Newegg ruins Windows Vista

Windows Vista is suppose to be a fresh new start for Microsoft’s partners. The level of quality demanded from Vista-related marketing has been upped compared to previous Windows releases, with most partners complying to a higher standard of websites to showcase Vista. But one company decides to take Vista back to the stone age.

This is what you get when you type “Windows Vista” into the search box on Newegg.com.

Newegg's Windows Vista website

I wouldn’t be surprised if this mini-site was proposed, drafted, designed, published and signed-off solely by a intern. The whole website has been sliced and diced in Adobe ImageReady with CSS standards and accessibility thrown out the window.

Newegg also suggests to customers to disregard Microsoft’s system requirements for Newegg’s own specifications to sell more high-end hardware. “So go ahead and glance over what Microsoft suggests and then jump over to the hardware requirements that Newegg recommends.” Ridiculous system specifications include a 64-bit CPU, DirectX 10 graphics card and a 250GB hard drive. Sneaky.

Microsoft should keep a closer eye on what Frankenstein marketing mash-up some of their partners have created such as this. This site creates a pretty poor impression to customers about Windows Vista, and I wouldn’t doubt there are more like this.

16 insightful thoughts

  1. I wouldn’t throw them a stone. They’re an excellent company (I buy most of my hardware there) with good service. The webpage is not beautiful indeed, but honestly, I find the “official Vista website” ugly as well. It’s like Sarah Jessica Parker, I personally find her ugly as a broomstick, other people would disagree. So here, all in all, the webpage is ugly (and that’s subjective), but I do recognize its style as Vista-like. Try that, ask a few coworkers/friends. This crap page has indeed a Vista-like style to it…

    I agree with their specs however, Vista needs power, lots of power. I wouldn’t use Vista on Microsoft’s minimum specs… Would you? I mean, of course if you can’t spend the money, then yeah I guess you would have to. And if you can’t spend the money for Vista, you would have to go with something else as well. But that’s not the point. What are the minimum specs that you would run Vista on? I think Microsoft’s specs are a bit demagogic.

  2. dagh give me a break jack i have used pc’s at the minimum specs and it works fine about as good as xp if not better… up to a decent graphic card and tada its even better

  3. I’ve tried Vista on an Athlon XP 3200+ with 1GB of RAM, and I found pretty sluggy when compared to XP. I didn’t run precise tests, but it did take almost an hour to unzip a 100MB file (!) on Vista, while the same operation takes usually around 10 minutes on XP. Now, I bet there’s something wrong with Vista’s unzip code, but still. Also, with 1GB you can’t have many apps open without swapping all the time. Now, if you just have a web browser up, I guess you don’t care that much.

    A 250 GB hard drive costs about $70 nowadays, while a 40 GB one costs around $40. If you ask me, I’d recommend my friends to buy a 250 GB HD for any purpose, not just Vista… Buying a 40 GB hard drive is ludicrous, way to expensive ($ per GB).

    Also, a gig of RAM is about $90 today. Why would you want to see your $200 Vista swap virtual memory all the time to save a measly $80 in hardware? Vista uses around 500MB to 700MB on startup, that doesn’t leave you much to work with. But then again, I’m a developer, so maybe if you’re only browsing the web 99% of the time on your computer, what I say here is irrelevant…

  4. As far as I know, they are not allowed to use logos and artwork from Microsoft. So it would be better if they stopped it as soon as possible. It looks so terrible.

  5. I’m running Vista on a 1GHz 512MB RAM 4 year old HP tablet pc. Runs fine, about same as XP. Runs even better with ready boost.

  6. I wonder if the author of this article has every purchased anything from Newegg. Almost everybody I know considers Newegg to be the best place to shop for computer enthusiasts. If you know anything about computer hardware, then you’ll know that the recommend specs by Newegg are pretty much standard in order to really experience Vista (except for Basic). Is this considered Sneaky or just considered IGNORANCE from the author?

    I’m surprised that somebody this ignorant is allowed to publish on the web.
    I noticed in your profile that Long Zheng is “deathly afraid of technology”. Probably not the most qualified person to be writing an article on Vista.

  7. @Georgeous George: Shame, I know absolutely nothing about hardware or computers. I’m very afraid of technology. I should just stop writing.

  8. MS’s min requirement is ok if you only do one thing at once. Newegg’s an great place to shop for hardware, if you know nothing about hardware you wouldn’t end up there to buy stuff.

    I’m already tired of looking at all the eye candy in vista… wastes my computer resources fading in and out.

    The Newegg page isn’t that pretty and well done.. but then again.. if you look at Vista.. it’s not all ready for prime time… still lots of flaws.

    Besides.. MS should care more about making a better OS than nicer marketing… they got a monopoly on the market already… and people buying new computers are forced to use vista… not even an option (back then there was option for xp or win 2000)!

  9. I’m running Vista on an AthlonXP 2200+ (1.8 GHz for you Intel users out there) with a gig of RAM and an old GeForce4 video card and it runs amazingly well. I was shocked when I first installed it because I kept hearing people say things like “yoo n33d s s00per cr4y g1bs0n c0mput3r t0 u$E [email protected]$#@$Q#@’

  10. What’s wrong with slicing images from Photoshop and standard CSS for doing a website? Don’t just judge it by that…consider the work environment that so many changes and demands in last minute that makes this way faster and deliver the project on time.

  11. I know I’m a little late–but I don’t think their recommendations (aside from hard drive) are too ridiculous. In fact, I would put 2GB on the better and 4GB on the best. It is probably less critical if you’re building your own from Newegg, since you don’t have so many craplets to weed out (which most non-Newegg users won’t bother doing).

  12. For one ur an IDIOT. I really beleive u do not know what the hell ur talking about….HAHAHAHHAAHAHA You must be getting alot of the error code: ID10T error.

Comments are closed.