"Vista Capable" Stickers Causing All Kinds Of Problems For Microsoft
Around this time last year, computer manufactures were trying to convince people not to wait until Vista came out to buy a new computer. To that end Microsoft devised what was (and still is) considered to be one of the most confusing marketing campaigns ever.
Some computers could only run a very basic version of Vista that did not include all the fancy "Aero" windows. Other computers were able to run any version of Vista. These computers were given stickers that either said "Certified for Windows Vista" or "Works with Windows Vista." The latter meant that the computer would technically "work." Maybe not with all the features, but it would work.
We wrote a post explaining the various stickers and urged people to be careful when they bought a new computer. Some people didn't get the message, and now they're suing Microsoft, seeking class action status. They claim that because there was a sticker that said "Vista capable" on the actual machine (separate from the aforementioned "Certified for Windows Vista" and the "Works With Windows Vista" stickers) the computer should have been able to run every version of the new operating system. They believe they were deliberately tricked into buying a computer that was already obsolete.
We recently got a complaint letter about the issue. Reader Craig writes (to Howard Stringer, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sony):
Dear Mr. Stringer,Was Microsoft being deliberately misleading, or are they just incompetent?I am writing to express my frustration, anger, and resentment at what I view are dishonest selling practices by Sony. Last year I left the Navy (US Navy) and began taking classes to enter Dental School. After my old Vaio laptop gave out from all the sand and humidity it occurred in the Gulf, I decided to purchase another Vaio that would carry me through Dental School. I choose a ultra portable VGN-TX750P, paying around 2100.00 American for it. Even though it had windows xp on it, it had a sticker saying it was Windows Vista Capable - which assured me when vista came out I could put it on my computer. Well, I have tried to install Vista and while it can be installed, Vista is in crippled state that doesn't allowing some of the newest and innovative features of vista to function (like Aero windows).
As a loyal Vaio user for 5 years, I feel as Sony lied about what it was selling. To me, "capable" means "able", and since there were no limiting factors on the sticker (which is/was on the computer itself) I think this is false advertising. I could understand if Sony was told one thing by Microsoft and sold items predicated on that incorrect information. But once the original information was learned to be incorrect a refund should have been available so customers could return the item for a refund and then upgrade to a product that was truly "capable."
I am not going to sue if that is what you are thinking - first I am not that type of person and second I am too busy with school and taking care of my expecting wife. I just think you should know that your shadowy selling practices do have an effect even on a once "loyal" customer. What I can do is cc a few people so they may understand how Sony operates.
Sincerely,
Craig
Microsoft criticizes "Vista Capable" plaintiffs for focus on tiny sticker [Ars Technica]
PREVIOUSLY: Getting Ready for Vista
This is a test using rich text formatting and html links. It's the generic "company" ad that should appear on all posts with the Company category if they don't have an ad attached to a specific company.
Post a comment
Comments:
It's surprising that you even have to ask the question. Of course, think of the alternative: A whole range of Vista stickers, for which version is supported, and the Vista Experience score.. that'd be great for techs, but disastrous for the average user.
Before you got Vista, did you read what are the hardware requirements? They're usually listed what is recommended and what are the minimum requirements. My guess is you didnt check them out. Anyone who spends 5 years consistently buying Vaio's tells me you're not the kind of person who watches what he buys.
Deliberately misleading *and* incompetent.
It was such a piss poor implementation on the behalf of Microsoft AND the manufacturers. One of the best things in the world about Apple, is that you KNOW the next OS is going to work with all but a handful of the oldest machines.
It does matter what sticker you put on it, the truth is that Vista will not work with either simply because Vista is crap.. I had it for about 2 weeks on my laptop that was Vista Certified and then some and it still ran slower (if it ran at all) than the molassess cliche... I "Upgraded" back to XP and then kicked myself for not getting the Mac...
Why would you want to ruin a perfectly working XP box by putting Vista on it before SP1 has been released?
Its really in that grey area. Technically it is capable of running Vista. Visuals aren't as nice as with a newer computer. So technically it can run *any* version of Vista it's just some of the gfx things aren't supported.
It's sorta like if you buy a machine that advertises being able to play games. Yes its capable of playing games but some games and games that come out in the future won't run with all the features turned on.
But yes all in all I think Microsoft could've handled it better. Perhaps with a disclaimer somewhere or being a little more descriptive about being capable of running Vista.
Or?
Aero on a laptop is horrible idea anyway. Normally, if your computer isn't doing anything, a laptop will go into a low-power mode, where the CPU basically just sits there doing nothing. The problem with Aero is that it's constantly doing something -- all that animation keeps your CPU active. That's not really an issue if you're on A/C power, but will chew through your battery if you're not.
Heh, I *knew* my Acer would never, ever run Vista, no matter what the sticker on it said. In fact, as soon as I an get DSL out in the boonies where I live, I'll be upgrading it to Ubuntu.
Microsoft probably doesnt think they were misleading people. They just did an awful job creating a system that has such drastically larger system requirements over XP. Vista is overly user-friendly, it requires massive resources, and its creation was completely unnecessary. But Microsoft needed it to create something "new" so they'd stop losing market share to Apple. It completely backfired.
Vista runs on his computer, so his computer is "Vista Capable". I'm not going to feel sorry for an incompetent consumer.
uh, I've seen Microsoft win harder battles than this.
you won't win
Designed for Windows XP, Vista Capable sings: "Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman"
@smitty1123: Exactly. I don't see how the fancy animations not working means his computer doesn't run Vista.
I have vista and have no idea what aero windows are...
And holy overpriced, I'd expect a $2100 laptop to still be able to run Vista decently!
@cef21:
Ok, now I know what Aero is. And on my laptop it turns off after like 5-10 minutes. I rarely run it without a constant source of power, and when I do, I downgrade the settings and don't leave it idle long enough for aero to start...
It was widely known that Vista would require quite new machines. Sony's laptop were never that good to start with (but they have a bit of the apple 'who care about the specs, it's cool' thing going on).
To me, this is not misleading: vista does work and something like aero is just a fraction of the OS. It's more a case of the user not doing enough research.
@ideagirl: "deliberately misleading"
How, exactly?
His laptop is perfectly capable of running Vista. His laptop is not capable of running Aero, which is nothing more than flashy fancy eye-candy. Turning Aero off doesn't lose you any actual features, just glitter and glamor (which slows things down anyway).
If the sticker said "Aero Capable" he'd be right. But it didn't -- it said "Vista Capable," and his laptop is indeed capable of running Vista. Fin.
Don't feel bad, you aren't missing all that much with Vista. Besides with a Intel Pentium M 753 (1.2GHz)and 512 of RAM you are going to want to be as streamlined as possible. You did get hosed with the marketing but on the other hand everybody knows that each new Microsoft OS is increasingly obese. I would think you would have heard about all the performance issues Vista has and realized your PC is at the bottom of the performance barrel. I'll let you come over at oogle my transparent windows if you want - the thrill dies fast.
Just a minute... somebody WANTS to upgrade to Vista??? That's a new one. Everything I have seen about Vista -- driver incompatibilities, slower than geologic time, etc -- makes me wonder if not going to Vista is really more of a blessing in disguise? Just a thought.
I had a similar issue years ago with Tyan and their Tomcat motherboards. They listed USB as 'optional'. I ordered my mb with it and when it came time to start using it (usb was brand new at the time) it didnt work on my stepping of the Intel chipset on the MB. Tyan made a bunch of excuses about it being a 'manufacturing option' to have the USB and the order I placed (despite coming with the USB header) didnt include USB functionality. After much screaming online for months getting other roused to the cause they eventually offered to send me an updated board if I would just shut up. I turned them down and a friend who owned a shop sent me one instead.
So those who feel slighted, do what you feel it right!
capable in my mind doesnt seem like a real strong positive word. You wouldn't hire someone who is just capable of roofing to put a roof on your house. It is what it is. This guy needs to cool out and do his research. The sticker would have said "Makes Vista its bitch" if the PC was good enough to do so.
His Vaio must be utter crap. I'm running Vista Home Premium with Aero fully enabled on a 3 year old Dell Inspiron 6000. Pentium M 1.6, 2gb of RAM, crappy 128mb ATI video card, etc. Basic system, runs Vista without issue.
also vista haters - Take it somewhere else. This isn't about vista. It's about marketing and scamming.
Misleading. It doesn't say "Vista capable, but only partly so."
@Bladefist: you mean, like windows Me 2? er...i mean vista?
if he's upset about the lack of Aero, i can attest its one of the most useless things ive ever seen. my new dell, far more than capable of running vista premium (and came with it from dell), has yet to see me anything that is advantageous over xp. i miss xp.
so i am dual booting ubuntu and just using it instead, until a decent service pack comes out.
Seriously. But while we're stirring the vista hate pot, I'd like to point out it was more secure than OSX during the first few months post-release.
If these people had looked at the computer BESIDE the one they bought, they would have seen the other sticker (Vista ready) and perhaps would have seen the difference. That, or they should have educated themselves as to the requirements of the "better" versions of vista with the fancy graphics.
To me, "capable" does NOT mean "able." Capable has the connotation, as bladefist said, of not being 100% able. I think the stickers were very clear.
@Bladefist: The two issues aren't mutually exclusive. For all the specs and features, an OS should be ultimately be judged for the user experience. Marketing certainly is a small, but not insignificant part of the user experience, in that it sets up expectations for the user experience.
When a simple "Vista compatible" sticker requires qualifiers, or you have to nitpick the diffeerence between "capable" and "able", then the user experience is off to a bad start.
It comes down to one of Microsoft's (and its apologists') major problems, that they think more features and bigger specs are necessarily better. So they spend 7 years developing a bloated OS that's not fully operational on computers that are less than a year old. Seriously, when you have to check to see if an apparently "compatible" computer meets minimum requirements, the OS might be a bit overloaded.
If they'd just focus on creating an OS that's self-intuitive and secure, then every 12 to 18 months, they'd be able to release a new OS that is a little more efficient and has a couple of new useful features, and people would happily pay $100 to $150 each time around.
Here is a "New Idea"...
WORLDWIDE TESTS
Are you smart enough to own a computer??? This isn't the first time this has happened, and really, as a computer tech, I do blame the users. The number of times I have to tell a client they wasted 2, 3, sometimes $4000 on a useless device because "it said it could do this"...
DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BUY, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS YOU'RE BUYING!!!
If everyone put as much thought into purchasing a computer (or any other big ticket item, a car for example) as they do to their regular shopping decisions, a lot of these problems would go away.
Scratch that, I just realised that they are making the same research efforts as their normal shopping decisions.
Vista isn't capable of doing crap really. What a useless piece of OS. What were they thinking? Let's make a PC for mickeymouse?
@spinachdip: hmm what OS did you attempt to describe? oh apple. oh well, you + me gives consumerist balance between pc/mac.
Within 1.5 weeks of OS X Leopard being released, and the same week that my school's store has Leopard-configured laptops in-stock, I bought a bottom-of-the-line MacBook for $999. Half the price of the LW's laptop.
I feel cheated since I didn't need a slide-rule to discern which flavors (business, consumer, basic, ultimate) to pay extra for. Feel doubly cheated since there was no "Leopard Capable!" sticker on the box. Or "Compatible". Or "Ready".
Or stickers for "Business Compatible", "Works for Business", "Ready for Business", "Consumer Compatible", "Works for Consumer", "Ready for Consumer", "Basic Compatible", "Works for Basic", "Ready for Basic", "Ultimate Compatible", "Works for Ultimate" or pant gasp pant "Ready for Ultimate".
Just booted up my bottom-of-the-line, under-$1,000 laptop in and everything - everything worked out of the box.
Damn you, Apple. Damn you!!
@m4nea:
The point of a sticker is to convey a message in a simple, easy to understand way. It's not meant to be a riddle or a clue in a scavenger hunt. If understanding a sticker requires you to look at *other* stickers, or differentiate between "able" and "capable", then I say the sticker's doing a pretty shitty job.
@vaxman:
I'm all for consumers educating themselves, but when companies seemingly go out of their way to overpromise and mislead, it's hard to blame the consumers. Again, the point of marketing should be to simplify the message, and the PC industry for the most part does the exact opposite.
Reminds me of the time I bought a G3 tower because I was assured that it would run Apple's next-generation OS when it was finally released. It did run MacOS X. Slowly. And MacOS X was pretty half-baked until a few point revisions came out.
I built myself a PC and switched to Windows.
@m4nea: If you'd RTFA, you'd see that ALL of the computers had stickers that proclaimed the machine "Vista Capable". The stickers that differed, namely the "Vista Certified" and "Works with Vista" stickers, were on the packaging only. Looking at the computer beside the one you are going to buy nets you nothing, because they have the same sticker on the PC. In order to discern the difference, the shopper would have to compare the packaging for the two computers, and I don't know when you last shopped for a computer in a retail store, but most stores don't just stick computers on the shelves for customers to toss into their shopping cart, they keep them stocked out of the way.
In other words, the customer won't even see the "Works with Vista" or "Vista Certified" sticker until they have committed to buy a PC, and are unlikely to see the two stickers side by side unless they are either a) informed ahead of time, or b) purchasing two sufficiently different PCs at the same time (and are observant enough to notice the differences in a 1x1 square on a large box).
I'm all for pinning blame on stupid consumers when it's appropriate, but in this case, MS has gone out of its way to confuse customers with needlessly and deceptively vague and arcane branding.
The company I work for doesn't even recommend Vista, where waitin' for the new version, Vista Personal Operating System or Vista POS. (I completely stole that joke, but it's the best one I have seen.) The part about not recommending Vista is true, we have told all our cust. to wait at least a year.
@spinachdip: The automobile industry is kinda the same thing (yeah, i know, everyone knows how to work a car, vs a computer but...) Everyone can go buy a car, no matter how luxurious it is, or how much of a POS car it is (ahh, everyone's first POS car... the stories, the stories...) but at the end of the day, you can't use it unless you can pass the test and get the license.
Think about it... you need a license to prove that you are educated enough (maybe not formally educated, but you know what you're doing) to use a computer... Maybe instead of clicking yes to everything that pops up on the screen and wondering why your computer suddenly gets infected with 20 viruses (which are now only going to spread to other people), you're trained to know that a RED STOP SIGN on your screen means "No No, you must stop and think" and the virus never gets to make it onto your PC in the first place.
In the case of vista, Microsoft did put out lots of marketing as to what each version of vista could do. While they did not specify that vista capable meant may not run the highest version of vista, they shouldn't have to. One of the reasons for multiple Vista versions was because users complained that the current lineup of windows was to restrictive. why buy XP Home when it's a piece of crap, but why spend an extra 100 to 150 on pro that comes with features you don't need or want... Tons of marketing and education to resellers was provided as to the different versions, who they were intended for and what hardware platforms would be expected to operate at running the different versions.
I'm starting to ramble i think, but basically, I don't blame microsoft for this. I blame the resellers and users. Resellers who did not give correct information to the users buying the product from them (the same people (users) that didn't do any reading on the matter before hand when the material was provided), then passing the buck on to microsoft to deal with the backlash.
"Was Microsoft being deliberately misleading, or are they just incompetent?"
They're at the point where the 109th tentacle doesn't know what the 30th appendage is up to, and they want total control over what they sell to home and business users. In other words, the decision to do this was a result of the feature creep that is Vista, and somewhat is a result of the empire preservation mentality. Hence the "edition" scheme, which Joe Average can't make heads or tails of.
@trai_dep: Everything worked out of the box...except for 85% of the software on the market. Oops!
Ok, ok, sorry. Don't want this to get into a mac/win fight.
C'mon Bill. Just kill it and bury it next to B.O.B. and Windows ME
Leopard did/does have problems. But Apple has already released fixes, haven't seen the SP for Vista yet and probably won't for another 6-8 months.
Well, gee, I like my Vista machine, but it has a 5200+ AMD 64x2 processor and 3 GB of RAM.
I would NEVER think about putting Vista on my 1.73 gHz Pentium M, 1 GB RAM laptop. The thing's already excruciatingly slow in XP. I can't imagine what it'd be like in Vista.
@ptkdude: Ditto.
Nothing about the definition implies that capable means 85% able instead of 100% and I've heard the word used both ways.
Any average Joe that doesn't know about the different stickers isn't going to assume 85%. They're going to assume 100%.
Yes, people should research their computer purchases. But if the thing has a sticker saying it's capable of running Vista are you really going to ask the store employee, "Hey, will this thing run Vista?"
deliberately misleading