California Microsoft Settlement

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!"

Comments

In exchange for the $1.1 Billion

[Anonymous Coward]

California agrees to a ten year, $10 billion Microsoft contract.

Overpaid ?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I pirated a copy and feel ripped off !!

Re:Overpaid ?

[NotQuiteReal]

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.

Convenient

[sirmikester]

Cnet says : Two-thirds of the unclaimed money will go to California public schools in a mix of donated Microsoft software and cash grants."

Microsoft should make it a habit of getting sued by states so that it can spread its software into the schools more effectively. I'm sure that the cash is also tax deductible. You go Bill!

Cash is king

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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 ?

Price of Windows

[rmohr02]

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

Judge declares M$ dividend!

[mnmlst]

Is this some kind of attempt to get M$ moving on the rumoured increases in its' dividend rate? Were the California shareholders just excessively impatient?

Of course, after living in California a few years now, I can assure you that you had better be a Microsoft-sized company if you expect to survive here. The place is insanely litigous, the State Senate and State Assembly routinely pass absurd legislation that inflicts high costs on companies gullible enough to do business here, and the cost of living is driving this place into a two-tiered society; the wealthy and those who serve them.

Consider this just one more warning to other businesses tempted by this fabled "market of 34 million consumers". Chalk up this settlement next to hundreds of others, the recent tripling of workman's compensation insurance premiums (which is driving out hundreds of small companies and manufacturers), and the recent brilliance of our state government regarding taxes. The state's income tax system is very "progressive" meaning that high earners are heavily taxed and lesser earners are not taxed at all. Our brilliant legislature recently opted only to increase the income tax rates on the high earners. This is the very approach that got us in such a budget mess in the first place. The low earners vote for dozens of unaccountable spending programs that are paid for by the high earners. When the high earners get clobbered (read NASDAQ collapses onto Silicon Valley), the state government goes begging to support all those programs. Eventually, the state will be entirely populated by a wealthy few, some inland farmers, and those who serve the wealthy and depend on government programs to cope with the uniformly high cost of living. At least the ailing public schools will have a few copies of Windows 98 "donated" by Microsith. Be sure to check out microsith.com!

Hey Californians, last one out, turn off the lights!

Re:more than 90% of desktops...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

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.

I have an idea!

[Mike Schiraldi]

Cool, man. When the tobacco companies were getting sued left and right a decade ago, they should have negotiated a settlement where they donated cigarettes to schools.