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Internal Microsoft e-mails made public late Monday illustrate how executives debated whether to lower the standards for the Vista Capable marketing program to appease one of the company’s most important partners: chip maker Intel.

Once the decision was made, e-mails show, Microsoft scrambled to contain the fallout with other partners.

The messages are evidence in a Windows class-action lawsuit brought by PC customers in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Microsoft is accused of deceiving consumers who bought PCs in 2006 labeled “Vista Capable,” but which could only run a basic version of the operating system.

Surprise, then scramble

Jan. 30, 2006, was a long Monday for the Windows team at Microsoft.

Word of the company’s controversial decision to drop a new Windows Vista graphics technology from requirements for the Vista Capable marketing program was quickly spreading among its customers.

The technology, known as the Windows Device Driver Model, or WDDM, was dropped in part because a widely used Intel “915 chipset” would not support it, meaning computers built with that chip would not qualify for a “Windows Vista Capable” sticker, making them appear less desirable and hurting sales.

Intel had pressured Microsoft to make the change to the marketing program, designed to prop up PC demand during the 2006 holiday shopping season, before Vista PCs would be on the market.

“We need good messaging for the elimination of WDDM in Capable, as we have had this as a requirement since inception over 18 months ago,” wrote Mark Croft, a Microsoft marketing director, in an e-mail to several others on the Vista team that morning.

Microsoft was scrambling to coordinate communication of this major surprise revision, which some would love and others — Hewlett-Packard in particular — would hate.

Croft circulated draft talking points outlining the change. Employees on several teams prepared to make potentially uncomfortable phone calls and e-mails to their partners in the PC industry explaining the decision.

(The next day, a Microsoft general manager urgently requested the communications plan for graphics chip makers Nvidia and ATI, noting he needed to be ready to “diffuse this situation.”)

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