Mailbag: Vista Capable (But Not Really), IE 8 Thoughts
Fred thinks the whole "Vista Capable" sticker debacle is a matter
of deception by omission:
So the sticker on the machine reads "Vista Capable." That tells
me the machine can run Vista. Doesn't say how well, though. And it doesn't
tell me Vista can run on the machine, either, without perhaps limping badly.
This is no different from the prior "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP"
stickers, such as the one HP affixed to my 256MB RAM Pavilion that really
needed a RAM upgrade to 1GB to run XP without constant HD swapping.
Typical modern-day, misleading advertising. It's the truth, yes, but
not the WHOLE truth. But I'd put the lion's share of the blame on the OEM,
not on MS. After all, MS didn't FORCE the OEM to affix that sticker.
-Fred
And Paul responds to Floyd's
letter last week, which suggested that it wasn't "average" users
who were confused by the stickers, but users that should've known better:
Floyd makes good points but forgets that these were computers bought
before Vista had been released. So the moms and pops that bought these had
not been told by the seller or the sticker that there would be different versions.
In hindsight, it is easy to see but remember this was before Vista's release.
-Paul
IE 8's release candidate is scheduled
for early 2009, but Liza's been testing out the beta for a while now. So
far, so good:
I've been running the IE 8 beta 2 for a month or two now, and I like
it a lot better than IE 7. Microsoft finally added my favorite Firefox feature:
the ability to reopen an accidentally closed tab. Firefox still does it better,
IMHO (that and many other things -- NoScript add-on, anyone?), but IE 8 is
a step in the right direction.
-Liza
Share your thoughts with us! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on December 01, 2008