"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."

Ugh...

I hate class action suits. They do next to no good for the consumer save for putting a couple (literally) bucks in the pocket, benefit lawyers almost exclusively and in the end make products cost more. I hate Vista, and I don't care for (and therefor do not use the products produced by) Microsoft but this is going to do little good in the long run.

Re:Ugh...

True but without class actions are really the only way to punish companies when it would be way too costly for a single person to go after them. I consider class actions to be necessary evils.

Re:Ugh...

[CA's only benefit lawyers] True but without class actions are really the only way to punish companies when it would be way too costly for a single person to go after them. I consider class actions to be necessary evils.

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.)
     

Re:Ugh...

E. Revoke their charter of incorporation.

I bet they would start to get the point after the first few.

Re:Ugh...

B. Move a lot of perpetrator's money to lawyers and a little bit to consumers. (class-action)

Tier the rate lawyers get paid. For awards up to, say, $1 million, they get 33%. For the fraction of awards between $1-$10 million, they get 10%. Between $10-$100 million they get 3%. Over $100 million, they get 1%. Over $1 billion they get 0.1% ($1 million per $1 billion awarded). Right now they get 33% of everything, which is flat out ridiculous. A class action reduces the lawyers' workload by taking advantage of efficiencies of scale, their compensation should be reduced to reflect that.

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.

Re:

Also, punitive awards should go to the government - either regulatory agencies or law enforcement, not the victims.

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 de

Re:Ugh...

I guess you don't understand the purpose of a class action. The purpose is never to benefit the consumer. The purpose is to punish the target of the class action. That is a valid purpose in a situation like this where the individual losses of the consumer were negligible but, in aggregate, add up to a significant amount.

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.

Re:Ugh...

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

Re:Ugh...

I hate class action suits. They do next to no good for the consumer save for putting a couple (literally) bucks in the pocket, benefit lawyers almost exclusively and in the end make products cost more.

You don't understand the point of class action lawsuits.

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.

but this is going to do little good in the long run.

If it makes them not knowingly [slashdot.org] engage in an extremely confusing (at best) and deceptive (at worse) campaign, then it would have achieved it's goal.

"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?

Re:Ugh...

Entirely false. Class action law suits do not add one cent to the price of a product. I am sick of this same lie being spread over and over again, just like piracy does not add one cent to the price of a product. It is all supply and demand, greedy corporations charge as much as they possible can, there is absolutely no limit to their greed, 100%, 1000%, 10000% markups not a problem at all.

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.

In other news

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:In other news

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

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.

Just so I've got this right..

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.

oh yeah...

Recently bought a laptop that came with vita home premium. Look at the "Windows Experience Index", and am getting about 60 percent of what I could be. Brand new laptop, meets all recommended requirements (except video card) for vista ultimate, and I still only get a 60%. I also see computers that are less than a quarter as powerful as that laptop being sold with vista on them. There should be at least a minimum spec increase to certify the hardware as vista enabled. Like you can run XP Pro on as low as a 233 MHz core, with 128 Mb ram, and 1.5 GB of hard drive. It will run, just about as fast as the mold growing in Antarctica. It runs, but you can't do more than idle without it freezing up on you. Therefore, in my opinion, you should change the minimum system requirements so that you could at least open notepad within 5 minutes.

And apparently 512 MB RAM is "Vista Capable"

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:

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

Re:Its not a lie!

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

Re:MS selling hardware?

Since when is Microsoft selling PC's? Or did they send someone around to go put those stickers on the machines?
I'd have thought the hardware manufacturers would be the ones who didn't want sales to fall.

I agree that the hardware vendors should also share part of the blame. However, Microsoft designed the campaign, and in addition is responsible for the capabilities of Vista (for all the hardware manufacturers knew, it might get faster before it was released to the general public). Therefore, on the face of it, the case might have merit.

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.

Yes, this isn't entirely new. But that doesn't justify things in any way. In fact Microsoft should have learned from past experience and done things better this time.

Re:MS selling hardware?

For some reason it still bothers me when people claim to have "downgraded" to Win2k. it's like saying you "Downgrade" from Vista to XP. How can it be a downgrade when your computer runs faster, you have less problems, etc?

Re:MS selling hardware?

Use Windows 95, or perhaps even DOS. It runs faster and you have less problems.

Except, only one part of that statement is true....

Re:MS selling hardware?

Use Windows 95, or perhaps even DOS. It runs faster and you have less problems.

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.

Re:

Well, 2k is faster than Vista because it has a lot less features. If you don't use any of those features, then sure, ok you can stick with the older stuff. But I personally benefit from Vista features and thus I'm also using Vista.

Re:Ridiculous.

What ever happened to researching products before buying them?

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.

Re:Ridiculous.

But it is "Vista capable", just not "Full Vista-with-all-eye-candy-features capable".

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".

Re:Ridiculous.

Instead they're selling half a dozen or more version of Vista where eye candy is an option - more so in some than others.

Not quite, only the most expensive versions have the eye candy as an option. And that's the problem. You pay more specifically for the eye candy then aren't able to run it on your Vista Capable machine.

And that doesn't hint at anything? TBH I wouldn't expect my new £50,000 sports car to run well at all on the £60 each cheap tyres I bought for my Fiat Punto.

No, it doesn't hint at anything, certainly not in the way your analogy makes it seem. Microsoft has a history of charging more for versions that can do more, but in the past it's had nothing to do with computer specifications. XP Pro will run just as well on a computer that supports XP Home.

Only if you take marketing at their word and assume (naively) that "capable" means "fully functional of everything" rather than taking the more normal meaning of "capable" which is "it can do it in some way". Capable has an implied undertone of "and not much more". Some of its synonyms imply more than a basic level, but I would always take capable to mean capable, not capable and exceeding the minimum.

I would too, but I still think it's a basis for a lawsuit, and obviously the judge in this case agrees. I just don't think they'll win, for the reason you mentioned.