When we learned Windows Vista would come in three consumer editions, we were surprised: wasn't two enough? New evidence supports the possibility that the birth of the most controversial of these—Windows Vista Home Basic—was rooted in an attempt to sell aging hardware and survive yet another holiday season without a new release of Windows. While this remains just a hypothesis for now, it is clear that Microsoft made compromises to what it considered the minimum specifications for full Vista support in order to accommodate Intel.

Ars has covered the progress of the "Windows Vista Capable" lawsuit several times since it was filed in April 2007. The lawsuit has recently been given the green light as a class action. At issue is what customers had a right to expect from a so-called "Vista Capable" system.

Despite its defense of the Vista Capable program, Redmond, it seems, had doubts. A number of internal Microsoft e-mails that pertain to the case have recently been unsealed by court order, and they paint a picture of a company divided.

Microsoft's stated goal for Windows Vista was to "raise the bar" for an OS experience. That's a lofty goal, but it doesn't necessarily track well with OEM sales targets and price points. By August of 2005, Microsoft knew what hardware specs would be required for a system to qualify for a "Vista Ready" label. According to the company's projections, however, only 20 to 30 percent of the systems on the market would qualify as Vista Ready by the spring of 2006.

This low qualification rate was a significant source of worry for OEMs. Both Microsoft and its various partners were concerned that announcing Vista in the early part of 2006 could create a stall in the PC market as buyers held off on purchases until the new OS was available. The "Vista Ready" campaign was meant to prevent or lessen the impact of such a stall, just as the "XP Ready" campaign did in the murky past of 2000. But with Vista there was a difference: it seems that everyone knew that Vista was delayed, and Microsoft wasn't able to pull off a pre-holiday 2006 launch for its consumer versions. The end result was that Microsoft launched Vista for business in late 2006, but the holiday shopping season would come and go without Vista being on the retail scene. This half-launch terrified OEMs and Microsoft. The marketing campaign was thus even more important than one might normally expect.

To make matters more complex, Microsoft had created a new video driver model for its new operating system and required any laptop with a "Vista Ready" sticker to include an integrated graphics module capable of supporting WVDDM (Windows Vista Device Driver Model) and all the advanced graphical features of Aero, including Aero Glass and Flip 3D. Windows Vista Capable, meanwhile, was meant to apply to systems that could run Windows Vista without all the advanced graphical features. Crucially, however, as originally defined, a "Windows Vista Capable" system was a system that used a WVDDM-compatible video solution.

A trail of e-mail

The distinction is nontrivial. The dominant chipset (mobile and desktop) in mid-2005 was Intel's 915, which didn't support WVDDM. Intel had a WVDDM-compliant solution on the market in the form of the 945 chipset, but it was significantly more expensive than the 915 and available in lower quantities. This presented something of a problem for OEMs who wanted to market their systems as "Vista Capable." HP, in particular, had concerns in this regard. A January 31, 2006, e-mail from Mike Ybarra, Microsoft director of product management, demonstrates:

I was surprised to learn of the changes to the Windows Capable program (no WDDM requirement now). In our August 7x7 with

HP you both committed to HP that we would not move off the WDDM requirement and HP made significant product roadmap changes to

support graphics for the full Vista experience. Ramano specifically told Jim that HP will invest in graphics if MS would give him

100% assurance that we would not budge for Intel. This goes beyond desktop for HP as their mobile guys moved off 915 early for the

same reasons.

The bundled e-mails contain additional references and documentation of Microsoft's plans to require WVDDM support for any Vista Capable products, but the company's resolve not to waver on this requirement had melted away by January 2006, due to apparent pressure from Intel. None of the available documents cover any discussions between the two companies, but Intel evidently saw the 915's ineligibility as a threat to its sales in 2006. Sometime in late January, 2006, Microsoft decided to redefine "Vista Capable." This time, the company recommended a WVDDM driver, but didn't require one. The change was controversial. It also came just weeks before Microsoft announced the SKUs for Windows Vista.

Jim Allchin (then co-president of Microsoft's Platform Products and Services Group) was decidedly unhappy with this development, partly because it threw HP under a bus. He wrote: "We really botched this. I was not involved in this decision process and I will support it because I trust you thinking through the logic. BUT, you guys have to do a better job with our customers than what was shown here. This was especially true because you put me out on a limb making a commitment. This is not ok."

Ybarra expressed his own discontent in stronger terms in an e-mail to Allchin, saying: "We are caving to Intel. We worked hard the last 18 months to drive the UI experience, and we are giving this up. The OEMs are behind us here, we have the support, we need to drive this experience on today's hardware. We are really burning HP... We are allowing Intel to drive our consumer experience."

Proof of Intel's involvement rests on more than Ybarra's e-mails. On February 26, 2007, general manager John Kalkman sent an e-mail discussing the changes to the "Vista Capable" definition. "In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded. This in turn did two things: 1. Decreased focus of OEM's planning and shipping higher end graphics for Vista ready programs and 2. Reduced the focus by IHV's to ready great WHQL qualified drivers. We can see this today with Intel's inability to ship a compelling full featured 945 graphics driver for Windows Vista."

Microsoft's e-mails are a veritable goldmine of interesting information; Intel's influence on the OS qualification process is only one example. In this particular case, Microsoft's plans to create a compelling next-generation graphic interface were partially blocked by available and shipping hardware, and partially by its own decision to "help Intel make their quarterly earnings." Most interesting of all, however, is the degree of back-and-forth discussion that went on at the software giant. Those accustomed to viewing Microsoft as a monolith might be surprised at the number of dissenting voices, and at the number of people who cited a desire to "do the right thing" by the company's customers.

Now it appears as though a court will decide that issue. More on this story as it unfolds...