back to article 'Vista Capable' judge tosses class-action status - again

Microsoft scored a second significant victory in the “Vista Capable” lawsuit late on Friday, after a federal judge declined to restore class-action status in the long-running case against the software giant. According to ComputerWorld, US District Court Judge Marsha Pechman denied a motion by the plaintiffs to recertify a …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't get it.

    Did the stickers say "Vista Premium Capable"? No.

    You may as well sue sky for selling you a box that is capable of showing premiership football, but won't do it because you haven't paid for that package.

    Are these people holding MS responsible for their own stupidity?

  2. Michael
    Happy

    caveat eptor

    they bought vista....despite the warnings

    That is all.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC

    "Are these people holding MS responsible for their own stupidity?"

    In a word, yes!

    If there were any case to answer, surely it would be against the vendors of the hardware, who actually stated it was Vista ready?

  4. Charles

    The tag is "Vista Preferred"

    Thing is, when you buy something that says it's capable, common sense dictates you should be able to use it fully (it's not just Aero that's as issue but also DirectX 10 and other key multimedia features). It's like buying a "road-worthy" car only to learn it's not allowed on motorways. Now, if the tag had said "Vista Limited", that would be truth enough to leave the user high and dry.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Forget Microsoft

    Get a MAC...

  6. Pete Smith
    Stop

    What's the fuss?

    I built a homebrew PC back in 2005, using standard, non-top-end parts - Athlon 64 3500, 1Gb of RAM, ATI X800 graphics card - certainly not the best quality/speed stuff out there.

    I was using this, running Vista since RC1 (or was it Beta 1?). I run at 1600*1200, 32bpp, with all fancy bits turned up to the max, cleartype fonts, shadows etc.

    It ran absolutely fine, until I upgraded it (or rather kept the case, monitor, DVD etc) in Jan 2009. The only real reason was that Farcry 2 wasn't running as fast as I'd like, and I'd had a HDD failure that meant the drive couldn't be seen at boot time, when booting off it. It was visible to Windows, so I added an IDE drive that held the boot stuff, and booted the OS off the flaky drive.

    Whoever was building these PCs, 12-24 months after mine became obsolete that were incapable of running Vista is taking the mickey. Probably some cheap a*se integrated, all-in-one motherboard, built down to a price, inadequate RAM, pitiful graphics, and generic processor. (Just like the Evesham one my in-laws bought. They've now got an iMac, which sits upstairs in its shrine, totally unused, while they still use the 8 year old heap of crap downstairs!)

    One thing that I would say is that 2Gb of RAM is vital. It's a bit slow with all the effects turned on with only 1Gb.

    Pete.

  7. Adam
    Paris Hilton

    @AC 12:51

    "Get a MAC..."

    What, from the company that claims their computer works with high-definition video... oh, except you can only burn it TO bluray, you can't actually play video FROM bluray!!!

    It runs Vista, thus it is Vista capable. Can't fault Microsoft on that one can you?

    Jeez, if people are this upset that they bought a cheap computer, what on earth do they do when they find their £4,000 Dacia Sandero isn't as fast as a £100,000 Ferrari?

    Paris, because the same people would probably try to return their wife after finding she doesn't do everything Ms Hilton might...

  8. Colin Morris
    Stop

    1000 versions of Vista

    Since Microsoft released 1000's of versions of Vista (including Vista Home Basic Garbage... whatever its called) The machines WERE Vista capable. It may be hard to accept to the many of us who think Microsoft are abusing their position but it's a fact.

    Microsoft have been typically sneaky barstewards here but I agree that they don't really have a case to answer in this case unfortunately.....

  9. Mike

    @Charles

    >>>>Thing is, when you buy something that says it's capable, common sense dictates you should be able to use it fully (it's not just Aero that's as issue but also DirectX 10 and other key multimedia features). It's like buying a "road-worthy" car only to learn it's not allowed on motorways. Now, if the tag had said "Vista Limited", that would be truth enough to leave the user high and dry.<<<<

    Why don't you people get it? look at it round the other way just because an OS has a feature it doesn't mean that the hardware HAS to support it?

    Vista supports readyboost - what if you have no USB thumbdrive?

    Vista supports IR devices - what if you have no IR port?

    Vista supports serial/parallel ports - what if you don't have these?

    Vista supports hibernate - what if your MB is not capable?

    Vista supports DX10 - what if you don't have a gutsy enough GFX card?

    Can you imagine the kind of machine you would need to support every feature of Vista? (SCSI/Camera/Serial/Parallel/USB/Firewire/ISDN/Modem/Tokenring/Scanner/webphone/wireless etc.)

    "Vista Capable" is an accurate description - maybe it would have been better to have idiot cards explaining what it means, but maybe, just maybe a buyer ought to have some responsibility for what they are buying and realise there is a difference between a £300 laptop and a £450 one without assuming the £300 is "a much better deal".

    btw. any car that can go 30mph can go on a motorway, but can you imagine the traffic problems that would be caused by a car doing 30mph on a motorway? it would be perfectly legal but not very practical (sound familiar?).

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Ah, a Microsoft victory

    Let them savor it - soon they'll have to come to grips with how Win 7 doesn't sell.

  11. Dave

    @Pete Smith

    It is my understanding that most of the PC's involved in the case that were sold as "Vista Capable" came with Intel integrated graphics cores. I dont remember which core, I915 or I845 I think, at any rate a core that is barely DX9 so there was no hope of running Aero. At least you had a dedicated graphics card in your machine so yeah, I would expect Aero to run, but on the crappy Intel graphics... no such luck! In fact if I remember correctly, MS revised down the minimum specs for Intel and internal emails / docs said that that would cause problems. And the reason for doing that was that Intels Vista supporting integrated graphics were not ready by the launch date.

    Anyhew: I am not sure which way I stand. Part of me says yes the people shouldn't have been so bleedin' stupid, but the other says that MS did mislead people with respect to the Capable vs Ready program, but they did so at the request of one of their partners and for that they should be slapped.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The only ones who care ar the lawyers

    The lawyers are the only ones who care about "Class Action" status - without it, they won't make any money, even if they will the case. The actual plaintiffs won't be any worse off without the status (except that their ambulance chasing lawyers mightn't bother showing up to work).

  13. John Angelico
    Gates Horns

    @colin morris

    [quote]

    It may be hard to accept to the many of us who think Microsoft are abusing their position but it's a fact.

    Microsoft have been typically sneaky barstewards here but I agree that they don't really have a case to answer in this case unfortunately.....

    [/quote]

    Given that a leopard doesn't change its spots, we would agree that the basic proposition is plausible (ie. that the "Vista Capable" sticker was meant to snare people into buying the hardware, pending Vista release and that theoretically they would be able to run Vista).

    However, this is all about MS avoiding the legally provable case ie. they don't want the mud to stick.

    The rules for proved monopolists *are* different...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It was a misleading marketing exercise

    If I remember correctly, Vista was not ready for release in time for the Xmas market and so MS put up the marketting plan to sell to include free Vista when it became available.

    As part of the plan some PCs/laptops were blazoned Vista ready or Vista Capable so that they could attract buyers.

    It then turned out that the minimum spec released by MS that had to be matched to allow the Vista Capable logo to be employed was far too low to achieve the results portrayed by movies and demos of the soon to be released Vista product.

    OK the hardware vendors were misleading in their claims, but they were adhering to the MS requirements and MS are the ones who now how much is really required to achieve a simple task. So the HW vendors were either misled by MS or in collaboration with MS were allowed to use misleading claims on their hardware to maximise their selling potential.

    The average consumer does not have a clue what Vista is other than something that comes with the computer, they do not understand the differences between versions especially prior to release. Some of us still don't!

    Meanwhile the consumers who bought a PC/laptop for Xmas thinking that within a couple of months it would be running the flashy OS promised in marketing blurb by MS have been ripped off. Would they have been willing to pay such a high price for the device had they known that it would not do what they had been led to believe? Probably not.

    Many end consumers were ripped off and the root of the problem originated with the misleading Vista capable spec released by MS, unfortunately for the complainants, hardware manufacturers are unlikely to add their weight as it may influence future oem deals with MS.

    Does sound like the judge is a big MS fan, however it could be that the complainants' team have not done their homework and put together the right case and evidence.

  15. Peter Kay

    'Motorway capable'

    Since people like Charles insist on using a car analogy, it's possible to buy a moped and drive it on the motorway (at 30mph, provided you have a full motorbike license). You'd be mad to do so, but it is 'motorway capable' ;).

    It's been extensively documented that Intel twisted Microsoft's arm to allow their substandard graphics chipsets to be marked as capable of supporting Vista.

    In any case the machines were still capable of running Vista - just not very well, in the cases where the manufacturers supplied insufficient memory and stuck on lots of crap.

    I'm sure no other companies would ever do the same thing, such as 'HD Ready' on TV sets for instance - something they still do to this day.

    The consumers bought a piece of crap and got burnt. They should be complaining to the manufacturers - not Microsoft.

  16. Mike

    Re: It was a misleading marketing exercise

    How much wrongness can you fit in a post!

    You make so many statements with no basis in fact such as "Many end consumers were ripped off", but lets focus on your assertion "Meanwhile the consumers who bought a PC/laptop for Xmas thinking that within a couple of months it would be running the flashy OS promised in marketing blurb by MS have been ripped off."

    How many people bought a PC before Christmas because Vista was coming? let's be clear about this, how many people would not have bought the PC without the promise of Vista? Ignore the fact that the possibility of getting cash out of microsoft makes people say "Oh yes.... I was taken in".

    OK, you're assuming/implying that this would leave a significant number of people? (I'm not convinced, nor have I ever heard first hand from a single person who considers themself "ripped off").

    BUT, lets imagine there is someone (I believe there's six people in this world who consider themselves such, hence the lawsuit), these people must have seen a PC running Vista, gone into a shop (or online store), seen the "Vista Capable" sticker and assumed that the PC attached could do everything that the PC in the advert could do?

    With me still? see the flaw yet? if you buy something that is not identical to something that you saw then it may be different in some respect. The "Vista is Vista assumption" is like saying I put petrol in my Honda Blackbird and can go 185mph so why can't my girlfriends Dawoo Matiz do 185mph when I put identical petrol in it?

    I am a great believer in "Caveat Emptor", if you spend money on something then you should understand what you are buying, if it's not important enough to research then you do not deserve any recourse (when I give people my money, I want to know what I'm getting for it, if I could get the same thing cheaper or if I could get more for the same money), this whole debacle would have been solved by the buyer asking "will this one do what I saw the other one do on the advert?" - the Vista six are either greedy or stupid (possibly both).

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