Court to Microsoft: Vista Capable Appeal Denied
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 23.4.2008
An appeals court ruled against Microsoft's request to appeal class action status in the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit – the case will continue
Microsoft took another hit on the legal front Monday when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to let the software behemoth appeal a ruling by the judge in the so-called "Vista Capable" lawsuit that had granted the plaintiffs class action status.
In a brief, one-paragraph order, the appeals court denied Microsoft's request to appeal Judge Marsha Pechman's February 2008 ruling expanding the case into a class action.
The denial effectively lifts a stay that Judge Pechman granted to Microsoft in early April while the request for appeal was still pending.
Judge Pechman's stay halted discovery in the case, a welcome respite for Microsoft, which had been roundly embarrassed when Pechman unsealed 158 pages of previously sealed evidence, mostly executives' e-mails, in late February.
Whether the denial of Microsoft's request to appeal and the lifting of the stay will put the case back on schedule isn't clear. The case was originally scheduled for October, however, the discovery process – halted by the stay – will now likely restart.
A deceptive campaign?
The case revolves around claims that Microsoft's so-called "Windows Vista Capable" marketing campaign, promulgated to help keep the bottom from falling out from under the PC market during the 2006 holiday season, was deceptive. Allegations by the plaintiffs argue that Microsoft's "Vista Capable" sticker on the boxes deliberately mislead consumers to believe that new PCs that they bought prior to Vista's consumer delivery on January 30, 2007, could be upgraded to run higher-end editions of Vista that feature the Aero Glass user interface and other graphics intensive features of the operating system.
Instead, the plaintiffs say, Vista Capable only meant that those PCs could run the very lowest-end edition of Vista, which doesn't support those graphical capabilities. The suit was originally filed a year ago and the plaintiffs later requested the suit be expanded into a class action. The judge agreed and Microsoft requested an appeal. Now that request has been denied so the case will move forward as a class action.
Microsoft's response to the ruling was pro forma. source:
internetnews.com
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Comments(8)
power to the people!
my "vista ready" pc has 2 gigs of system ram & 288 mb of total video ram with vista
premium installed & still can't run areo-glass.
do you know if your graphics card has a wddm driver? without it, aero will not run
regradless of your sweet hardware. i'd suggest digging through the manufacturer's
website cuz some of them make it hard to find drivers that aren't the most popular
downloads.
on another note, to all beginner computer users: which sounds
better, "vista capable" or "vista premium ready"? even if i had no clue what those two
ratings are, the word "premium" sounds better to me than "capable" or whatever other
word microsoft could've used. that's why this law suit is frivolous. just a bunch of
lazy americans looking to get rich quick. their only real claim is that they're too
ignorant and lazy to learn what microsoft meant by those two system ratings.
the fact that their stupidity is being reported publicly only reinforces the reason why
maybe they should go back to using those clunky machines that when you hit a key, a little
hammer hits a ribbon and makes a print on a piece of paper...what are those called? hahaha
hear hear
i believe you are going way over the facts here. first of all, you can't pretend
everyone out there is a computer literate and microsoft knows that. otherwise they
wouldn’t be selling the most popular os when there are free alternatives that are equal
(not to say better) in what productivity concerns. the ones you called "ignorant" are
the same people that put their money on microsoft's products and pump up their profits
throughout the years. it seems that your approach to this situation is the result of not
being informed of what has happened and/or what microsoft did in order to "help" their
partners to sell products as in the case of intel, for example. at the same time, the
so-called "windows vista capable" marketing campaign was confusing even for microsoft’s
own crew (employees). now you tell me they are not computer literate individuals and you
will prove yourself wrong over again.
it would be fun as well to start selling
windows xp “capable” pcs. let’s say slot1 (pentium ii, pentium iii, celeron) with 64 mb
ram. wouldn’t’ it be? i mean, according to microsoft, pcs with such hardware specs are
“capable” of running windows xp. at what cost? well, give it yourself a try and let us
know about your wonderful xp experience in such hardware configuration. obviously, this
isn’t the best comparison but it could be a fare approach according to your post.
as
i see it, “capable” and “premium” deliberately mislead consumers to believe that new pcs
that they bought prior to vista's delivery were, in fact, good computers able to run
windows vista at its maximum splendor. why didn’t they call it basic pcs and premium pcs
when they were delivering “capable” pcs with windows vista home basic? why didn’t they
explain to the customers what a home basic pc had to offer them as they did afterwards
trying to hide the embarrassment?
yes, pointing to home basic pcs as “capable” pcs
was a great move to create confusion to the end customer (the ones you call ignorant)
creating an atmosphere of unspecified terminology that could be interpreted differently by
every individual, especially those that are not computer literate as i mentioned before
(the same people you called ignorant god knows for what reasons).
as far as i’m
concerned “capability” is the sum of expertise and capacity. windows vista’s new gui
(called windows aero) is something that windows vista “capable” pcs are incapable of
running in most cases. what does it mean? it means that microsoft took vendors’ hardware
capabilities to advertise windows vista (even when they don’t sell the hardware) instead
of limiting their campaign advertisements to the features vista delivers within each
version of the os.
windows vista “capable” pcs should have been advertised as
windows vista home basic “capable” pcs, something that they didn’t do because of the
negative repercussion it might had in their sales, hence creating confusion “was the right
thing to do”.
to summarize, it is fare (and logical) to look at it this way:
-----windows vista------ is the new os from microsoft. this os comes in five different
flavors to meet different user’s expectations and make it affordable for each individual.
home basic (features)
home premium (features +)
vista business (features
++)
vista enterprise (features +++)
vista ultimate (features ++++)
a
---------windows vista----------------- “capable pc” is a pc with the capability of
running windows vista, hence “it is capable of running all five different versions”.
depending on the version you buy, you will be able to run –less- or –more- features
of the os. i’ll take the time to explain my point of view and give you a more simple
approach to what we are facing here:
microsoft is selling “features” separately in
each version of their os, windows vista. if i install windows vista home basic in my
computer (aero capable) i won’t have the chance to experience the aero interface or any
other features not included in th
microsoft is selling “features” separately in each version of their os, windows vista.
if i install windows vista home basic in my computer (aero capable) i won’t have the
chance to experience the aero interface or any other features not included in the basic
because i bough windows vista home basic (it has limited “features” and doesn’t offer the
aero gui). that’s the reason why i will have to buy one of the other versions of the os to
be able to run the aero gui but it is certainly not related to my pc’s hardware
capabilities. or is it microsoft going to sell to us windows vista ultimate at the price
of windows vista home basic because we bough high end products from intel, ati-amd and so
on? of course not, sir! their sales will be based on their own products’ features and they
have a different price tag because of it.
i’m just another it guy going for a rant.
by the way, the little hammer that hits a ribbon and makes a print on a piece
of paper were not pcs but typewriters and printers such as impact printers, daisy-wheel
printers and dot-matrix printers.
god bless you
i'm sorry guys, my previous post was related to yoyoma's post and not to packedfunk
at microsoft:
ha ha!
Add a Comment
Hit 'em Hard!
By crapintosh on 24.04.2008 - 02:04