whole new line, and make a huge push, and sell both Linux PCs and Windows PCs.
In fact, you can be sure that HP is considering this very thing (among many other scenarios), and with distributions like Ubuntu becoming very user-friendly, and the Mac weaning people from thinking they must have Windows, such a scenario is becoming more and more reasonable.
In fact, unless Windows 7 (aka Mojave 2) is a home run, I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this happen during its reign.
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
Most importantly however is the fact that most computer users don't actually know how to use their PCs for anything beyond 2 or 3 basic tasks, and they find learning how to do new tasks too tedious to be bothered.
Sitting those people in front of Linux, I find they more quickly grasp how to do things than they do with Vista, and feel more comfortable doing things because most everything acts the way they expect it to when they experiment.
The best part about sitting a Windows user in front of my Linux desktop is saying "go ahead and play around, you won't break anything."
The average Windows user is so accustomed to rebooting Windows and having driver updates, etc. screw up their system that they've become afraid to do anything new. The new users who aren't jaded yet also aren't trained enough to be afraid of change, its the power users who notice all the little tweaks and changes that make Linux not work the same as their Windows desktop.
Microsoft on the brink (Score:5, Interesting)
Year after year, I maintain the feeling that Windows is teetering on the brink. The immense army of Microsoft's R&D organisation is employed to add "differentiators", i.e. more features, rather than less, so you'll always have planned obsolesence. This is inconsistent with getting the price per unit down to where it's competitive in the TCO equation they're selling to. At the Enterprise back office, it's still perceived by most of our customers that a Windows server solution is easier to plug together in a scalable way with the fewest possible high-end engineers. Because of this perception (aided by a very good single-source support portal in MSDN with a lot of expensive polish) many of our Enterprise customers see a Windows desktop -- at whatever level of evolution -- is the client of least resistance. This amounts to a lot of technology knitted together with a glue consisting of 1 part content, 1 part support, and 1 part marketing polish.
As far as overall quality and ease, well, you and I know different.
To make Linux prevail across the Enterprise will require a differentiator, something that can compensate for the immense marketing engine that is MSFT. This will have to be not just a convincing alternative, but a convincing argument that is driven home.
A couple of holdouts keep MSFT on the cliff instead of off it. A diminishing yet prevalent feeling of product consistency across the board (reinforced by their consistent portal graphics, I kid you not), the immense momentum of the installed product base and the fact that the users' home devices can run World of Warcraft on that platform and no other.
The cost equation is at present very much in favour of a Linux desktop + **Nix back end. Unless we somehow counter that marketing engine, however, we'll never be able to give the beast that last push over the cliff. And we'll need to do it in some other way than they do -- remember, it took a year-after-year consistency for Volkswagen to break the tailfin aristocracy of the 1950's car makers. Of course by that time planned obsolescence had reached absurd levels and people were ready for the change.
Maybe that's our marketing message -- "Do you really need the tailfins? Or would a simple, economical desktop do the job?"
If any marketing types out there have the links, it would be great to see some of the old VW beetle adverts. Inspirational simplicity.
Re:SUSE laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
with linux the odds of complete success are lower, but the odds of complete disaster (computer no longer working) are much much lower also. Failure on linux, is take back the new device it didn't work. Failure on windows is, PC no longer reboots, so she sticks in the recovery CD, and everything is gone. (linux need recovery from this unlikely, but also data in a different partition with no default re-format.)
EG most have no idea if its 98/XP/XP SP1/2/Vista. Wrong choice could be very bad for the computers Windows OS (some crappy installers out their.)
The game has a very high risk of complete failure on windows (assuming she buys a decently challenging one with DRM, if not linux is likely OK too, assuming installed a package with wine, and autolaunch)
The one that I would challenge, is the replacement computer. IE she has the mp3,webcam, MF printer, and a few programs, and replaces the computer. If she goes linux -> linux all is good (except in both cases needs help moving data.) If she has windows (say XP to Vista, or even XP to XP) no chance the hardware will work without downloads, and no idea what to download (why can't it ask for the driver by name?). chances are good the software can't be installed, or will corrupt something in the PC is decent their as well.
Re:What really fucking sucks (Score:1, Interesting)
horse shit. MS supports it's products about 4 times as long as any other OS you care to name, and unless you expect everyone to write their own security patches for linux, please STFU about "you can see the source"