"Vista Capable" Lawsuit Is Now a Class Action

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."

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Re:Its not a lie!

[obstalesgone]

AH! This explains the claim that Vista is faster than XP. All this time I thought it was just marketing nonsense.

In other news

[iamacat]

Judge granted a class action status to a lawsuit of customers against a company selling an "under a thousand dollars" TV for $999.95

Re:Ugh...

[Jerry Rivers]

Yeah but if the suit succeeds everyone will win $25!

Just so I've got this right..

[QuantumG]

1. Honey, should we buy a new computer now?
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:Its not a lie!

[Alcoholic Synonymous]

He's just a little sore from having to post quickly between crashes.

Chair Warning.. Watch yourself..

[LingNoi]

you can always tell who the people are that pretend to run MS OSs in order to slam them. it is obvious by the statements you make, that you have never even run vista... what a stupid thing to say, are you retarded? If what you say is true for you, you just need to learn some computer skills. Vista doesn't crash. Where do you get your info? from reading slasdont? you speak without knowledge

-Signed Steve B.

And apparently 512 MB RAM is "Vista Capable"

[mathnerd314]

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.

Re:Vista Capable is a bit of an oxymoron

[dominious]

Reminds me of Microsoft Works