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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."
I worked retail during the period "Vista ready" hit the shelves and only a very small handful of machines meet what our team of salespeople would consider to be truly capable of running vista. The whole thing was a total scam to sell as many computers as possible during the typical iteration lull; when a new product is about to release, nobody typically wants the old one. The seriously funny part of Vista's release is how few people wanted it, but MSFT acted like everyone was going to love it, thus proving how out of touch they are with reality. The new Seinfeld ads prove this to be true. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
...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.
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.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Better yet, they've elevated it to an artform. Buying representatives on standards committees, bribing government officials to get rid of FOSS friendly legislation, the list is endless.
When having to choose between monsanto and microsoft as the supreme example of an outright criminal corporation it's a tough choice.
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From ieee.org, and other places: Unfortunately, 158 pages of internal Microsoft emails by employees like Michael Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management, tends to undercut Microsoft's insistence that there was nothing misleading with Vista. Nash wrote that he "personally got burned" by buying a laptop that was labeled as Windows Vista Capable: "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine." If their advertising can fool a VP then it surely can fool the plaintiffs. I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
anyone who's been reading Slashdot since "Longhorn" started development would know that Microsoft had always intended for Vista to have different levels of UI capabilities depending on the hardware it is running on. that's not news to anyone here, and even without the fine print most Slashdotters wouldn't equate the "Vista Capable/Ready" sticker with "Aero Capable."
however, and this is a pretty big however, we're not the average consumer. unless you're a tech geek, you're not going to know these details about Vista, or know what Aero even is. just like unless you're a car-buff you're probably not going to know what kind of engine your new car has other than that it's a V4/V6/V8. should a car-buyer know the internal workings of the vehicle they are looking to purchase? i think that's debatable. but in this case it's completely besides the point.
consumers were clearly misled in this case with a combination of deceptive actions on the part of Microsoft:
you can't have it both ways. you either advertise your product as clearly having multiple tiers, or you deliver the full "premium" experience which includes all of the features advertised.
and, IANAL, but i don't think fine print by itself is sufficient defense against false advertisement charges. i highly doubt that there's anyone out there who's never missed a line of fine print, either in a contract they're signing, a TV commercial they watched, a magazine ad they glanced over, or (in this case "fast talking") a radio commercial. the very nature of fine print/fast talking makes it impossible, or at least impractical, for an ordinary human-being (as opposed to the radioactively-enhanced type) to catch all of the information businesses try to slip past consumers. just like it's impractical for a consumer to become an expert on every product they're looking to purchase.