MICROSOFT KNEW VISTA HAD COMPATIBILITY PROBLEMS

CNET - As happens every year or so, some juicy Microsoft e-mails have surfaced as part of litigation that the software maker is party to. In this case, Microsoft is being sued over a program in 2006 that labeled some PCs as Windows Vista Capable ahead of the products mainstream release in January 2007. As part of the discovery process, a number of e-mails have emerged with Microsoft executives discussing various problems with Vista as it came to market.

In one e-mail, Steven Sinofsky writes to Steve Ballmer that three factors were to blame for early Vista challenges. First off, he said, "No one really believed we would ever ship so they didn't start the work until very late in 2006." He added that his Brother home printer didn't have drivers until after Vista's commercial launch.

Secondly, he said, major changes to the way Vista handles audio and video caused headaches, particularly for those upgrading from XP. Finally, he said, many Windows XP drivers didn't really work under Vista. "This is across the board for printers, scanners, wan, accessories (fingerprint readers, smartcards, tv tuners), and so on," Sinofsky wrote. "This category is due to the fact that many of the associated applets don't run within the constraints of the security model or the new video/audio driver models."

Sinofsky noted that Microsoft executive Orlando Ayala had stuck with XP because there was no Vista driver for his Verizon mobile wireless card. . . .