When Steve Ballmer launched the consumer version of Windows Vista in January, he boasted that the highly touted operating system was compatible out of the gate with hundreds of software applications from major independent software vendors. Consumers could rush out to their nearest Best Buy or Circuit City, buy a Windows Vista PC, and expect to run all of the latest productivity and entertainment programs without a hitch, Ballmer said.

What the Microsoft CEO failed to mention, not surprisingly, is that absent from his list of Windows Vista-friendly ISVs were the makers of some of the world's most widely used and important programs. Some products made by Adobe, IBM, Symantec, and a number of other high-profile developers were absent from the list of applications that Microsoft says are either fully certified for Windows Vista or will, at the very least, run relatively trouble free on the new OS.

Despite the omissions from its list, Microsoft officials insist that Windows Vista isn't suffering from a compatibility gap. They maintain that the current number of applications certified for the operating system is about what should be expected for a product that has been on the market for nearly three months. In addition, more applications are being added to the list all the time.

"You have to remember that our ecosystem includes hundreds of thousands of applications," said Dave Wascha, the company's director of Windows client partner marketing. "When we look at our internal metrics, we're way ahead of where we were with Windows XP at the same time," he said.

To emphasize the point, Wascha noted that Microsoft first started reaching out to ISVs whose applications would need to run on Windows Vista back when it was still just a gleam in the company's eye -- as far back as 2003, when Microsoft kicked off the first of what would be hundreds of strategic design reviews on the technology. "We highlighted what changes we were planning, and how we may have to work with partners to do some of that [compatibility] work," said Wascha.

Throughout the Windows Vista development process, Microsoft invited software engineers from hundreds of key application makers to Redmond for formal and informal meetings. There, visiting programmers would gather daily in a building about 100 yards from where Windows Vista was undergoing production. "There were engineers going back and forth between buildings, impromptu whiteboarding sessions were held, whatever was required," said Wascha.

Microsoft also did its own, automated testing of Windows Vista for compatibility with 1,200 to 1,400 major consumer and business applications, performing as many as 35,000 tests per week in the run-up to the product's January launch. "The end result is a couple of million automated tests over the development lifetime," said Wascha.

The stats are impressive, but also beg the question: With such an extensive compatibility program in place, why are some key software programs still not fully certified for Windows Vista?

It turns out that updating applications for Windows Vista is a significantly more complex a task than what faced ISVs when they needed to revise their products for the move from Windows NT and Windows ME to Windows XP in 2001. The most challenging problem, according to ISVs and Microsoft officials, is to create applications that will work well with Windows Vista's advanced security features, such as the User Account Control.

Microsoft isn't saying when, but in an apparent slip of the tongue during an earnings call with analysts, Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel, said the first Windows Vista Service Pack is scheduled for release in October or November.

Among the questions Otellini was asked on Tuesday following the release of Intel's first-quarter financial results was what impact Vista would have on Intel financially in the second half of the year. In his answer, Otellini slipped in the timetable, while giving the expected response that companies were waiting to deploy Vista.

"In the corporate space, I believe most companies will act like Intel and do some pilots and testing today, but the deployment will actually happen when the service pack gets released in the fourth-quarter timeframe -- probably the October, November timeframe," Otellini said.

Microsoft wasn't immediately available for comment on Thursday, but a senior company official has said that the software maker doesn't plan to issue a major service pack for the operating system, which is "high quality right out of the gate."

Michael Sievert, corporate VP for Windows marketing, also said that Windows Update, which enables the software maker to make fixes when needed over the Internet, has made "big bang" service packs unnecessary.

Microsoft shipped Windows Vista, a major upgrade from Windows XP, to consumers in January. The OS has been available to businesses since last November.

The wife of an imprisoned Chinese dissident sued Yahoo Inc. under human-rights laws Wednesday, saying the Internet company voluntarily revealed her husband's identity to the Chinese government and is responsible for his arrest and torture.

The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, also seeks to hold the Sunnyvale company responsible for the imprisonment of other, unidentified Chinese citizens whose Internet communications were allegedly disclosed to the government by Yahoo.

"If Yahoo did not give out this information, then the Chinese government would not be able to sentence him,'' Yu Ling said through an interpreter, referring to her husband, Wang Xiaoning, who has been in custody since September 2002. She said Yahoo's name appeared numerous times on the verdict form for Wang, who was convicted of subversion charges in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan said the company turns over information to the Chinese government only under "threat of civil and criminal penalties.''

"It's a part of doing business in China,'' Cullinan said. He said Chinese authorities who demand the identities of Internet users don't specify what they're investigating, and Yahoo has no way of knowing whether any information it provides has led to repression.

But Yu's attorney, Morton Sklar, said Yahoo was never given a subpoena or court order for the information and instead turned it over voluntarily.

"There's no way that Yahoo, as an American corporation, would not know that the record of China in human rights was highly questionable,'' Sklar said.

According to the lawsuit, Yahoo signed an agreement in 2002, drafted by the government-affiliated Internet Society of China, to help monitor and censor electronic communication that might endanger state security and to report any such communication to the government. Although companies are pressured to sign the agreement, it is voluntary, the suit said.

Wang, now 57, an editor of journals calling for political reform and a multiparty state, was arrested in 2002 at the Beijing home he shared with Yu, his wife of 28 years, and their son.

The lawsuit said he was arrested after Yahoo identified him to police as the author of e-mails and writings that he had circulated anonymously over its network.

HEADS UP ANYBODY VOICING UNPOPULAR OPINIONS ON THE INTERNET. THE CARRIERS WILL RAT YOUR TINY LITTLE ASS OUT. 

Yu said she next saw Wang at a detention center in March 2004. She said his hair had turned white, he looked dazed and frail, and he told her he had been beaten, kicked and threatened by his interrogators.

BUT THEY DIDN'T READ HIS EMAILS? So, what's the problem here?

The suit accuses Yahoo of complicity in torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, and other violations of U.S. and international laws. The case relies on an 18th-century U.S. law allowing foreigners to sue for violations of universally accepted human rights standards.

The law has been invoked recently in suits against U.S. oil companies that allegedly colluded with repressive military forces overseas. Sklar said he knew of no previous case involving an Internet provider.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and a court order that would require Yahoo to seek the release of Wang and other dissidents whose imprisonment it allegedly brought about.

"They could put pressure on the government to get them out of jail,'' and provide legal help and other resources, Sklar said.

Cullinan, the Yahoo spokesman, said the company has urged the U.S. State Department to negotiate with the Chinese government "to help secure freedom for these dissidents.''

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.