Microsoft Moves To Quash Case, End E-mail Revelations

CWmike writes "Microsoft asked a federal judge yesterday to end the class-action lawsuit that has been the source of a treasure trove of embarrassing insider e-mails covering everything from managers badmouthing Intel to others on who worried how Vista would be compared to Apple's Mac OS X in 2005. In seeking to end the case, Microsoft argues the plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the lowest-priced version of Windows Vista was not the 'real' Vista, or showed that users paid more for PCs prior to the new operating system's launch because of the Vista Capable campaign."

Comments

Re:Thanks For Modding It Troll You FAGs

[nawcom]

Oh come on you dumb mods, why can't you recognize sarcasm?

Re:I've always hated the practice...

[Dutch Gun]

Are you saying you wanted a Bill Gates-looking punching bag with your Windows Vista Ultimate Edition for when your computer crashes?

I've been developing on Vista for about a year and a half. In all that time, on either my laptop or desktop machine, Vista has never crashed on me. Nowadays, jokes about Microsoft OS instability simply paints you as a) an anti-Microsoft zealot, and/or b) someone who hasn't used Windows in recent years.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Microsoft and its products. But there are also things that Microsoft is really good at. Why make stuff up?

Re:I've always hated the practice...

[jlarocco]

...of selectively disabling features in a software product and selling a product at a lower price. It's a bit different for things in the real world, where there's a real physical cost involved with adding extra do-dads and features to products. But in software, it's just flipping a few bits to remove features you've already developed. The crazy thing is, it actually costs *more* to do this, as the company now has multiple versions of the product to package, distribute, and support.

Since when is there no cost to writing software?

I'd much prefer the game industry's model of "premium versions" of a game containing extra bonuses. The core product is the same, but if you want to pay for it, you can get a few extras, maybe a "making of" DVD, or a CD containing the soundtrack, books and figurines, stuff like that.

How is that different than what you're complaining about? Isn't the "core product" just the "premium version" with the extra bits removed?

It definitely wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft is doing it wrong, but in most cases everybody benefits when people can pay for just the parts they want. The software company sells an extra copy of their software, and the customer gets just the software they need, for less money. I'm really not seeing what there is to complain about.