Microsoft's own analyst warned about Vista, low-cost laptops

[OhioChick]

He read the tea leaves correctly, but nothing changed

April 10, 2008 (Computerworld) More than two years before Microsoft Corp. extended Windows XP's life span so makers of new low-cost laptops could install the operating system, a company analyst had warned that Vista's "harsher" system requirements might mean trouble, according to internal e-mails.

The messages were among the hundreds made public by a federal judge two months ago, in a case where consumers have accused Microsoft with misleading PC buyers with its "Vista Capable" program in the months leading up to the operating system's release. Recently, that judge suspended the lawsuit while another court hears Microsoft's appeal of the decision to grant the case class-action status.

In early 2006, Gregg Daugherty, an analyst in Microsoft's hardware group, told Windows marketing executives that the personal computer market was skewing toward less-expensive laptops. "We all know laptops are growing, but I'm struck by the magnitude, especially in the home," said Daugherty in an e-mail on Feb. 28, 2006.

"I'm especially taken by the fact sub-$1,000 laptops are now 50% of the home laptop market, and in Dec. '05, accounted for 26% of all retail computers sold," he added. Daugherty sent that message and others to a list that included Mike Sievert, then the head of Windows marketing, and Brad Goldberg, who was general manager of Windows product management at the time.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9076438&intsrc=hm_list

[Yael]

1. Hint for laptop Vista users

Turn off the 'float' in your control panel. That feature causes battery life to be cut in half.

I am so happy that I don't have to work with that OS. Resource hogging, buggy as all get out and not worth all the problems trying to get your older software and peripherals to work.

*shiver*

[Deja Q]

4. It's too hoggy for its own good, but I will give MS some credit--

it's more stable than XP, and XP plus a 3rd party GUI skinner wasted RAM and was horridly unstable.

Vista's GUI enhancements are pretty much solid. Especially by comparison to the best known XP GUI add-on, and they're known for great games and started shop during the era of OS/2...

[Deja Q]

2. Well, let's compare default rsystem requirements:

(note: RAM amounts are "sweet spot" values for ideal OS speed)

Windows NT 4 (1996):
__ million lines of code
128MB RAM
500MB HD space

Windows 2000 Pro (1999):
35 million lines of code
256MB RAM
800MB HD Space


Windows XP Pro (2001):
42 million lines of code
384 or 512MB RAM
1.5GB disk space

Windows Vista Business (2006):
55 million lines of code
2048MB RAM
15.0GB disk space

So between 2001 and 2006, what the flying fickle pickle happened to let Vista get so obscenely bloated? It may have 55 million lines of code, but it's very sloppy and inefficient code to demand such system requirements. I've found 4GB worth of unnecessary crap (about 3000 language files for 20 different languages; so who nixed the "Which language do you use" subsystem that filters out unneeded files?!), but I'm not risking deleting it and arfing up my system - just to be sure.

Indeed, what will "Windows 7" require?
70 million lines of code
5120MB of RAM
39.75GB disk space?!

[Ian David]

3. Vista sucks for web browsing. Explorer and Mozilla are VERY slow on Vista.

However, for some reason, Safari is still operating at normal speeds.