Microsoft Lowered Vista Bar for Intel

By Geoff Duncan
February 28, 2008

Email messages between Microsoft executives seems to indicate Microsoft lowered Vista's hardware requirements so Intel could keep selling low-end chipsets.

Internal Microsoft email messages unsealed by a federal judge as part of the "Vista Capable" class action lawsuit reveal considerable trepidation even amongst Microsoft's high-level executives about how well Vista would fare on then-current systems. The messages also include seemingly plain admissions that Microsoft capitulated to Intel and lowered hardware requirements for Windows Vista so Intel could keep selling chipsets that, otherwise, would have had no future under Vista.

"In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded," wrote Microsoft executive John Klakman in February 2007. Intel's 915 graphic chipset does not support Vista's "Aero" interface; however, a large number of systems on sale bth prior to and as of Vista's release ...

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