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Vista Capable Lawsuit Loses Class-Action Status
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:20 AM
from the this-means-what-exactly-now dept.
from the this-means-what-exactly-now dept.
nandemoari writes "The long-running 'Vista Capable' lawsuit challenging Microsoft's marketing of PCs capable of running only the most basic version of the Windows Vista operating system has reportedly lost its class-action status. Federal judge Marsha Pechman decertified the class-action lawsuit, saying that plaintiffs had failed to show that consumers paid more for PCs with the 'Vista Capable' label than they would have otherwise."
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I paid more... (Score:2)
Out the window goes my brilliant rebate scheme for my Vista capable MacBook Pro.
Re: (Score:2)
And how much bribes did Microsoft pay to get the suit dismissed?
I think that's a valid question since it's a lot of money at stake for Microsoft and they have tipped the odds earlier in the OOXML circus.
"Paid more"? What about "needed to replace?" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused by the judge's comment -- I thought the whole issue was *not* that users paid higher prices for "Vista Capable" machines, but rather that they bought such machines that were not actually capable of running Vista.
What gives?
Re:"Paid more"? What about "needed to replace?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
TFA seems to disagree (Score:4, Informative)
A good idea, but I don't think that's the argument. Actually reading TFA (I know, I know), it sure sounds like the judge is saying that the prosecution is arguing that the low-end machines labeled as "Vista Capable" were somehow deliberately overpriced, thereby leading to 'unjust enrichment' for Microsoft. If so, this really seems like a royal screw-up for the prosecution, since it's your version of the argument that makes much more sense (at least to me, but IANAL).
Cheers,
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So? It's still Vista and the machine is running it.
Whether or not Vista blows goats is outside the scope of this particular lawsuit.
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"Vista Capable" laptop == "$2100 email machine" (Score:4, Informative)
Here you go. [nwsource.com] The PDF linked in the article shows the actual email thread, including the "I now have a $2100 email machine" money quote by MS executive Mike Nash.
Cheers,
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Just read the one from the higher up complaining he spent $2100 on a laptop and got "an email machine" because it said it was Vista Capable and wasn't.
I must admit I'm struggling to conceive of a way you could spend $2100 on a laptop and _not_ have something capable of running Vista "Premium".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Slightly Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
The summary (and, indeed, the article) is a little misleading. It is not that they didn't show that the plaintiffs didn't pay more (if the judge had found that, the case probably would have been dismissed). Rather, they lost their clase certification because they hadn't shown that all the plaintiffs in the class had uniformly overpaid.
To form a class, the plaintiffs' situations situations have to be relevantly similar. Her ruling was just that, in essence, the cases hadn't been shown to be similar enough to be litigated as a class.
Now the cases will proceed individually, with each plaintiff having to show individually that they overpaid.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This whole thing stinks of bought and paid for...
Re:Slightly Misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
find a bicycle that is actually just the basic version of a car, then perhaps your argument might mean something. There is a version of Vista those machines would run with, and it is actually Vista...not DOS, not Win3.1, but Vista.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, more bullshit and liars games... I can take a piece of dog shit, stick it in a box and put a Vista sticker on it. If I advertise that I'm selling Vista for $10 and send you this box, was I honest, or was I not?
Similarly, Microsoft made a lot of grand claims about what
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. It does matter whether they paid more. They are claiming unjust enrichment which requires that MS profit from the deceptive practices. This means that it has to be shown (now on a case by case basis) that the plaintiffs actually paid more than they otherwise would for the deceptively marketed computers.
(IANAL, but I will be AL soon and I have a fair deal of experience with these sorts of consumer class actions. And this, of course, is not legal advice. Take my word for it: the federal court system is
Does "deceptive mktg" require "unjust enrichment"? (Score:2)
When I first heard about the case, my assumption about the main thrust of the argument (since proven wrong) was that consumers were put through undue hassle and extra expense in having to replace the extrememly low-end and basically unusable "Vista Capable" machines. I always thought it was more of a classic "bait and switch", with the user being deliberately misled into buying something different from what was being described. Even if unjust enrichment were required for such a legal argument, it would th
Re: (Score:2)
But they DID profit from the deceptive practices, it just wasn't in cash. As we know in products "buzz" is everything and by pushing out those machines as Vista when they weren't MSFT was able to hype Vista and say "See how many we have sold! It is very popular! You should buy it now!" just as they are doing right at this very moment with Vista Business which we all know is being bought by those wanting downgrades to XP, yet they are able to say "See how much more Vista is selling than XP at the same time?
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Reading TFA, it sounds more and more like an egregious prosecutorial cock-up. As pdabbadabba notes below [slashdot.org], the knuckleheaded prosecution argument is apparently that the "Vista Capable" machines were deliberately overpriced. IANAL, but simply logically speaking, it would seem to make more sense to argue that the labeling program was misleading, requiring lots of hassle and possible extra expense for consumers to return and / or replace the low-end, barely-usable "Vista Capable" machines with something that
Re: (Score:2)
It was my assumption that the suit was over low end machines being labeled and sold as Vista capable when they shouldn't have been. Which would likely mean that the majority of people effected actually underpaid for what they were told was a Vista capable machine.
I was assuming that they would have to show that enough of the cases people purchased "Vista Capable" machines that were clearly not capable of running Vista in the marketed manner.
If they were trying to sell it to the judge as a matter of overpayi
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Now the cases will proceed individually, with each plaintiff having to show individually that they overpaid.
"Hey, Vista has splashly effects"
"Hey, buy this laptop, it'll run Vista"
<hand over some money>
"wtf, this is not beefy enough to run the splashy effects! I paid for something I didn't get."
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Now the cases will proceed individually, with each plaintiff having to show individually that they overpaid.
"Hey, Vista has splashly effects"
"Hey, buy this laptop, it'll run Vista"
[hand over some money]
"wtf, this is not beefy enough to run the splashy effects! I paid for something I didn't get."
[Judge] Yeah, but I did suckers! Bwaahahaha!
[Judge drives off in new Bentley to mansion in the Hamptons]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, that's what they'll have to do now. The down side with this strategy is that:
1. It will he harder for the plaintiffs to get good lawyers because there will be a lot less money involved. (The way it attracts top lawyers to take up the plaintiffs' cause - due to the large paydays - is one of the benefits of the class action system). Though, as you say, they may not need lawyers at all this way.
2. Similarly, MS will almost certainly pay less in damages if the suits are individually litigated. Remember, M
Missing the point? (Score:2)
I thought the point of the lawsuit was that people were fooled (allegedly!) into thinking that lesser-spec'd machines were capable of running many of Vista's better goodies, and not specifically that the machines they did buy were overpriced?
Is this a cock-up of the presentation by the plaintiffs or their reps?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The complaint in the court of public opinion is that when Vista is marketed they talk about all the great shit it does on the highest end hardware and make it seem like you get that stuff if you get Vista. Lots of machines were sold as "Vista Capable" that couldn't do a bunch of that shit and on which Vista ran like a squashed turd (arguably it ran like that on anything without a special disk AND a special USB stick AND at least 4GB of memory until SP1 and now it's only a round turd so it can at least roll,
Mighty Mouse was not Vista Capable (Score:2, Funny)
Whats the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
I was part of one of the previous class action suits. After years of waiting all I got was a coupon for a $15 discount on windows or office.
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You can get more by suing individually, but then you'd likely have to front the cost of a lawyer.
So, although the potential return is less for you in a class action suit, the risk is lower too, as you have almost no cost in joining.
(But it does annoy me when the result is a coupon whose face value is only useful if you actually wanted to buy a new product. The ones who probably win the most in these cases are the lawyers who take a percentage of the whole ... and I'm guessing they're not paid in coupons)
So in summary . . . (Score:2)
The issue was never about users paying more... (Score:3, Informative)
that's not the issue they sued over, though (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe that's the issue you had a problem with, but the judge can only really rule on the issue the plaintiffs brought up. Their case did not allege "users getting a POS that wouldn't give them the minimum acceptable user experience". Instead, the case alleged "unjust enrichment" on the part of Microsoft, which requires showing that Microsoft made more money via the allegedly misleading behavior than they would have otherwise.
Class-action capable (Score:2, Funny)
It was about the features (Score:2, Informative)
The case was dismissed because the low end laptops were "Vista Capable" but there was also a "Premium Ready" sticker on other models. It was a case of read the fine print.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE51I4KF20090219 [reuters.com]
Why did they bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
This lawsuit was a joke. For once I have to say I'm happy Microsoft won.
Why?
Simple.
There is nothing wrong with advertising a PC as "Vista Capable".
Even if it only runs Basic Home Edition of Vista, certainly it doesn't contradicted its ability as being "Vista Capable".
Furthermore, retailers and manufacturers who have been pushing Vista with their products (PCs, laptops, notebooks, etc...) have usually also made sure that they recommended their products with words such as "runs best with (insert flavor of Vista)".
This is one of those times where clearly, greed was the only reason for this lawsuit.
On another note, the cost of a laptop being "Vista Capable" and how much they overpaid? Oye Vay! Are they retarded? Even I know there are no collation between a product being branded as "Vista Capable" and a higher cost of purchase. If anything, I recall laptops being sold for like 400$ with Vista Basic. Dirt Cheap.
Now, let's not think I like Vista, heck no, in my honest opinion, it's a crappy product, but, this isn't about what I like, it's just about being fair.
Again, this lawsuit and the people behind it are just trying to make a quick buck on Microsoft by conning the system.
What a waste of time and resources...
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Re:Monitors (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/hardwareprogramme
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I hear vendors won't do that until an OS has 3% marketshare. Come back in 2035.
Is that the year of the Linux Desktop that I keep hearing so much about?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I thought FOSS stood for Free Operating System Stickers.
What's that? It's Free Open Source Software? Wow, that explains a lot. Excuse me, I need to go make some apologies on some Linux forums.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm confused -- I had assumed it was the other way around.
That is, I'd assumed that hardware vendors would want their hardware to be known as compatible, thus resulting in higher sales. And that to obtain such status, they would have to follow Microsoft's standards -- implying that if anything, they'd be paying Microsoft for the privilege, not the other way around.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OBVIOUSLY no dude, by night, when everyone leaves the factory, some Latino dude with indigenous heritage make some ritual (involving Win 95 floppies, WinME complain letters and spit from RIAA representatives) so magical pixies emerge from the pile of Vista licenses and roam the factory automagically putting the sticker on. Does not apply if is a Chinese factory because you should know that nobody sleeps in th... errr because pixies does not get along with dragons and that all I'm going to say about it. Get
Re:Monitors (Score:4, Informative)
Could have been a DRM thing. I'm too tired to look up the exact acronym (though HDCP is sounding familiar), but Vista implemented new support for certain monitors having end to end encryption between the video card and the display, so that it wasn't possible to directly capture the video from the video cable. There was originally plans (that I'm not sure if they ever came to fruition) to downgrade HD video on monitors that didn't conform to this standard (or were connected using standard DSUB cables instead of HDMI or DVI).
Parent
Or just marketing run amok (Score:3, Insightful)
While I see your point, I've also seen and touched computer speakers labeled as "Y2K compliant" back in 1999. And even that wasn't the most ludicrious thing. IIRC _the_ most ludicrious thing was a network cable sold as Y2K compliant.
I'm not even sure how a cable or speakers could _possibly_ have had a Y2K problem, seeing that neither even had a CPU, much less anything capable of knowing the date or depending on it.
The only sane explanation was that some marketer figured out they'd sell more of them with tha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The only sane explanation was that some marketer figured out they'd sell more of them with that extra claim.
Sort of. "Sell more of them" actually meant "Sell any of them, to corporate and organizational customers with brainless hard-and-fast Y2K compliance requirements."
Yes, I am a Y2K remediation survivor. I saw many companies, and many government agencies, implement no-exceptions, no-tailoring, mandatory, 100% applicable standards that looked like: "Any computer acquisition (hardware, software, or servi
Re:Monitors (Score:4, Informative)
Then explain to me why it's on my ANALOG 22" LCD as well, then. There is no HDMI or DVI connection, so just how is HDCP implemented?
The Vista Capable is just a marketing scheme.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like the immoral, unethical, dishonest and really quite pathetically retarded Microsoft shills are getting mod points these days. Ah my, it must be so so sad to be so immoral, unethical, dishonest and really quite pathetically retarded.
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Re:Not a Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, Vista got a bad name for three reasons:
1. The lowest-end computers certified to run it were not really capable (since fixed).
Microsoft ran the certification program that certified those low end computers as being capable of running vista. This was under Microsoft's control.
2. Nvidia's drivers sucked for the first 6 months.
While Nvidia's drivers sucking is not under Microsoft's direct control, the certification program that signs the drivers for use in Vista is. Were those drivers signed?
I will agree that the signing of the drivers doesn't necessarily mean that they don't suck, just that they wont harm your system; so in that way this one really shouldn't be Microsoft's responsibility as long as the drivers weren't actually destructive.
3. The I/O subsystem was poorly designed (fixed in SP1), and the virtualization of video memory was a poor idea for Vista-32 [anandtech.com] that makes game memory usage balloon (hence the higher memory requirements for games under Vista, and problems running out of memory that players don't see on XP). REALITY: Vista should have pushed 64-bit as the primary OS.
clearly Microsoft's fault.
Only one of the above was really under Microsoft's control.
Two of them. Why do you think the first one is not Microsoft's fault?
I also don't agree that these are the only reasons Vista got a bad name, but I'm leaving that part alone.
Parent