It’s time to review what’s new with Windows Vista in the news! First up is the $1,632 copy of Windows Vista that’s just insane. Bill ordered Vista online and each time he tried to pay it gave him an error screen and he had to go back. Each time he went back and tried again it billed him $233. Months later he still doesn’t have all his money back - and the Vista Ultimate Upgrade license he was charged for wasn’t even the one he ordered! Oh - did I mention he was an IT manager at a large university? Unbelieveable.

Did Microsoft lie about “Vista Capable” machines being able to upgrade from XP?

When I was reading this article today in Bit-Tech I suddenly remembered the problems that people had with their “Vista Capable” systems when Vista first came out. Apparently most of those systems were barely capable of running “Vista Basic” and most didn’t hard the processor or memory to run Aero, etc. So, of course there’s a “clasa action” suit against MS for it. The funny thing about it this time is that the lawyer seems to have done some pretty good (email) discovery, because he dug out some awesome things written in internal emails by Microsoft employees the public never heard about, like such gems as:

“Even a piece of junk will qualify”

“You guys have to do a better job with our customers”

I PERSONALLY got burnt. … Are we seeing this from a lot of customers? … I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine.

Now that’s why they say to watch what you type in an email!

If that isn’t enough in the original article Joseph Tartakoff was there first hand and heard during the court testimony that “Another e-mail chain presented in court showed that Wal-Mart was concerned about the impact the campaign could have, and Tilden hinted that other retailers had similar concerns.” So, even companies (selling systems with the “Vista Capable” sticker) were concerned about customer education (of what they were buying). Is all this surprising? I certainly don’t think so…

According to Betanews there are only 104 applications certified to run on Windows Vista. That’s according to this article on the Microsoft web site as of March 2, 2007.

The companies listed don’t even include McAfee, Symantec, or Adobe (yet), and Microsoft is even offering up to $1,000 to assist companies in getting their software certified. That is clearly pitiful. No wonder there are so many programs with problems once installed under Windows Vista.