Microsoft Learns from Vista Capable Lawsuit, Ups Requirements for Windows 7 Compatibility Sticker
Microsoft Learns from Vista Capable Lawsuit, Ups Requirements for Windows 7 Compatibility Sticker
Posted 10/05/2009 at 6:23am
| by Paul Lilly
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By all indications, Windows 7 will be met with a much warmer reception than Vista was at launch, and the Redmond company has already started certifying PCs as "compatible with Windows 7." The logo will appear on machines that "have passed Microsoft designed tests for compatibility and reliability with Windows 7," but can consumers really trust this to be true after the Vista-capable fiasco?
According to court documents, Microsoft bowed to pressure from Intel and lowered requirements for its Vista Capable stickers at the last minute so that the chip maker's 915 chipset could be included. Consumers balked when they found out that some machines bearing Vista's logo were only powerful enough to run Vista Home Basic, which had been stripped of many of the features found on other versions of Vista.
Rest assured, Microsoft seems to have learned its lesson and has no intention of repeating the same mistake. In order to qualify for a Windows 7 sticker, the PC or gadget in question must "work with all versions of Windows 7," and that includes 64-bit versions, not just 32-bit. So say you purchase a machine bearing the Windows 7 logo and later decide to upgrade from Windows 7 Starter 32-bit to Ultimate 64-bit, you'll be able to do so, according to Microsoft's certification requirements.
The software giant also says that logo'd machines are checked for common issues and are less likely to crash, hang, or reboot unexpectedly.
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SuperiorBeing
October 05, 2009 at 2:24pm
I assume the misspelling on the picture is intentional.
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Signatures are cool.
The Relic
October 05, 2009 at 10:10am
Ah yes, the "Vista Capable" sticker. I remember going to a Wal-Mart shortly after Vista hit street. They had a laptop out on their promo table with Vista running, and it had that sticker on it. The thing only had 512MB RAM and it ran slow as cold molasses. Not a good promo.
I have on my workbench an EMachines I found at a local thrift (turns out it just needed the RAM replaced) that has a Sempron 2Ghz proc. It has the XP install with drivers and programs loaded onto a separate partition (thankfully; I fixed it up to sell), but sure enough, there was that "Vista Capable" sticker, even though it was not only originally designed with 512MB RAM (NVidia 6100 video built-in, but has a PCI-E slot if one wants to use it), but it can only use up to 2GB of PC3200.
Crazy stuff.
Dynotaku
October 05, 2009 at 8:58am
This will not prevent us from getting these stickers on assinine products like power strips and external hard drives though.
Thiazolium
October 05, 2009 at 8:22am
The irony about this is that Microsoft themselves placed a "Vista Compatible" sticker on their own fingerprint reader that they sold. The implication of that sticker was that both 32 and 64 bit versions are supposed to be supported. Never happened. 64 bit users were left out in the cold. Let's hope that they set a better example themselves as well.
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