I heard a claim (not from any especially reliable source) that Windows Vista was designed in India. Is that true?

I would recommend that you be more specific with claims like this---eg: Did you hear this in a barbershop?....a gas station? from the computer repair department of KFC**?

Lot's of coding is outsourced to India, so it is certainly plausible that Microsoft is one of their customers (eg for specific modules)

**For other parts of the world: Kentucky Fried Chicken ( a notorious fast-food chain)

Do you have any reliable evidence that "Vista" was, in actual fact, designed?

Note that, if your premise is false (i.e., "Vista was designed") then any statement based on that (false) premise is true.

Thus all of the following statements are logically true if Vista was not, in fact, designed:

1. Vista was designed in India.
2. Vista was designed in Seattle, Washington, USA.
3. Vista was designed in South Africa by unemployed dock workers.
4. Vista was designed as a plot to subvert Christian nations by the Taliban.
5. Vista was designed by Santa Clause.
6. Vista was designed by a group on Monarch butterflies.

So, please justify your premise.

Ehh...I'd rather not say, but my source was about as reliable as one at a gas station or a barber shop. And KFC is, as you said, Kentucky Fried Chicken--not Kentucky Fried Computers. Cute. Well, you have pretty much answered my question. The guy I heard this from was from India, so he was probably grossly exaggerating a truth.

@Ptrenholme: As Bertrand Russell said to Paul Johnson, "Logical fiddlesticks!"

P.S. Pixellany's post gives me an idea for my signature...

Probably at least parts are done in India.MS employs about a gazillion people there.

Ah, semantics......Not hard to imagine someone from India saying: "We designed Vista", but meaning "We did a lot of the coding". Quite plausible that it was an honest error with no malice.

In India? That is utter nonsense. Everyone knows vista was designed, implemented and tested on Mars.

Oh why did you have to go and mention a planet!... Must resist obvious joke.... Must... trying... oh so hard.... no, here it comes... I can't... it's just too damn tempting....

"Mars? Come off it! Everyone knows that Vista came from Uranus!"

bum! bum!

That's like saying "I am/want to be a game/program designer" and every body assumes you write code for what you design. Did I stutter? I said "designer" not "programmer" you know, technical document? no coding, lots of nice gui pictures and defining how the user is going to interact with it, etc, etc.

Then again, you could ask your self what they mean by 'design' there are so many layers to design that the actual 'code design' could have in fact been done by a programmer in India where as the 'look and feel' aspects were designed in the US/China/Russia/Canaydia/Etc. I suggest you get into a long drawn out conversation with this person until he gives up and says "the programming modules were designed in India" or something. The world may never know.

I would have to guess it depends on how much of 'windows' is actually left in vista as that could imply anywhere from 10% to 90% of the entire project design (interface and coding included) is from the existing windows standard and that "Vista" is nothing more than a face lift to an old saggy skinned celebrity that we read about only in tabloids and make remarks about to have a good laugh about even though they have more money that many will never have in 50 life times of their free and open source co-op existence *trails on*

This is the point I was trying to make, above, but with the added observation that there is no existing Windows design documentation. Microsoft was ordered by the EU to produce that documentation, and, despite massive punitive fines, was unable to find any such design documents for even some specific subsystems of their OS.

Thus, as I said, there exists compelling evidence that Vista was never actually designed in any sense that a professional software designer would recognise.

Note that the original Microsoft DOS was written by two hackers trying to get something working using scanty documentation. Basically, a "try and retry" hack that worked well enough to be useful. since that's the way they worked, and it was successful, that's the way they told their staff to work as their company expanded. Hence the current lack of any overall design documentation for any Windows OS.