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Comments: 133 +-   The "Vista-Capable" Debacle Spreads To Acer on Saturday March 28 2009, @01:31PM

Posted by kdawson on Saturday March 28 2009, @01:31PM
from the for-some-values-of-capable dept.
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N!NJA writes in with a Register story on a lawsuit filed against Acer for selling Windows Vista on an underpowered notebook. Of course anybody can sue for anything; it will be interesting to see if this action goes forward in the courts. "With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world's third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-$600 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory. In its official "recommended system requirements," Microsoft recommends that an additional 128MB is required to run the Premium incarnation of its latest desktop operating system. ... Microsoft says that the Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions of Vista will run on 512MB systems — with certain OS features disabled. In the beginning, Redmond called these 'Vista Capable' machines, and it's facing a separate lawsuit over this potentially misleading moniker."
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Submission: Microsoft's Vista-capable debacle spills over Acer by N!NJA (1437175)
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  • 512Meg? (Score:3, Informative)

    by jawtheshark (198669) * <slashdot@jawthesh a r k . c om> on Saturday March 28 2009, @01:36PM (#27371675) Homepage Journal

    Probably even with shared graphics memory, resulting in something like 448Meg usable? Windows XP SP0 and SP1 ran on 256Meg RAM, SP2 seems to need 512Meg RAM, SP3 seems to need a bit more (but I never tried taht one on low-memory machines). Vista on such a machine? Eeeuh.... I don't think so.

    That said, they seem to have paid quite a lot of money to get a RAM upgrade.

    Linux runs fine tough on such "low-memory" (I had harddisks smaller than that, like 20Meg!) machines.

    • Re:512Meg? (Score:5, Informative)

      by the_humeister (922869) on Saturday March 28 2009, @01:45PM (#27371785)

      Linux runs fine tough on such "low-memory" (I had harddisks smaller than that, like 20Meg!) machines.

      It's a little disingenuous to say that "Linux" (aside from the fact that Linux is just a kernel and that the term "Linux" is now being used in the mainstream for almost any Unix-like OS; but that's another argument altogether) will run in low memory. While this is true, most people wouldn't use it like that. My WRT54g with 16 MB of RAM is running OpenWRT. I had a 386 that only had 12 MB of RAM and I had X running with twm, and it ran only slightly faster than Windows 95, which had a much better looking UI.

      So yes, you can run "Linux" on a low memory computer, but you're sure as hell not going to be running KDE or GNOME or some other good-looking interface with it.

      • So yes, you can run "Linux" on a low memory computer, but you're sure as hell not going to be running KDE or GNOME or some other good-looking interface with it.

        256 Mb is enough for a lightly used Gnome desktop. My mom has one, and it's working fine for her.

        Personally, I'd go with fluxbox on that machine, but I'm not the one who needs to use it.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Im running Kubuntu on my home built atom 330 box. It has two gigs, but right now it's only using 0.47 gigs according to the system monitor.

          And this is with KDE4, Kaffine playing a video, KTorrent pulling down ...distros...(cough) and of course firefox with a couple of slashdot tabs open.

          I think it's fair to say that a modern linux desktop is perfectly usable with only half a gig.

        • 256 Mb is enough for a lightly used Gnome desktop. My mom has one, and it's working fine for her.

          Your mom should try XFCE. It's much more lightweight, and for light usage it can be configured to look and act almost exactly like GNOME. I run XFCE on Xubuntu on my 512 MB Dell Latitude with its puny 1.5 Ghz Pentium M processor, and it flys!

          • "my 512 MB Dell Latitude with its puny 1.5 Ghz Pentium M processor, and it flys!"
            Oh, f%$k me! Now I feel old. :(

            • So the humankind hates computer geeks, scientists and any people that look smart. They just want to kill you on a very painful way and not have to call you to install another desktop manager.

              Fine. Be that way. Just don't come cryin' to us when Brawndo doesn't actually have what plants crave.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by ion.simon.c (1183967)

              ...will need the same or higher computer specs to run a configuration that gets close to what the Windows experience offers...

              Check out the SVN trunk version of KDE 4 some day. [0]
              When you combine that with an ATI card, the open source drivers, and OpenRC, you get a desktop experience that (IMO) blows the doors off of anything coming out of Redmond.
              With this configuration, I have a Linux machine that goes from GRUB bootloader to a usable [1] desktop in ~45 seconds. (Time spent typing username/password not included. Time spent starting X is included.) Server 2K3 on the same hardware (with nothing else happening on startup) takes n

        • And 512 Meg leave my RHEL and Debian systsems running _fine_. Leaving out most of the semi-graphical debris in the Windows toolbar is a big help, as is the superior Linux handling of virtual memory. (Windows NT and XP memory handling is basically from VMS, and while it's done fairly well for the kernel, for the programs, it's not well used.)

      • Re:512Meg? (Score:4, Informative)

        by jawtheshark (198669) * <slashdot@jawthesh a r k . c om> on Saturday March 28 2009, @01:53PM (#27371881) Homepage Journal

        Yes, indeed... You are of course right. However, I implied (that wasn't perhaps clear) that a 512Meg machine runs a Full Linux-Based Desktop like Gnome just fine. On my Asus EEE PC 701 4G, I rarely exceed 300Meg used.

        But your points are well taken....

        • I keep forgetting that 512MB is considered "low-memory" nowadays.

          • Oh, I remember when 1024KByte RAM was overkill (my first, okay, my dads first machine had that... and most people were at 512KByte then) Anyway, I must have pissed off someone. I don't think those Troll mods were deserved.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by hairyfeet (841228)

                While I think your idea of bringing back plus packs is a GREAT idea, as it would cut the bloat without having 400 fricking versions of the OS, there is another idea from that time I believe they desperately need to bring back as well: The WinNT/Win9x divide. Remember how if you remember how if you wanted a HOME OS you could actually BUY a home OS, and if you just wanted to get your work done there was an actual business OS? Now they put out the same bloated as hell, multimedia choked, bling bling to the top

      • So yes, you can run "Linux" on a low memory computer, but you're sure as hell not going to be running KDE or GNOME or some other good-looking interface with it.

        Bear in mind that one needs neither KDE nor Gnome to have a full featured desktop experience based on Linux. While I no longer dabble with 386's on a regular basis, I can state with some authority that "Linux" runs great on a P54c-233 with 64MB of RAM. Web, e-mail, word processing. Flash video on footube tends to get bogged down a bit, but otherwise an A+ computing experience.

        BBH

        • I have an old laptop, maxed out at 96meg of RAM, and a screen that can't go past 800X600. For about the same type of usage as you list, I find Puppy Linux and JWM (Joe's Window Manager) works just fine. From the time I hit Enter at the Grub menu to the time I have a full, wor4king desktop is just over 90 seconds, about three times as fast as Win98Se booted, assuming that nothing hung. I don't need no steenking iCandy on my laptop; if that's what I'm looking for, I've got all the gosh-wow enhancements I n

      • On my first laptop (Pentium based) I did a fair amount of web development work, so I often had a database (Postgres), web server, Netscape Communicator, and emacs all running at the same time, along with 6 xterms on an X desktop with FVWM2.

        Total memory? 40 MB.

        My current laptop has a spacious 1 GB and Linux, with Firefox and OpenOffice running doesn't even use half of it. Upgrading memory? Not worth the bother.

    • My sister bought a Windows XP laptop wtih 512mb Ram (shared). It ran horrible, it was hard to have a browser and open office open at the same time for instance. I purchased 1gb chip and that made everything fairly smooth. However I am still thinking Dell kind of ripped her (and others off) selling a computer with less RAM than it needs to run the OS shipped with it.

      • Hmm... I never used Windows XP with more than 512 MB ram. With a fat firewall software, antivirus, a fat messenger software, winamp and Firefox running. And I never felt it to be slow. My current machine, running Linux/GNU/Gentoo/KDE/Compiz with 2 GB ram and a on-board Geforce 7050PV (with shared mem) actually feels slower.

        So I wonder if you had some botnet client running in the background... ...or if it simply is the graphics card...

        But 512 MB definitely was enough to work well with XP SP3.

        • Nope. When I got hold of my sister laptop I re-formated it, ran anti-virus and SpyBot from the start. No viruses, no HD damage, up-to-date drivers; in short; the works. Still it was absolutely horrendous to work with; slow, sluggish and over-all not a working product (in my mind). Though buying 1gb of RAM fixed all of those problems right up.
          • You do realise modern malware is less of a drain on resources than any type of AV?

    • I've run XP SP3 on 256MB RAM before, it worked fine. None of the machines at my office have more that 512MB Ram, and they're all current, running XP SP3 and IE7 (but IE is disabled on most of them, with Firefox set as default). They run fine, so long as they're kept clean, however crapware and tracking cookies slow them down if they're not maintained well.

      SUSE, like Windows is slow on a machine with 512MB RAM, I'm going try installing Ubuntu to see if that's better. KDE is crabby like Vista, Gnome is much

  • Remember when a gigabyte of memory was a lot? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2009, @01:37PM (#27371687)

    Thanks Vista for making that a thing of the past.

  • Slashdot called this a 'Funny Capable' comment, and it will face a lawsuit if this turns out not to be true!
  • I've actually had Vista running in a 512mb virtual machine on my Linux box. My whole Linux box had but a gig at the time, and I had Ubuntu, KDevelop, the virtual box, Vista in it, running Visual Studio 2008 to develop an Excel application. I was rather impressed that it all worked.

    • You probably had to tweak it though? I bought a lower-midend Acer Desktop ($450-500, without monitor, with some dual core AMD chip) about a year ago and it was nasty even with 2GB ram. It was just meant for the wife to browse on, but out of the box, you would start it up and you could hear the harddrive, CPU, and fans working the entire time even though it was advertised as a quiet system.

      They did absolutely no optimizations at all at the factory, and the problem corrected itself once I turned all the gra

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Z34107 (925136)

        At work, we have an old, repurposed desktop at our help desk for doing troubleshooting over the phone. It's either an old HP D310 or DC5000; I forget which. Has the worst kind of horrible, integrated Intel graphics and a gigabyte of RAM. 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor.

        The Vista partition runs fine on it, and in fact runs faster than the XP partition. (Although that's due to all the garbage the other help desk workers have thrown on the machine; they stay away from the Vista partition because "Vista is slow

      • The only thing that stopped me from installing Ubuntu on the spot was that it came with no Windows Recovery disk and if murphy's law struck and she wanted some windows program

        fyi, you can use any vista dvd with any serial key. So all you need is any copy of the vista dvd, and the key on the bottom/back of the computer case. Unlike XP, you can get a clean install on any system (some drivers, and bloatware not included).

      • I ran the Vista beta on my 1 gig machine (ati radeon 9700 graphics card) and it ran quite well. One thing is that Acer's bloatware tends to be absolutely horrendous in bogging down the computer it's absolutely disgusting they decide to throw all that crap in there...and it's Acer's own software, not some demos or trials that other companies pay them to throw in. I can't fathom why they would do that, and pretty much refuse to buy an Acer laptop because of that. They even threw it in on their netbook!

        Rega

  • Does the OS run on the notebook? Is it able to run the basic applications, even if the HD is swapping like crazy? If so, they're going to have trouble succeeding with the lawsuit.

    You can't buy the cheapest thing available and expect it to run WELL. Only to run.

  • capable? sure. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It works fine with 512... Its just incredibly slow!

  • Guys, I know Vista has way too many versions, but is it really that hard to remember that it's Windows Vista Home Premium (and for that matter, Vista Home Basic), not Vista Premium and Vista Basic?

          --- Mr. DOS

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by icebike (68054)

      But all of those versions run like crap on a small machine.

      Turning off Aero helps some, but the machine was underspeced for ANY version of Vista, and the manufacturer should have realized that.

      By simply bundling in another 512meg of memory the manufacture could steal a march on their competition. Yet they chose to knuckle under to Microsoft and Intel.

      • I'm a little confused. I mean, I understand that Microsoft probably intentionally lowballed the requirements for Vista, but how did they knuckle under (buckle?) to Microsoft and Intel by skimping on RAM? I think the real problem was manufacturers skimping on RAM despite the fact that DDR2 prices have plummeted (and are still plummeting). My parents' computer from 2003, which finally died a few weeks ago, was the cheapest thing at CompUSA and it had 512MB RAM. You'd think that by 2008 we would have moved pas

  • Strange story (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kupfernigk (1190345) on Saturday March 28 2009, @02:15PM (#27372093)
    Why can't they reduce the memory allocation of the graphics to 256 or 128Mbyte? Why did an extra SODIMM cost so much? And how much is the lawsuit going to cost them?

    If the machine kept freezing and crashing, why didn't they return it under warranty rather than go to law? If I buy a computer and it is obviously faulty, I should expect to exhaust the warranty process before starting a lawsuit, and I should not have to provide a technical explanation of what the supplier did wrong. It's broke, fix it.

    Nowadays the concept that you get what you pay for seems obscure to some people. But then, looking at the number of rich and famous people who thought Bernie Madoff's "too good to be true" interest rates were somehow possible, it looks like stupidity is no respecter of class, celebrity or even IQ.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jawtheshark (198669) *

      Why can't they reduce the memory allocation of the graphics to 256 or 128Mbyte?

      Doesn't that depend on the laptop/BIOS/Chipset? I have Fujitsu-Siemens Pa1510 and it reserves 256Meg by default for the graphics card. Originally the machine had 1Gig, I upgraded it to 2Gig, which results in me having 1.8Gig available (still enough...) I only use it for 2D stuff, so I would be more than comfortable with 16Meg Framebuffer (1280x800x24bit=24576000bit=3072000Byte ~= 3MByte required) The BIOS has next to no optio

  • Turn off the Theme service and Vista Home Premium runs fine on a Netbook with 1GB of RAM, as my Fujitsu U810 proves. It's not terribly speedy, but quite usable unless you're in power-saver mode. All that UI gloss just makes things slow.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by hechacker1 (1358761)
      Aero offloads the GUI onto your graphics card if it is capable of DirectX 9. It provides a faster, tear free interface, and if you notice DWM.exe (Desktop Window Manager) uses only 0-1% of CPU during use.
      If you disable Aero and fall back to GDI, DWM.exe will disappear, and explorer.exe instead takes the load, usually using 1-5% of my CPU (at least on this machine).
      In general, you should get better performance if you have a decent video card. If you are using the desktop anyways, why not utilize the GPU?

  • Acer 5315 - Mandriva Linux, WinXP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hduff (570443) <hoytduffNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday March 28 2009, @02:53PM (#27372391) Homepage

    I purchased 4 of these at Wal-Mart. Mine got Mandriva Linux; I can run compiz with all the gee-whiz effects with no problems. The system is fast and reliable.

    The other family members got WindowsXP "upgrades" using TinyXP after they complained about Vista slowness. Wow, what a difference! Fastest Windows machines I have seen since 98Lite.

  • Honestly, I don't understand what Vista can possibly be doing that it requires so much memory. What is it using it all for?

    • Not sure, but you could say the same about other OSes and other environments. Mac OS X, if you don't load aqua, has a really small memory footprint but then balloons once aqua is loaded. Same with KDE and GNOME.

  • 1 GB for $9.99 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cskrat (921721) <chris@ c s k r a t t i g er.com> on Saturday March 28 2009, @03:17PM (#27372547)

    According to Acer this laptop ships with 1GB from the factory. And according to NewEgg upgrading to 2GB would be about $9.99 plus $2.99 shipping or going to 4GB would be just under $40.00. How the hell did she spend $157.40 on an upgrade that maxes out at $40 in parts and $30 in labor?

    Vista does run reasonably with 872MB available to it as long as you stick to basic applications. OpenOffice, Firefox, Windows Media Player and etc. all run well enough. Crysis, Fallout 3, Photoshop CS4 and Visual Studio will run like dogs, if at all.

    Vista capable is just like a DOT highway safety rating, just because your Kia is roadworthy doesn't mean that it will compete with a BMW for either performance or luxury.

  • Bah (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wildBoar (181352)

    thing that pissed me off was the so called free upgrade to Vista that was advertised. When I went to get it I was asked for 80 euros. Dirty robbing thieving bastards. Service charge and postage - absolutely mad and a total con.

    So I'm still happily using XP (and Centos)

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