Home Basic "didn't deserve Vista tag"

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Jan 2009 at 10:04

Court documents reveal that groups within Microsoft wanted the Vista tag dropped from the Home Basic version of the operating system, fearing it didn't meet "consumer expectations".

The software giant is being sued in the US by plaintiffs who claim the company "unjustly enriched" itself by using Vista Capable stickers to sell PCs that weren't suitable for Vista Home Premium or Ultimate editions.

These plaintiffs claim the lack of an Aero interface and other features means Home Basic isn't actually Vista at all, and have found papers showing that groups within Microsoft shared their reservations.

"Microsoft studied the precise question of whether Home Basic should be called Vista," claim the plaintiffs in documents recently released to the public.

"The recommendation of the Windows Product Management Group was that Home Basic should carry the Windows brand alone without the Vista generation name," they add, citing an internal Microsoft email from 2005 obtained as part of the legal discovery process.

The group went on to recommend that dropping the Vista brand from the Home Basic edition would "better align user product expectations to the high visibility innovations uniquely present in the Windows Vista premium versions."

The Vista Capable lawsuit has already proved an embarrassing event for Microsoft, revealing among other things that the company allegedly relaxed its hardware requirements for Vista Capable in early 2006 at the behest of Intel.

This decision swiftly brought the ire of HP, causing a great deal of infighting among the Microsoft ranks, with then Microsoft co-President Jim Allchin blaming Steve Ballmer, and Ballmer blaming Microsoft executive, Will Poole.