need to separate what the 'Vista Capable' logo requirements are from the concept of being able to run Vista," Poole said in a follow-up e-mail. "Lots (many tens of millions) of systems that will NOT have WDDN, absolutely WILL be able to run Windows Vista. The POR [plan of record] is that although the 915 is upgradeable to Vista, it would not qualify for a Vista Capable logo, nor for a basic 'designed for Windows Visa' [sic] logo once we launch."
In fact, the plaintiffs charged in their motion, as soon as Microsoft launched Vista, it reinstituted the WDDM requirement for the Vista Capable logo.
Some Microsoft executives reacted intensely to the decision to drop WDDM from Vista Capable's must-have list. "This kind of shit drives me crazy, Chris," said Mike Ybarra, a director of product management, in a message to a co-worker. "We have pushed the UI in Vista so hard in the last 18 months, and we get our OEMs to go with higher end chip sets and graphics parts on existing PCs to really drive the experience for consumers, and at the last minute, we cave to Intel and give 915 and other chip sets a back door into the programs."
Jim Allchin, then the co-president of the company's platform products and services -- effectively the head of Windows -- was even blunter in his criticism. "I believe we are going to be misleading customers with the Capable program," Allchin said in an e-mail undated in the motion. "OEMs will say a machine is Capable, and customers will believe it will run all the core Vista features. The fact that aero won't be there EVER for many of these machines is misleading to customers."
He argued that customers, not the computer makers or Intel, should be the priority. "End-customers must be the top priority. We must avoid confusion. It is wrong for customers."
Allchin resigned from Microsoft the day after Vista shipped in January 2007.
Yesterday's filing asks U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman to rule that Microsoft's changing the Vista Capable requirements meets the definition of an "unfair or deceptive act or practice" under Washington state law.
"The reasons for lowering the bar on WDDN were to clear out a huge inventory of both existing computers and Intel 915 chip sets and to increase the number of PCs that would qualify for the Vista Capable program," argued the plaintiffs' lawyers in the conclusion to the motion. "Immediately after the launch of Windows Vista, WDDM was again required. If it had been generally known that the 'Vista Capable' PCs were not truly 'Vista Capable,' demand for the in-channel computers, the 915 chip sets, and the XP licenses associated with these PCs would have been 'Osborned," they added, using a term derived from a computer executive, Adam Osborne, who in the 1980s talked up the next version of his company's hardware before it was ready, only to see sales of the current systems plummet.
"Microsoft chose to withhold from the public all information about the fact that WDDM was removed as a requirement in order to increase the demand for PCs that were, if truth had been told, soon to be obsolete," they said.
A month ago, Microsoft countered, saying that the decision was a purely internal one and that it had told customers later during 2006 that WDDM was necessary to run Aero and that the plaintiffs' motion was "generally irrelevant" and "has no merit."
Today, company spokesman David Bowermaster said, "The e-mails highlighted by the plaintiffs reflect the normal back-and-forth discussion about an internal decision Microsoft made in January 2006, long before it began communicating about the Windows Vista Capable program to consumers in May 2006. Ultimately, we provided choices to consumers, giving different options for Windows Vista Capable PCs at various price-points to meet their needs."
The lawsuit, which began nearly a year and a half ago, was granted class-action
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