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Ballmer Ordered To Testify In 'Vista Capable' Case

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the take-the-stand-monkey-man dept.

alphadogg writes "A federal judge in Seattle has ordered Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to testify in a class action lawsuit against Microsoft that alleges the company misled consumers in a marketing campaign for its Windows Vista operating system in which computers sold with an older Microsoft OS were labeled 'Vista Capable' when in fact they could only run a basic version of Vista. Ballmer has unique personal knowledge of facts surrounding the case, therefore he must face questioning, Judge Marsha Pechman of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle ruled, according to court documents released late Friday."

4 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. So? by FredFredrickson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Although it seems misleading.. Vista Basic is still vista. Why is this still going on?

    Because people feel like Aero was a major selling feature? And that without Aero, Vista is not distinguisable from XP? I'd say that the difference is major, and is very much public knowledge, much to Microsoft's chagrin.

    So what's the argument? That MS's ad campaign led you to believe anything over the "vista-sucks" hype? I don't think so.

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    Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
    1. Re:So? by pizzach · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's a bit of a game. If Aero wasn't such a resource hog, the nicer graphics would have made the now mostly hated interface changes more palatable. This is the first time anyone had to deal with graphics being an extra pay-for feature. Imagine having to do that for an FPS.

      Mac OS X has changed what the expectations for interface graphics are. I'm sure a lot of People thought Aero would be something similar to Quartz and such.

      --
      Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
  2. Re:Hmm by Cowmonaut · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My laptop with 2GB RAM has no issues with Vista Ultimate x64. It does have an AMD64 Turion dual core though.

    It came with Vista Home Basic pre-installed which DID run dog slow during everything. I'm pretty sure Microsoft, for whatever reason, purposely crippled the lower versions. Lord knows I've seen similar things happen when people misconfigure their GPO settings or make bad Registry changes manually.

  3. Re:Hmm by canajin56 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It also fooled MS employees. One of the damning e-mails was a VP who bought a Vista capable laptop and was pissed it couldn't run Vista in a usable way.

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