Discovery on hold in 'Vista capable' lawsuit

A lawsuit against Microsoft that's already unveiled several juicy tidbits about the company is on hold, according to Ars Technica.

In late February, a U.S. District judge in Seattle ruled that consumers could move forward with a class-action lawsuit over the manner in which Microsoft advertised computers leading up to the release of its Windows Vista operating system. Microsoft is appealing that decision, and any further disclosures will be on hold pending the review by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, according to the report.

The lawsuit revolves around customers' complaints that PCs they bought had been advertised as "Windows Vista capable," but turned out to be capable of running only the Home Basic version of Vista, which lacks the fancypants Aero graphics technology. It turns out computers needed to be "Vista Premium Ready" to run the full-blown versions of Vista. The court will need to determine whether Microsoft knowingly created confusion over the capabilities of PCs sold with these labels just before the release of Vista.

Over the course of the suit, a few salacious details have trickled out. First came an e-mail by Microsoft executive Mike Nash complaining about his own confusion over buying a laptop labeled as "Vista capable" and feeling burned when he found it couldn't run the multimedia programs he wanted. "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine," he wrote. The lawsuit also led to the embarrassing revelation that Intel had pressured Microsoft into creating the two-tiered marketing campaign so Intel could sell its lower-end chipsets.

[Penguinisto]

Eh?

It's not Intel's fault. Microsoft made the decision on whether or not to put a sticker on the chipsets in question, not Intel. If Vista sucked so much (It does), then perhaps they should have delayed it or simply said "no".<br /><br /><br />/P

[Mercury23]

Aero is not Vista

I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that Aero is not Vista. If it's Vista capable, and it ran Vista Home Basic, then the sticker was correct. If you want the fancy graphics that come with Aero, then why in gods name are you relying on onboard graphics. While you may not have much of a choice in the laptop market for changing out your graphics, in the desktop world, there's no excuse. Slap in a video card and be done with it. You can get some older Nvidia 7x cards for $50 now and that will run Aero. <br /><br />Last time I checked, it was cheaper to spend $50 on a video card than spend all the time and money on lawsuits.

[Vegaman_Dan]

nVidia is involved as well

It's not nearly as simple as you would make it sound. A lot of this is involving the third party hardware OEM's pushing to get that sticker on their equipment even though it wasn't passing the tests. That will cause problems in the lawsuit as well. Will MS then have to sue nVidia, Intel, etc? <br /><br />Nobody knows the full extent of this situation and any guesses by you or me are just that- guesses. There is no evidence yet pro or con since the case isn't at that stage.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Reason for the hold: Jurisdiction

The story doesn't mention it, but the cited source does. <br /><br />There is a question as to whether or not the court handling this lawsuit even has the authority to work the case since one of the plaintiffs is not a resident of Washington State. If they proceed and it is later determined that the State of Washington doesn't have jurisdiction for this out of state claim, then the entire case would be thrown out of court and all that time and effort spent wasted.<br /><br />Right now it's being researched for jurisdiction issues and to ensure it can go forward without having it all overturned later as a moot point.

[Dalkorian]

sorry

I'm sorry, but I have no pity for the fools who plopped money <br />down for fista or fista capable or fista ready junk. Buy M$ - get <br />raped. It's been that way for years and won't change any time <br />soon. What makes people think they can sleep with Darth Vader <br />and then complain that he doesn't treat them nicely?<br /><br />You know that all these fista capable and fista ready and fista <br />certified computer will run Linux without issue. I'm a fan of <br />Ubuntu because of it's ease of use and the fact that it seems to <br />"just work" in more cases than not. Linux does have issues too, <br />but at least you own your own machine instead of giving the bill <br />absolute control over it (cough cough ... wga ... cough cough ... <br />drm). Oh, did I forget to mention that Linux doesn't cost quite <br />as much as fista?<br /><br />On the other hand, some people like pain and suffering. <br />Bondage is quite popular with many people; it's just funny that <br />most people who are into bondage don't sit there and cry and <br />whine about it like a 5 year old.

[TedInAK]

Is Microsoft Resonsible?

Here's the crux of my question (not yet sure myself of where MS's liability is in this lawsuit):<br /><br />Me (a nobody) makes a computer, slaps a sticker labeled "Vista Capable" (approved by Microsoft) on it, sells it to you. Am I legally liable for misleading you, or is MS the one to blame?<br /><br />Sure, you could sue me (and get nothing), or sue MS, so it's obvious who the lawyers would target. But I believe that were I the one to mislead you, I should be the one being sued, regardless if I'm the "big ticket" lawsuit that a lawyer is always seeking. Making it class action against MS is a *huge* bonus. Sure, the court could just as easily make the class-action against me, instead of a deep-pockets corp like MS, but I guarantee you no self-respecting lawyer would look twice at me...no big $$$.<br /><br />So, ask yourself this. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft, did they cheat you, or did I?