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Microsoft 'Vista Capable' Settlement Cost Could Be Over $8 Billion
bk- writes with news that documents from the "Vista Capable" class-action lawsuit against Microsoft indicate the software giant could be on the hook for as much as $8.52 billion in upgrade costs.
"[University of Washington economist Keith] Leffler came up with his total upgrade costs by calculating how much it would cost to upgrade each of the 19.4 million PCs with 1 GB of memory and graphics cards or onboard chipsets able to run Aero, according to Keizer. Leffler put the maximum cost of upgrading the desktops at $155, while positing that the notebooks' integrated graphics would be more tricky to replace and would cost between $245 and $590 per unit. The total price tag for Microsoft would thus range from $3.92 billion to $8.52 billion and in some cases would include complete replacements of notebooks that could not be feasibly upgraded, Leffler testified. Microsoft in its response argued that giving litigants 'a free upgrade to Premium-ready PCs would provide a windfall to millions.'"
Funny, I have saved my company 10's or 100's of thousands of $ just by switching to Linux and dropping MS and Sun. MS can post what they want on a site but my budget don't lie.
I'm surprised that this isn't the case in the US, frankly. What's the point in retailers if they're not responsible for the products they retail?
They are. In an ideal world, everyone would sue the person they bought it from, and they would sue up the line until it got to the person that stamped "Vista Capable" on it, which would be Microsoft. So yes, from a consumer's point of view, the person that screwed them was the person that sold it to them, but then, the retailer either applied the sticker because Microsoft said to, or they bought it with the sticker already on it, so from the retailer's point of view, they were screwed as well, ultimately by Microsoft.
So suing Microsoft cuts out the middle man.
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