Home Basic shouldn't have been labeled Vista

I'm sure the consumers will finally get the message and not buy MS products...

So, Microsoft made profit from a product that was installed on OEM rigs and some of the OEM's complained about what?

Is all of this Vista bashing really in the better interest of the consumer? It's no secret now that Microsoft really wants to move on and forget about the whole MESS. So, if we drum up enough folks bought into the most basic version of the OS then we can start a class action.
How does it really matter WHAT the lowest version of WIndows is called. If the proudct has the words BASIC in it, then some smart shopping needs to be put on the shoulders of the consumer. I mean really people - JUST becuase it says it's a fat free sandwhich, doens't mean if you eat 50 of them you won't gain weight - right?
So why can't it be presumed that the OS labeled with BASIC won't have some sort of limited functionality?
But hey, whatever. Let some up and coming law firm stick it to Microsoft so that Microsoft can then go on to recoup some of losses by upping the pice of its next desktop and server operating system. So who losses again? Oh yeagh, the consumer.

After a summer of paying The Man At the Pump FAR more than we should have, I guess IT compaines are just fair game for the wrath right? After all, its becuase Microsoft made a Vista Home Basic that Americans were paying $5.00 per gallon right? So they will pay - oh yes. they should pay.

"Vole adds that since the crippled version is its own software, it should be able to call it whatever it wants, and charge whatever it wants"

that is exactly right.

Who says Vista has to have Aero UI?? should NVidia be sued too because its M9500 is the same as M8600? when users "should" expect M9000 series to be signicantly superior than older generation?

I agree that MS shouldnt have lowered the minimum spec in the whole HP vs other OEM debacle, but for this one, i think some people are just picking bones in an egg.

Whatever the 12 dumbest Americans I can find(probably 12 who don't own computers to make sure they unbiased) will decide what is right and what is wrong.

Windows NT 6.0 build 6000 was Vista Ultimate. Home Basic was Windows NT 6.0 build 6000.

Home Basic is full-on Vista with Aero and a few services turned off (which you can get running in home basic with a few tweaks). That's all.

It ran like crap not because it "wasn't Vista" but because it WAS Vista. On hardware which couldn't run Vista.

Does the OS run? Yes? Then the computer is "Vista capable." End of story. There is no "user experience" guarantee for any of the versions of Vista. If those chumps were expecting something different they should've done a little more research before making their purchase. The information about the differences between the versions is not hidden. It's almost surprising that they had expectations *at all* when they didn't even do some research beforehand.

I am glad someone is taking this up with MS. Frankly the core issue for all of us is that MS is creating artificial price points to extract maximum cashola from the public (i.e. monopolistic pricing). We can all thank Bush for letting MS off of the hook. Anyway, the point is that if MS weren't a monopoly we would see two full-featured products, a client and a server (I assume I don't have to explain the economics of software publishing to justify this argument), instead of a mass of artificially hobbled products at lousy prices.

Woopty F8cking doo. They can name their OS whatever they damned well please. Vista Basic IS Vista. It runs on the same kernel and requires the same drivers; etc. These people are just pissing and moaning because they want the features that Home Premium & Ultimate have; but they don't want to pay extra for them. You pay less, you get less - and it's perfectly fair, end of story.

Windows Vista running on a minimum-spec machine is still MUCH faster than Windows XP used to run on a minimum spec machine. Don't believe me? Boot up XP on a Pentium Pro with 64mb of ram; and then boot up a Vista machine with an 800mhz cpu and 512mb of ram. The XP one WILL take longer and be much slower.

I had Vista Business on my Fujitsu U810 (800mhz cpu, 1gb ram) for about a month - it wasn't nearly as bad performancewise as you might think.

Again, a case of people complaining because they want something for nothing.

"We can all thank Bush for letting MS off of the hook."

UGH.

Right, because a president is TOTALLY responsible for how a company markets and develops their products, amirite?

This is getting absolutely ridiculous. What a nice, convenient scapegoat for people not doing their homework enough to make an INTELLIGENT choice when purchasing something. Last I saw, no one was holding a gun to someone's head forcing them to buy a computer with Vista Basic on it, not now, not back when Vista launched. There were options back then as well as now. Don't like Vista Basic? Get a more full-featured version of Vista, stick with XP if you can, or buy an Apple product. What this really amounts to is people wanting to take the cheapest route to something possible and then screaming when it (surprise surprise) doesn't cure cancer.

And really.....blaming the former president for it? Good grief. This obsession over Bush has got to stop. He and his administration is gone (thank goodness), let's focus on how to correct the screw ups and become smarter so that sort of thing is less likely to happen in the future. This dead horse has already been beaten so much it's already been bottled and on the way to classrooms to be used in craft projects (glue). While it is good to remember what happened in history so it isn't repeated, it's incredibly obvious what went wrong and where. Why the need to constantly flog it, remaining stuck in the past when all that energy could be put to a much MUCH better use in working to correct past mistakes? Plus, a little personal responsibility would be nice too, but I know that's just way too much to ask people to actually do.

""We can all thank Bush for letting MS off of the hook." UGH. Right, because a president is TOTALLY responsible for how a company markets and develops their products, amirite?"

LOL. Seems that some of us have very short memories. Think back 8 years to the toothless resolution of the MS antitrust trial.

There is nothing wrong with Visa basic.

It runs great and runs all Vista programs, it just lacks some of the media center features in Home Premium version and it lacks the new GUI.

So, what, it was loaded on cheap PCs for cheap ass customers.

Why would you go buy the crappy version of VISA and complain about it?

Obviously if you bought a pc with the crappy version of vista, it is probably a cheap pc, and cheap pcs are not powerful. They don't do gaming, media stuff properly etc. You get what you pay for, if a customer decides to cheap out, it is their fault!!!!!!!!.

Laptops under $900 are usually crappy (integrated graphics, bad for games etc), good laptops are always $1200 and up. With laptops you get what you pay for, its always been that way.

With desktop computers its a different story, at least you can upgrade the video card and ram easily.

laptops that have VISTA basic on them, you know they are a basic computer. Also computers with basic on them were mostly targeted at cheap consumers, or at business with a budget.

Vista basic is like the Windows XP home except no media center.

So Vista Basic runs are programs made for Vista, so compatibility is the same.

I always buy the the: Pro, premium or Ultimate version of the OS, I don't cheap out.

Its actually good Microsoft offered a few different versions of Vista. So it helps me to sell computers at different price points to better suit the customers needs.

About the Intel thing with the GUI? well the intel drivers fix that problem. And all computers if you just upgrade the ram to 2GB Vista run great! Vista premium new GUI will only work properly on new grafx cards (integrated or external) or good video cards.

So once again, if you buy crap you get crap. All the consumers fault for buying crap and/or the sales guy for pushing it.

Anyways here another way of putting it. Consumers were happy with XP, so what is wrong with Home basic? Xp and Home Basic have both the same system requirements, except Vista basic has better security. Both have similar GUI. So how can you complain? Not everyone needs the new eye candy, as they lived without it in XP. So I find them both similar.

What’s next; people are going to sue over the fact that XP never had nice eye candy like Vista? And the funny thing is that most people avoid vista and stick with XP. hmmmm I love XP and im bitching I cant run VISTA but hey I would never run VISTA because I have Xp ;). Xp still outsells vista.

And are People are going to start to sue for the fact that their cheap pc can't run games when its VISTA compatable? People need to go and spend money...... Money gets you what you want...

People can be such Hippocrates

I love all the people who come and post pro-microsoft rubbish on here. It's so obvious that you are either getting paid or have no life. Why would anyone take their personal time to defend a multi-billion dollar company? You don't need to do their marketing for them, idiots!

What the pro-MS pundits are conveniently omitting to mention is that all the MS marketing of Vista promoted things like Aero etc.

Then when customers bought a "Vista capable" computer, they discovered that it couldn't do these features (those people saying "Home Basic *can* do Aero" miss the point that the *computer* can't do it!).

It's called "bait and switch" - users bought a product because the marketing led them to believe it could do things, and then they discovered it couldn't. Under the UK "Sale of Goods Act", we're entitled to take stuff like that back to the shop and demand a refund!

Oh - and as for MS wanting to move on and forget it, of course they do! Just like having destroyed Netscape, Lotus, WordPerfect they were so keen to move on so they could benefit from their illegal actions without having to pay for their knee-capping of the opposition...

Cheers,
Wol

You guys are alright. I like you guys.

I love vista its the best thing ive ever seen, i cant believe the hate, basic is basic, but basic is also basically pretty brilliant, don't you just love the word brilliant. But seriously home vista basic is as pretty as a pack of llamas raiding a 24/7 garage using only sharpened choc ices as weapons. The graphics are amazing on vista basic if your monitor is really small you can see all the pixels that made up vista.

I say love the pixels and forget the hate, think of all the pixels that made up vista and someone put them all there, and you complain, have you ever made an operating system out of pixels! Its damn hard!

Hasta la Vista Babeh

Wol, you seem to be missing a point, you also seem to be confusing US and UK law (Bait and Switch is a US term).

When you see a car advert on the TV, they always show the flashiest, most expensive, performance version, with print at the bottom of the screen saying which version is featured.

I seem to remember something similar regardign the Aero interface on Vista adverts.

Similarly, should you actually go and buy the car you saw in the flashy advert, you will have tried it/done research to find out the differences between what you saw and what you will get.

Is it, therefore, MS's fault if users blindly buy something without any concept of what they actually bought ?

Personally, I don't buy anything in the 3 figure and up category without having some idea of what I will actually get (I may do so in the £10-£20 category), if people are so unconcerned about their expensive purchase, why is that MS's fault ?

I am in no way an apologist for MS, their business practices in many areas are, at best, dubious, they continually release sub-standard software and continually abuse a monopoly position. The problem here, is that the company is being lambasted for something that isn't their fault, when there are an awful lot of other things that they *should* be getting sued over.

The innards were Vista's so it IS Vista (and that was the main point of Vista, actually). Agreed that it was somewhat mismarketed, plus that Ms-Intel thing, but I'm not even a full on Windows user (Mac non-zealot here) and I think I got what they meant by Vista Home Basic quite clearly.

(All my Vista laptop DTV workstation friends are more than happy with Vista, anyway. Looking forward to Windows 7)

People are still buying business systems with Vista on them and "downgrading" to XP. Many business users have "legacy" software that will not operate under any form of Vista. I have several programmes that will not function under Vista in compatibility mode, but I need them to work every day. One is a small ADA95 based database programme written back in 1999. Vista chokes and crashes when I start this and I am running an AMD 64 Athlon X2 with 1 GB ram. I don't want or need the Aero or any of the new bells and whistles/"improvements" that MS has forced upon us. Even the home basic version is incompatible so XP is the last best hope for me. MS is stopping all support this summer and I will NOT rewrite my software because Vista will not be supported.