Microsoft's top lawyer happy with Vista Ready info

Microsoft Corp.'s top lawyer said Thursday that he is happy with the information the company provided about its Vista operating system, and its compatibility with existing PCs, ahead of the software's launch in January this year.

Last week, a class-action lawsuit was brought against the software maker claiming it unfairly labeled some PCs "Windows Vista Capable" when they could only run the most basic version of the operating system and not support more advanced versions that offer some of the most heavily-promoted features such as media center and advanced graphics.

"I actually don't think there have been a lot of problems that consumers have encountered although I think there are a few lawyers and law firms that have pursued an action that are presenting such a picture," said Brad Smith, a senior vice president at Microsoft and the company's general counsel, during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.

"I actually feel good about the information that we provided," he said.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleges that "a large number" of PCs that sported "Vista Capable" labels were only capable of running the Home Basic version of Vista.

Smith disputed that claim.

"Most of the PCs are able to run the kinds of versions like our home premium version that have virtually all of the bells and whistles," he said. "Even the machines that are not able to run something like Home Premium are able to run a version that provides many if not most of the major advances that are important to consumers."

There is fairly wide gap between PCs that are "Vista Capable" versus those that are "Premium Ready," according to information on Microsoft's Web site.

The former requires a PC with a processor running at a clock speed of 800MHz or faster, 512M bytes of memory, and a DirectX 9-capable graphics processor. The latter calls for at least a 32-bit or 64-bit processor running at 1GHz, 1G byte of memory, DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM (Windows display driver model) driver, 128M bytes of graphics memory, and other requirements like a 40G-byte hard drive, DVD-ROM drive and Internet access.

The lawsuit seeks class action status and says the size of the class likely exceeds 10,000 people.