Bad Windows

Internal Microsoft emails used by plaintiffs as evidence in the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit have revealed that the software giant caved into pressure from Intel to enable its 915 series integrated graphics chipsets to run Windows Vista.

What’s significant about this is that before this decision, Microsoft had been adamant that, in order for a system to support Windows Vista, its graphics processor had to support the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM)—a specification that Intel’s 915 graphics chipset didn’t conform to.

John Kalkman, a Microsoft executive, wrote in an email chain dated 26th February 2007, “In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded.”

Read more at bit-tech.net 

News that Microsoft is to be hit with yet another fine from the European Union has naturally attracted plenty of attention, but it has also raised the old questions of whether such interventions by governments are justified or even do any good.

Some seem to believe that the market, inherently red in tooth and claw, should be allowed to sort itself out without any kind of government intervention. But as a convicted monopolist, Microsoft has already been found to have abused its dominant position, so the idea that it should be allowed merrily to do the same wherever else it fancies just because it can, with whatever collateral damage that may cause to open source projects, hardly seems in the public interest. By all means let it compete – but on a level playing field.

Read more at LinuxJournal 

The European Commission fined Microsoft a record $1.3 billion Wednesday for defying sanctions imposed on the software giant in 2004 for antitrust violations, far exceeding the original penalty.

EU regulators said the company charged “unreasonable prices” until last October to software developers who wanted to make products compatible with the Windows desktop operating system.

Read more at msnbc 

Several prominent anti-virus programs must be updated before they will work with the soon-to-be-released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft Corp. has said.

In a just-updated list of third-party software that doesn't work with Vista SP1, the major update expected to reach most users in about three weeks, Microsoft noted that a number of security suites will be barred from launching once the service pack is installed.

"The programs in the following table have known compatibility problems with Windows Vista SP1. For reliability reasons, Microsoft blocks these programs from starting after you install Windows Vista SP1," the company said in a support document.

Read more at ComputerWorld 

Migration to the Windows Vista operating system apparently isn't generating much enthusiasm among IT personnel in the enterprise. A survey conducted in November of last year by market research firm King Research supports that notion. The study found that "90 percent of participants have concerns about the migration to Windows Vista."

What's worse, from Microsoft's perspective, is that future plans to deploy Vista seemed stunted too. Roughly half (53 percent) of respondents said that they "have no plans to deploy Vista at this time." Other plans for Vista included installing it for testing (18 percent), new machines only (14 percent) and other uses (two percent). Just 13 percent said they planned to be fully deployed on Vista.

Read more at ADTMag 

Echostorm writes with word that Windows Vista SP1, which began rolling out via Automatic Update, has left some users' machines unbootable. The update loops forever on "Configuring updates: Stage 3 of 3 — 0% complete. Do not turn off your computer." "Shutting down"… restart and loop.

Read more at Slashdot 

Microsoft’s Vista operating system can’t get no respect, and the software maker aims to change that: Michael Sievert, a corporate vice president in charge of Windows marketing, is leaving Microsoft, the Journal reports.

This blog has chronicled the litany of charges brought against the new version of Windows since it was released just over a year ago: It’s too slow; it’s too difficult to learn; it breaks down; it’s not compatible with some software. We concluded a while ago that no matter the merits of these complaints, the fact that they find their way into newspapers and blogs on a near-daily basis creates the impression that they’re true.

Read more at WSJ 

You might remember a lawsuit filed claiming that Microsoft labeled PCs as Windows Vista capable when they were only really capable of running one version of Vista, the low-level Vista Home Basic.

Well, this week, we found out as part of the suit's legal proceedings that there was more to the story than just a bit of allegedly misleading marketing. Apparently, there was something resembling mass confusion inside Microsoft, including fairly high-ranking executives — Mike Nash and Jim Allchin among them — questioning what on earth was going on with the whole Vista labeling campaign. One employee even said in an e-mail that a "piece of junk" PC could still qualify for a Vista Ready label.

Read more at RCPMag 

Now that it's making headlines in the mainstream press that the EU Commission is investigating Microsoft's behavior in trying to get MSOOXML accepted as an ISO "standard", I want to simply remind the world that Groklaw has a permanent ODF/MSOOXML page, including a chronology, where all the events can be tracked, month by month, since the Massachusetts events began in January of 2005. Other primary resources you can find on the ODF/MSOOXML page are links to significant blogs that focus on this issue and a Miscellaneous section, where you will find the information surrounding the Massachusetts saga, technical white papers, and transcripts of public meetings.

Read more at Groklaw 

You rarely hear about a new OS causing people to panic. But IT consultant Scott Pam says that's exactly what his small-business clients are doing when they install Windows Vista on new PCs and run smack into compatibility or usability roadblocks.

Pam's clients are not alone: Since InfoWorld launched its petition drive on Jan. 14 to ask Microsoft to continue selling new XP licenses indefinitely alongside its Vista licenses, more than 75,000 people have signed on. And hundreds of people have commented — many with ferocious, sometimes unprintable passion. "Right now I have a laptop with crap Vista and I'm going to downgrade to XP because Vista sucks," reads one such comment.

Read more at InfoWorld