Pushing Vista Basic Edition on Christmas Shoppers

“Will retailers and OEMs put a little Vista coal in this year’s holiday stocking? Windows Home Basic and integrated graphics SKUs could lead to surprises—as in uh-ohs, not wows—for some holiday shoppers”

“…OEMs and retailers operate under the presumption that “the mainstream consumer doesn’t need huge graphic capabilities, especially since so many notebooks tend to be the second or third PC in the house,” Baker said. “The idea is that people who want that higher level of graphics are willing to pay more for it.”

That’s a nice concept in theory, but a tough sell for consumers expecting that at certain price points the computer will have sufficient power to run Windows Vista. Consumers are more used to the ubiquitous one-size-fits-all model. “

“…For holiday 2007, the Vista experience depends more on OEMs and retailers than Microsoft, although the company could be faulted for ever wasting development resources on Windows Basic. But who will get the blame, if coal comes in the holiday stocking? The OEM elves, or Microsoft Santa Claus?” Read the full article on Microsoft-Watch.Com