Bought and paid for....

M$ lawyers can be proud of themselves...

A dead duck then?

Looks that way.

If you can't get any money out of the monster, stop putting money IN, people!

,,,(allegedly).

America definitely has the best judges money can buy..

I am implying nothing.. what you infer is your own business.

AC because...

Well, what did you expect...?

I think what you are seeing here is just how much money Microsoft put into lawyers and advertising rather than research and development (and yes I am aware a recent shareholder revolt on the supposed frivolous expenditure on R and D that lead to nothing profitable).

And to Microsoft's apologist in residence (Anonymous Coward, never was a moniker so apt), people do get mighty ticked off when they see that the law of the land can be bought by the corporate elite. Civil or criminal, the outcome sold to the highest bidder.

Divide and Conquer

What do you expect in a country that now wears corruption as a badge of honour?

When a country becomes morally bankrupt (and then ethically bankrupt) then be sure that financial bancruptcy is not far behind.

MS is untouchable because the NSA have marked it as so as part of its GWoT

MS is allowed free rein and in return MS use Windows as a backdoor into (almost) every PC around the world for the spooks.

Plenty of trade secrets/corporate espionage have probably been made available to the spooks as part of this cosy agreement.

So the ability to spy on almost every PC in the world outweighs the odd user who has been hoodwinked into buying a barely capable PC for the shipped OS.

Billy boy because the Back Helicopters icon is gone :(

Good

Now, instead of one Vista-Incapable suit there could be 100 million. That should finish M$.

What was the judge thinking? hundreds of millions of copies sold and there is no class???

Linux capable

Oh yes, all PCs are "Linux capable", oh you wanted to run your wireless pcmcia card x? oh yes you can, it's Linux capable, I'll even give you the source code to complile, trevor from bulgaria wrote a patch for it, oh yes don't forget to to set --X-pass-7bit-arseitch-Opt55=HexOverflowHack or it won't work, oh yes and you'll need the extra include files, I'll give you the web site reference, they're probably still up and running, apt get this apt get that, yes you can use your TV tuner card, just put a copy of the bios in folder Z and it will load it on boot, oh that doesn't work... strange, it's meant to, perhaps you should consult the support people... oh dear....

Imagine if these moaners were "sold" a Linux system instead (like the woman who bought the Dell PC) would they a. give up and install windows or b. try and sue somebody? some people have no perspective.

Rabid Capitalism Sinking further into the MIre ..... Truth Quicksands

Is that a running scared, tacit admission of guilt, with the very real likelihood of them losing in Open Court and/or a slap on the wrists for "ambulance chasing" lawyers?

Well...

I'm not a Microsoft fan at all - not at all. However, playing Devil's Advocate, those stickers only said "Vista Capable," not "Vista Premium plus the Aero interface Capable." And technically, those machines COULD run Windows Vista... albeit maybe the most basic version sans Aero, but still Windows Vista. Was it shifty marketing? Absolutely, what else do you expect? Was it illegal? No.

Mixed feelings

I'm disappointed that Microsoft won't have to bankrupt itself paying people off for the Vista Capable debacle. But personal feelings aside, I'm forced to admit the judge is right. The majority of people who got vista capable notebooks probably don't *want* Vista. And some of the ones who do are probably OK with Vista Basic (its cheaper after all) So a class action suit isn't really appropriate.

I knew it

I said it while this whole thing was going on a couple times here on El Reg that this is what would happen. M$ has pockets deep enough to make the Marianas trench look like a pot hole in the street. I knew this wouldn't ever materialize into a suite that could really squeeze MS, and now today with the finest judge money can buy it comes true.

Oh well it made for some nice wishful thinking for a while.

@Mike

" Imagine if these moaners were "sold" a Linux system instead (like the woman who bought the Dell PC) would they a. give up and install windows or b. try and sue somebody? some people have no perspective."

You are so right.

Looks like not all MS apologists respond as 'anonymous coward'.

My 'perspective' would be c) customer happily runs Ubuntu linux, has no viruses, all their hardware works out of the box and at a very nice pace as well. Customer then trades in the unused Vista licence at the newly opened MS Store around the corner to get their MS tax back.

@TimNevins

<----

maybe your psychotic illusions has affected your sight too, because the black helicopter icon is alive and well...

HD Ready

How is PC labeled as "Vista Capable" any different to TVs being labeled as "HD Ready"? Neither of which says you are given that function (Vista or HD), just that if you CHOOSE to buy the option (Vista, or Sky HD etc) its guaranteed to work, I don't think they have a leg to stand on, and rightly so.

No Lawsuit against M$ will go anywhere

in the US of A. M$ owns too many politicians/judges there for there to be any other outcome. Makes me sad though, this obvious miscarriage of justice.

I see above people are agreeing that this should not be a class action suit. I disagree as any advertisements for Vista that I saw always showed Vista with all the eye-candy and I don't recall the adds going into any depth about the 6 or 8 levels? of Vista. So I disagree with those who think this is not class actionable, I believe that those adds were purposefully misleading.

Judge is a Moron

This judge is just another M$ sweetheart. While the truth is that anyone with half a tech brain should no what the constraints are the truth is that even within the tech-world there are those who don't understand hardware that well & with the ongoing changes that are occurring within the hardware industry on a moment-by-moment basis the truth is that not everyone truly understands. The fact is that M$ did mislead people. The vast majority of the population do not understand what memory is as opposed to a hard drive let alone the CPU. As far as video card capability is concerned their understanding is zero, zip, nuffin. I'd bet the judge has problems with this stuff & so when M$ played him he was hooked completely.

The vast majority of people are over 30 years of age & in fact the majority are over 40. For those over 50, there was never a computer at school, the first I ever saw was just a large calculator with one memory space & about 10" square. How would these people unless they had spent several years focussed on computing know anything about the hardware. They're told they can have an upgrade of memory but do they actually know what the memory does? Most of them have not a clue. Many of those over 40 have minimal knowledge. My partner of 45 requires a computer for her business. It has taken her 3 years to learn how to create a word document. She hardly realises the difference between saving a file on the hard drive as opposed to saving it on a USB drive. She just doesn't get it. I'm not criticising her but what I am saying is that there are many people like this who just don't get it at all.

The judge is wrong.