Microsoft Sued Over Vista Marketing

daviddennis writes "According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a lawsuit alleges that Microsoft engaged in deceptive practices by letting PC makers promote hardware as 'Windows Vista Capable' even though they knew it could not run most of Vista's widely-promoted features. Microsoft responds by saying that the differences have been promoted with one of the most extensive marketing pushes in company history. 'In sum, Microsoft engaged in bait and switch -- assuring consumers they were purchasing Vista Capable machines when, in fact, they could obtain only a stripped-down operating system lacking the functionality and features that Microsoft advertised as Vista ... As a result, the suit said, people were buying machines that couldn't run the real Vista.'"

Comments

Gates is on the hook too

[ktappe]

The suit also alleges that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates contributed to the company's "deceptive marketing" during a Jan. 29 appearance on the "Today" show, when he said that PC users could upgrade to Windows Vista for less than $100. "In fact, one can only 'upgrade' to Home Basic for that price, which Mr. Gates and Microsoft know is a product that lacks the features marketed by Microsoft as being Vista," the suit said.

It would be interesting to see Bill get deposed on this one. My main question is how long will it take for this to get to court. Class actions are notoriously slow-moving cases. By the time they get there, nobody will care. And any settlement, if history repeats itself, will just be a $50 certificate applicable to the cost of the next version of Windows.

Re:1 GB RAM is the minimum for windows

[PopeRatzo]

at its core (you know, the new driver model, dx10, etc) its only a little bigger than its predecessor.

Exactly. The fact that Vista is ANY bigger than its predecessor tells me everything I need to know about it. Do you think Microsoft is serving customer demands when it makes each successive operating system bigger and requiring more resources? Do you think customers are demanding that a computer should slow down just because you upgraded your operating system?

I've got a brand new PC that's right in the sweet spot for Vista performance. Yet, Windows XP runs faster and better on it than Vista. So how can anyone possibly say that Vista is "better"?

The entire PC industry is so tied to Microsoft that they don't have to even pretend to make each operating system better than the one before. All they have to do is get the PC makers to sign contracts saying that they'll put Windows on all of their new computers. Then, they sell big organizations on the idea that they need the latest software, which requires the latest OS, which requires a faster computer.

Net benefit to consumers? Negative. We are the consumables.

DX10

[Nom du Keyboard]

Consiering that Vista is really based on DirectX 10 graphics, and the only card that pretends to have it (Nvidia G8800) has virtually unusable Vista drivers, can any system claim to be full Vista Ready?