More emails have been released in the Vista Capable case this afternoon. Including more on the email exchanges between Microsoft’s Ballmer and Intel’s Otellini and the loosening of the ‘Vista Capable’ requirements. Microsoft senior vice president Will Poole e-mailed Ballmer:

Steve, following up on the call you took from Paul today, we have changed our program so that Intel’s current integrated parts qualify for ‘Vista Capable’ branding …

This change completely resolves their problem.

Also released were some emails regarding Best Buy’s CEO wanting to talk to Ballmer about Vista-related issues. One Microsoft executive described Best Buy as “whining.” while another was not too pleased, saying:

We feel BBY is being ridiculous in trying to escalate to Ballmer but it is their MO

Just in case there was any doubt that Microsoft wasn’t aware of ‘Vista Issues’ here’s a great email from Steven Sinofsky to Ballmer and ccing Bill Gates about issues with his Vista running laptop:

I still do not have a machine that is as reliable as XP for productivity use. I gave one presentation at Harvard this week where I just kept losing the signal to an external monitor which is a new driver model problem. I gave one at CMU where I spent 10 minutes trying to make sound come out of the external output jack which is a problem with Intel’s HD audio drivers.

And then we have board member Jon Shirley complaining to Ballmer about driver problems, to which Ballmer responded:

the drivers is painful i do not disagree but of course the real problem was we blew almost 2.5 of the 5 years we cannot do that again

Source: The Microsoft Blog