Comments on: Discovery on hold in 'Vista capable' lawsuit

A judge has paused a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over the way it advertised PCs leading up to the release of Windows Vista, pending an appeal.

[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".


/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.

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?

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.

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.

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
down for fista or fista capable or fista ready junk. Buy M$ - get
raped. It's been that way for years and won't change any time
soon. What makes people think they can sleep with Darth Vader
and then complain that he doesn't treat them nicely?

You know that all these fista capable and fista ready and fista
certified computer will run Linux without issue. I'm a fan of
Ubuntu because of it's ease of use and the fact that it seems to
"just work" in more cases than not. Linux does have issues too,
but at least you own your own machine instead of giving the bill
absolute control over it (cough cough ... wga ... cough cough ...
drm). Oh, did I forget to mention that Linux doesn't cost quite
as much as fista?

On the other hand, some people like pain and suffering.
Bondage is quite popular with many people; it's just funny that
most people who are into bondage don't sit there and cry and
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):

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?

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 $$$.

So, ask yourself this. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft, did they cheat you, or did I?