Just about anything can run Vista Home Basic.
It takes a considerably more powerful computer to run the more advanced versions.
Computer manufacturers and vendors, which are who actually labeled the computers as Vista compatible, had access to vista so that they could test compatibility on their systems before claiming that they were "Vista compatible.
So why are consumers suing Microsoft rather than the computer vendors? The bought the "Vista Compatible" computers from those vendors, not from Microsoft.
If it runs Vista Home Basic, then it is Vista Compatible. If you want to run the top end, latest software and hardware, you need a more powerful computer. If you don't know enough to figure that out, then you should buy a computer from a reputable vendor that will tell you what you need to do what you want, and stand behind their product and accept a return if they don't deliver what they promise.
In my opinion Vista still has a long way to go before I would bother wasting my money on it. It has some interesting features, but XP suits my needs well enough for any purpose that Vista might suit them.
OEMs and customers themselves have some responsibility to be less dense than a rock. Minimum system requirements have never meant that if you have that system it will run that software well, and with all the features enabled.
Greedy trial lawyers have gotten way out of control under our screwed up court system.
DING, DING, DING, DING!
The Free Republic understatement of the day!
You should see what they've done to the General Aviation and Biomedical industries.....
Any machine capable of running full-boat Vista will still run more quickly and responsively with XP or Windows 2003 on it. Vista is just a bloated, resource-intensive dog.
I’m not a Microsoft fan boy, but I agree with your assessment of this lawsuit.
“OEMs and customers themselves have some responsibility to be less dense than a rock. Minimum system requirements have never meant that if you have that system it will run that software well, and with all the features enabled.
Greedy trial lawyers have gotten way out of control under our screwed up court system.”
I have Win XP running on an Athlon 64 box I put together and I won’t go to Vista. I have multi boot and can do XP 32; XP 64 and Ubuntu. I do XP 32 most often as my apps that I use most are on that partition.
I have found Vista to be rather ho-hum. The added features are no great thing. They are much ado about nothing, including the security. I still get spyware in my testing, and I have had three naturally infected Vista boxen cross my bench so far- All that with UAC and all other safety features turned on.
Likewise, While everyone seem to be howling at the moon about major troubles, I have not found many problems either. A few peripherals needing driver updates, a few networking issues, particularly with wireless connections, but no really spectacular failures whatsoever.
My biggest impression is one of irritation, particularly wrt silly rearrangements of directory structures, renaming of control panel items, and useless changes to common tasks and operations designed to be more intuitive, I suppose, but succeeding only as a sure way to piss me off, and causing a lot more help desk type calls that seriously eat up my time.
There's a series of M$ internal emails over on slashdot that clarifies some of this.
Apparently. M$ required vendors to use these stickers.
Except a system with an Intel 915 chipset.
So why are consumers suing Microsoft rather than the computer vendors? The bought the "Vista Compatible" computers from those vendors, not from Microsoft.
Because Microsoft Certification Laboratories certified them as Vista Compatible even though they knew they weren't. That's why.
"Microsoft executive John Kalkman wrote: 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. ...."
If you read the letters, you see even Microsoft people are saying they got screwed by “Vista Capable.”