An e-mail from Richard Walker, senior vice president at Hewlett-Packard's consumer PC division, said Microsoft's decision to loosen the standards for a marketing campaign designed to promote compatibility with the Vista program "left a very bad taste with me and my team," ComputerWorld reported Monday.

The lawsuit alleges Microsoft deceived customers in 2006 by certifying computers as Vista compatible, although it knew the computers could only run Vista Basic -- a version that could not run some of the heavily-marketed features of Vista, ComputerWorld said.

A Microsoft executive, Jim Allchin also he was "beyond being upset," by the move, the report said.

Court papers filed last Thursday say HP spent $7 million to ensure its computers meet the original requirements of the "Vista Capable" marketing campaign.

In an e-mail to Allchin, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said he had "nothing to do with this."

"Will handled everything," he wrote to Allchin, referring to Will Poole, who was in charge of the client version of Windows and responsible for downgrading a graphics requirement for Vista certification.