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California Microsoft Settlement

Posted by timothy on from the settling-for dept.

Lord Prox writes "From news.com.com: A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows. More Townsend and Townsend and Crew is info from the law firm here. Also note... you get vouchers in settlement good for buying computer related items, not just Microsoft products and/or can be traded and converted to cash!"

5 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Cash is king by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows.

    Isn't it great when you're so rich you can break the law, then simply reimburse the people you scammed when, sometimes, they notice and react ? How many people got ripped off and never got their money back because they didn't have the time or energy to fight back big bad Microsoft ?

    Did the hordes of people who wanted to buy bare computers but couldn't find any, and had a Windows license forced down their throats, get their money back yet ?

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. Price of Windows by rmohr02 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So Microsoft admits that they overcharged for the price of Windows--does this mean that the price of Windows will now go down?

  3. What Idiots Negotiated this Deal? by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. Overcharge by $40/copy.
    2. Agree to refund $5 to $29/copy.
    3. Profit!

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  4. Re:Overpaid ? by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I am sure I purchased Microsoft products during the covered period. I don't recall feeling ripped off, nor do I remember anyone making me buy the products.

    Somehow, I suspect lawyers, or someone other than the alleged abused, are getting real money out of this deal and not silly coupons.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  5. Re:more than 90% of desktops... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Hey, when I started elementary school in 1981, computers in school were unheard of. You MAYBE saw a CPM machine. Then the Apple II came out. I remember playing with Apples clear into the 8th grade. I had a PC at home, and most of my friends had Commodore 64's. I programmed in BASIC, porting programs from Apple BASIC and Commodore BASIC to my IBM BASIC box.

    When I started high school the district bought a roomful of PC's networked with Novel Netware. Anyone else remember the big leap (around 11th grade) from DOS based Word Processors to Windows based? Hell I still remember the vulcan-neckpinch commands needed to operate WordPerfect. At this point I was writing device drivers in C for DOS. (Gasp, I still have the reference manual for all of the interrupt handlers for DOS 5 and 6.)

    In college I had to buy a Macintosh. Claris Works was my friend. My junior year they suddenly switched to PC's. I was on Coop an had to navigate MS Office. And just when people started to get good with NT, Linux came out. I moved on to scripting languages and SQL.

    What have I learned from all this? Basically how to learn. Everything else is just details.

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming