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"Vista Capable" Lawsuit Is Now a Class Action
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Feb 24, 2008 02:04 AM
from the go-to-the-head-of-the-class dept.
from the go-to-the-head-of-the-class dept.
An anonymous reader notes an update in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporting that the lawsuit against Microsoft's "Windows Vista Capable" marketing campaign has been granted class-action status. We discussed the company's internal misgivings with this campaign a while back. The suit alleges that "...Microsoft unjustly enriched itself by promoting PCs as 'Windows Vista Capable' even when they could only run a bare-bones version of the operating system, called 'Vista Home Basic.'" In the 2006 pre-holiday season, Microsoft had placed "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on machines to keep the sale of Windows XP machines going after Vista was delayed. Microsoft didn't lose out totally in the recent ruling — the article notes that the judge "narrowed the basis on which plaintiffs could move forward with their claims."
Related Stories
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Microsoft Had Doubts About the 'Vista Capable' Label 484 comments
dionysus writes "Last April, Microsoft was sued over its 'Vista Capable' labeling, and in hearing last week, attorneys for the plaintiffs presented evidence that Microsoft employees were skeptical about the 'Vista Capable' marketing. Some of the most damning evidence comes from Microsoft executives: 'Mike Nash, currently a corporate vice president for Windows product management, wrote in an e-mail, "I PERSONALLY got burnt ... Are we seeing this from a lot of customers? ... I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine." Jim Allchin, then the co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, wrote in another e-mail, "We really botched this ... You guys have to do a better job with our customers."' The judge in the case is currently considering the plaintiffs' request to make it a class-action lawsuit."
Submission: 'Vista Capable' lawsuit now deemed as class-action by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Microsoft Internal Emails Show Dismay With Vista 662 comments
bfwebster writes "Microsoft is currently facing a class-action suit over its designation of allegedly under-powered hardware as being 'Vista Capable.' The discovery process of that lawsuit has now compelled Microsoft to produce some internal emails discussing those issues. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has published extracts of some of those emails, along with a link to a a PDF file containing a more extensive email exchange. The emails reflect a lot of frustration among senior Microsoft personnel about Vista's performance problems and hardware incompatibilities. They also appear to indicate that Microsoft lowered the hardware requirements for 'Vista Capable' in order to include certain lower-end Intel chipsets, apparently as a favor to Intel: 'In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded.' Read the whole PDF; it is informative, interesting, and at times (unintentionally) funny."
[+]
Microsoft Tries To Prevent Further Discovery 178 comments
An anonymous reader notes the considerable irony in Microsoft asking for relief from further discovery in the Windows Vista Capable debacle. This is the lawsuit that was recently granted class-action status, and Microsoft wants the wheels of justice to stop while it appeals that designation. It's easy to see why Microsoft wants to prevent further digging around in their and their OEMs' email archives, with stories like this one from the NYTimes (registration may be required) revealing Redmond's highly embarrassing internal emails to a mass audience.
[+]
Technology: The "Vista-Capable" Debacle Spreads To Acer 133 comments
N!NJA writes in with a Register story on a lawsuit filed against Acer for selling Windows Vista on an underpowered notebook. Of course anybody can sue for anything; it will be interesting to see if this action goes forward in the courts. "With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world's third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-$600 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory. In its official "recommended system requirements," Microsoft recommends that an additional 128MB is required to run the Premium incarnation of its latest desktop operating system. ... Microsoft says that the Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions of Vista will run on 512MB systems — with certain OS features disabled. In the beginning, Redmond called these 'Vista Capable' machines, and it's facing a separate lawsuit over this potentially misleading moniker."
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Its not a lie! (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Its not a lie! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Chair Warning.. Watch yourself.. (Score:3, Funny)
MS selling hardware? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd have thought the hardware manufacturers would be the ones who didn't want sales to fall.
I remember the same sort of campaign when XP came out. The laptop I bought then had an "XP capable" (or something that sounded similar) sticker on the box, even though it came with ME installed and with a voucher for a cheap XP Home upgrade when it came out. After having upgraded it and having seen the pe
Re:MS selling hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd have thought the hardware manufacturers would be the ones who didn't want sales to fall.
I remember the same sort of campaign when XP came out. The laptop I bought then had an "XP capable" (or something that sounded similar) sticker on the box, even though it came with ME installed and with a voucher for a cheap XP Home upgrade when it came out. After having upgraded it and having seen the performance under XP, I reformatted it and downgraded. Not to ME, but to Win2000, which it still runs fine.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, let's see... last time they made money hand-over-fist, so why would they change things around?
Re:MS selling hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:MS selling hardware? (Score:4, Informative)
Except, only one part of that statement is true....
Parent
Re:MS selling hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite.
MSDOS was a clunker, all the way.
Windows 95 (and its' Service Pack, Windows 98), while the first usable OS from MS, was rife with problems
You would not want to go back to struggle with its' drivers, miserable attempts at plug'n'play, and frequent BSODs
For example, '98 seemed to have terrible memory management. When I was using 98 at work, I would frequently have Excel, Wordperfect, e-mail, and AutoCAD open at the same time. One particular job I was working on, a zoo, had particularly large and complicated CAD drawings, including several external references to other trades' drawings, and the exhibit designer's naturalistic fake trees drawn with the detail of every branch and twig. This slowed down my computer considerably, but the real problem was that after I closed the AutoCAD drawing and went back to Excel, I would soon get an error about illegal memory access that would crash the program. It only occasionally caused a BSOD, but it would require me to close all open programs and windows, and restart them. I figure that 98 somehow allocated the same memory to more than one program, and freed it from all of them when AutoCAD closed. More physical memory may have helped, but I never had that problem with XP. In fact, I almost never have had significant problems with XP.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No hacks no new drivers, just sucks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple definitely has the edge in configuration. Microsoft has to get its act together and recognize that UPnP is dead. Bonjour is deployed, works and is supported by a huge number of hardware providers. It took me minutes to hook my Mac up to my network attached printers and Windows Home server.
Microsoft has the edge when a configuration goes
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oops, you only asked for one. Anyway,
Some more here: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp/ [winsupersite.com]
and here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx/ [microsoft.com]
Ugh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. It's about the only way to punish big greedy companies enough to make them think twice the next time. I wish we could find an alternative, but so far none exists. If somebody can come up with a better way, please state it. What we have in CA's is better than fly-spec individual suits. Basically this is the current options:
A. Move a very little bit of perpetrator's money to consumer (individual suits)
B. Move a lot of perpetrator's money to lawyers and a little bit to consumers. (class-action)
C. Don't do anything.
D. Make Gates and Balmer do the Chicken Dance on American Idol.
Until E is invented, B is the best choice. (Okay, D is not viable, I admit. Besides, Balmer seems to like dancing funny.)
Parent
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Interesting)
E. Revoke their charter of incorporation.
I bet they would start to get the point after the first few.
Parent
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, punitive awards should go to the government - either regulatory agencies or law enforcement, not the victims. The victims already get compensatory damages to compensate them for their suffering. The punitive damages are designed to punish the guilty, and should go to society as recompense for violating the public trust. The U.S. court system is currently biased against punitive damages because often even when the defendant deserves to have to pay, the victim doesn't deserve the money so the court system errs on the side of the defendant. This change would help fix that.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've had the same thoughts before, that the defendant deserves to get punished, but that the victim doesn't deserve to be rewarded to that degree. My solution would be that the victim gets to nominate a charity and the money gets directed to them.
I wonder how that would change our court-happy society - if the victim knew that even if they won, they'd only more or less get compensated for their
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I said fractional. So if you were awarded $200 million, the lawyer would get:
And this was an example so the numbers could be sliced any other way. I'm a big fan of continuous functions but it seems the law
Re: (Score:2)
What about lots of small claims? The plaintiffs can file these in person, but the corporation must pay a lawyer to deal with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The winners don't matter. The losers do. (Score:2)
The only winners of a class action lawsuit are the lawyers.
This is very true. But class actions lawsuits - when successful - also create deterrent effects by making some companies into very big losers. The potential threat of class actions lawsuits, and the fiscal liability they represent, must thus be accounted for in a corporation's cost-benefit evaluations when they decide whether or not to shaft the consumers in some way. There should be more of them, frankly, and I say that as someone who once qualified for a trivial class-action award and never bothered to c
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Interesting)
No reasonable person is going to file an individual lawsuit against Microsoft because of this because the amount of money they could recover (if they win) is less than the value of the time it would take to file in small claims court, prepare the evidence, take a day off work...heck, it's not even worth the effort of typing it all out. But does that mean Microsoft should be off the hook? No. That's where the class action comes in.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
A class action would be perfect for things like drug companies failing to test a drug and killing people. Or insurance companies dropping coverage after a disease is discovered.
However, in 99% of class-actions, the *best* situation would be to have a Federal prosecutor charge the CEO and Board Members with committing a crime. Throw their asses in jail and you'd see a lot of co
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not compensation, it's punishment. Punishment for bad behavior is good. It makes companies think twice about conducting bad behavior in the future. It's essentially a civil fine. Lawyers making money? Well look, for members of the class, it is essentially free money. You fill out online form, and then you wait for a check. That's it.
"B-b-b-but it's a lawsuit! and Lawyers are Evil(tm)!!!11!eleventy-one!11!" you say. If you don't bring civil suits, how do you expect private citizens assert their rights and correct the behavior of those who have wronged them? Unless of course, you think that people shouldn't be able to defend themselves. Do you believe that?
Parent
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is well known that M$ puts a huge margin of the price of windows, which is why it so agressively and currptly purseus a monopoly to protect the absurd profit margins. So the more 'profit' eating, capital reserve draining class action law suits the better, who cares if it only enricghes a bunch of lawyers, as long as it bleeds M$ dry, and maybe, just maybe, finally forces some respect out of M$ for the customer.
Parent
In other news (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
It would be a more apt analagy if said TVs were could only average 10 frames per second, american idol was too taxing on the set for it even to start. This line of TVs was also heavily advertised as having 5.1 surround sound playback, a remote and very shiny sexy digital knobs going to 300 channels but when you got it hom and set it up there was no remote, and you had to change channels by turning a 13 channel knob. Oh, and there was no sound either. none. not 5.1, not even mono.
Such a unit may meet the barest qualifications of being a TV, but any reasonable consumer who got such a thing home would feel justifiably ripped off and return it immediately.
But the insidious part of Vista capable, was that they bought it on the promise that it would run vista when it came out, and when Vista came out, they found out that their reasonable expection of 'run vista' was not met, but they were now entirely unable to return the computer, and even downgrading is a 'reformat from scratch' procedure.
They feel ripped off, justifiably, in my opinon, and they want their money back.
If bought a computer that "ran Vista", and ended up with a computer that could only run Vista Home Basic... and did even that poorly, then I'd take it back. These people can't. And hence there is a lawsuit.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Just so I've got this right.. (Score:5, Funny)
2. No, Vista is about to come out, we should wait.
3. But this computer over here says "Vista Capable" on it.. we can upgrade when Vista comes out.
4. Ok, let's trust the advertising and buy now.
5. [time passes]
6. [more time passes]
7. [yet, MORE time passes]
8. Honey, Vista has finally come out.
9. You're fucking with me.
10. No really! Let's upgrade.
11. Ok, which of the 400 versions of Vista should we upgrade to?
12. Oh, seems that our machine can only run Vista Basic.
13. Those bastards!! Call the lawyers.
14. Meanwhile, the rest of the world makes it blatantly obvious that *all* version of Vista blow, not just Basic.
15. ???
16. Profit.
This did not really happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Bet it did. Thousands of times.
Well, apart from step 16 (unless you meant the profit that MS made).
oh yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the "Windows Experience Index", and am getting about 60 percent of what I could be.
Ummm, 60% of what?
There is no maximum value. To quote Raymond Chen: "Imagine what the world would be like if there were a max value. What happens if the max is 10 and you buy a 10 computer, and then an even faster computer comes out next year - what rating does that computer yet?" (source [msdn.com]).
The max you can get on today's absolute best hardware may be around 5.9, but that's not the top end of a scale -- it will certainly increase with time as better hardware comes out and WEI is updated with newer benc
Class Action Blows (Score:2, Interesting)
And apparently 512 MB RAM is "Vista Capable" (Score:5, Funny)
I bought a computer with a "Vista Capable" sticker, which had only 512 MB of RAM. Now, according to Dell [dell.com], such a configuration is "Great for... Booting the Operating System, without running applications or games".
Which, incidentally, was pretty much all I could do.
The penalty I would like to see is ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... that the judge orders Microsoft to do all testing for all versions of Vista and all versions of the next OS they market on these computers they identify as "Vista Capable".
It would never happen. Microsoft will test the next OS home version on dual-socket octal-core 4-GHz 64-bit processesors with 16-GB RAM and 4-way RAID-0 SATA-6 drive arrays.
Depends (Score:2, Offtopic)
Now, seriously... (Score:3, Insightful)
How many did not feel frustrated remembering an old computer could do things a Windows one could not? How many didn't feel restrained by having a tumor-growth-like GUI posing as OS? In which you have to use an entire application to change OS settings? In which capabilities are not available on a system-wide
Re: (Score:2)
Link is MyMiniCity, please treat post with utter disregard and contempt.
Re:Ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
So people shouldn't be able to make manufacturers and vendors live up to their promises? Of ot saus "Vista Capable", with no limitations, no "fine print", no disclaimers, then it should be capable of running Vista - not some crippled version.
Parent
Re:Ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I dislike Microsoft products, I can't see how they have a basis for this law suit.
Is the machine incapable of running Vista? No, just the flashy bits that aren't a requirement of the OS. Did Microsoft have a separate designation for machines that could run Vista better? Yes, it was "Premium Ready [microsoft.com]". Is Vista completely unusable because of their system specs? No (or not any more than normal).
It isn't as if they've been sold a "High Def capable TV" that only has 640x480 res, they've been sold the equivalent of a 720i/p TV - it is capable of what is classed as "High Def", just not the really high HD because it is only "capable" of some minimum requirement to be called what it is called.
As a similar situation: Am I capable of running a marathon? Probably. Would I do very good at it? No, because I'm not ready, not trained and not fit enough.
People need to get a dictionary and learn the definition of the word "capable".
Parent
Re:Ridiculous. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Gotta love the blame shifting (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, the stickers only mentioned Vista. Nothing about Basic. Never mind that the FTC had ordered msft in 2001 not to engage in such deceptive practices.
Honesty is too much to expect from msft. Any msft shill will tell you that. Msft advocates seem to believe that msft should be allowed to lie. According the msft advocates, that is just good 'ol American capitalis
Yes you are missing the fine print (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't actually have the Crysis box but every game I seen with a minimum set of requirements on it ALSO listed a recommended spec.
MS with this Vista advertising campaign made a simple mistake, they designed a sticker that was not clear enough about what was promised.
With PC games, a reasonable person would assume that if you see who different specs then it is obvious that this means that the game will look perform less well on this lower hardware. You would only expect it to run well on the recommended
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that's just shows that the problem is their version policy, isn't it? The fact that "Vista" is an encompassing brandname for a whole bunch of different OSes with different capabilities makes it extremely hard to say what "Vista" is. As anyone, I'd expect it to meet the requirements to run "Vista Ultimate" with everything on, because it's "Vista".
It's not "just marketing",