Senior executives inside the software maker questioned a decision to lower hardware specs for Vista PCs, e-mails show. By Paul McDougall Former Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin called the company's decision to allow PC manufacturers to label machines...

Microsoft played dirty two years ago in its “Vista Capable” campaign, by lowering the requirements for computers able to run Vista, and leading consumers into believing some PCs were Vista ready when they actually weren’t.

According to new court documents, Microsoft agreed to place the Vista Capable logo on Intel 915 chipsets, although in reality their performance was nowhere near Vista’s real requirements. According to e-mails exchanged between Intel and Microsoft CEOs and unveiled by the court, Intel’s Paul Otellini thanked Will Poole for the commitment to embrace 915 chipsets.

While other computer makers also seemed happy about Microsoft’s sudden decision, HP stated clearly that after making all the extra investments in Windows Display Drive Model (WDDM)-compliant chipsets, dropping the WDDM requirements was “totally unacceptable.”

HP accused Microsoft to have “bowed to pressure from a partner who would have been embarrassed in the April timeframe,” obviously making things easier for computer makers who would have been left with a lot of Vista-unready PCs.

Seeing all the e-mails, we noticed that Microsoft started going around the bush with what a truly Vista ready computer was, as opposed to computers with no WDDM, but still ”capable” of running Vista (without all the features of course).

That gave Intel some extra time to...
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