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Details of Microsoft's Settlement With Iowa
dringess writes "As reported on Yahoo, Microsoft has settled the suit brought by the State of Iowa. Individuals can collect $16 for each copy of MS-DOS or Windows purchased from 1994-2006, while Office nets $29. No proof of purchase required! Now I can finally get some money from Microsoft!" Here is our original coverage of the settlement.
Afford a PS3... Oh, you said "Purchased", nevermind.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Iowa will provide Microsoft with 1 million ears of corn per year for the next 10 years.
I can prove that I bought a copy of Windows 98! My registration key is
FCKGW....
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
In all seriousness though, how does something like this happen? Will other states follow suit (pun partially intended) for similar benefits?
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
If Microsoft has monopoly power, they ain't equivalents. If they are equivalents, Microsoft ain't got a monopoly.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Iowa relied on the federal antitrust ruling of 2000 which already found Microsoft to be an abusive monopolist. The Iowa's case was only about how much Microsoft has to pay as a compensation for breaking antitrust laws.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Well, Microsoft has had a monopoly for far longer than any free operating system has been on par with desktop features. In the early and mid 90's, Microsoft was a monopoly. Microsoft has retained that monopoly even in the face of competition by erecting artificial barriers to switching away from MS. Microsoft has abused their monopoly position by willfully making it harder for users to migrate their data (and, to a lesser extent, programs) to other systems.
Because Microsoft has control over the data formats and protocols their products use, they are able to unfairly take away consumer freedom of choice.
This was a class-action lawsuit not a state antitrust case. The only thing the State of Iowa had to do with it was that it was in the Iowa court system.
"Under the settlement, Microsoft will provide half of any unclaimed proceeds to the Iowa Department of Education to bridge the digital and technical divide in Iowa schools through the purchase of computer hardware and software."
Great...So the next generation can suffer too... This settlement is nothing more than an MS backdoor into the school system. Why use OSX or Linux when we have a pile of MS stuff here in this box...
100,000 copies of XP which will do longer be supported Dec 2008 anyone?
How is the parent post "off topic?"
He raises a good point. If part of the deal is you must produce the original license most people probably won't be able to do so. Microsoft would be getting off REALLY cheap.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The question now is how do I file to get my refund? Is there any website with any sort of directions?
Businesses are "encouraged" to keep records for at least the past 7 tax/fiscal years. All financially related records.
The company I work for is a small (12 ppl) firm which resells computers with win2k and msofc 2k3. Therefore we truthfully have PoP for probably (say three+) hundreds of copies of each. That's about $45 * 300+ = $13k+? Too bad we're not in Iowa. That's just if we only had 300 PoPs, and I figure it's probably more than that, but I'm being conservative.
2^3 * 31 * 647
http://edge-op.org/iowa/
I also have one but I am not about to publish it for a slashdotting.