Today Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO was ordered to testify in court regarding the publicized case regarding the “Vista Capable” advertising campaign that Microsoft set up for computer manufactures. The issue with the case is that the requirements for being Vista Capable were too low and could only run the most basic version of Vista which is Basic. That was while they were also advertising all the new features of Vista that for the most part aren’t in Vista Basic like Aero. I knew about it some when I bought my laptop a few years ago and I can say that from my experience that most machines sold then would barely run Vista much less any reasonable distribution. I was in on the beta testing and I can say that Vista was a very heavy OS when in development requiring a lot of hardware. Some issues for example were the requirements allowing 1GB of ram. That on Vista is dreadfully slow compared to XP. Then “Vista Capable” machines were allowed to ship with graphics that couldn’t even run the Aero effect which was widely publicized and advertised. To get a Machine to run Vista decent at that time was about $1000 or a little more but they bent the rules in hopes of selling more units thus more copies of Windows. I know my laptop which is a HP DV5178 would do ok but it ran $1200 and I knew exactly what I was getting unlike most consumers that when you say video card they say “What?”. My laptop had at that point 1GB of ram a 1.66 Core Duo processor, Nvidia go7400 graphics and a 100GB SATA hard drive. I still think that the 1GB of ram would be iffy but I easily upgraded to 2GB for $20.
My views are kind of neutral but what I didn’t like were the uneducated salesmen that tried to sell anything without making the customer aware of such issues during that time. I find that even though what a customer really wants may not be in there budget but at least I feel they got the best solution and understand why it is the best for them. That doesn’t have to be real detailed but enough for them to feel good and to know what they are getting into. I find that they came back to me as well. Also eventually the sales people started coming up or asking me to come over and give better advice. I made a point though while at the computer store even though I was a customer I would chime in and help people out since half the time the salesman was clueless. There was nothing better than the feeling you got from knowing you helped someone get the right product and when you know that they will be happy for a longer period of time.
