Microsoft Sued Over Vista-To-XP Downgrade Fees

Krojack writes with this excerpt from Computerworld: "Los Angeles resident Emma Alvarado charged Microsoft with multiple violations of Washington state's unfair business practices and consumer protection laws over its policy of barring computer makers from continuing to offer XP on new PCs after Vista's early-2007 launch. Alvarado is seeking compensatory damages and wants the case declared a class-action suit. ... Irked at having to pay a fee for downgrading a new Lenovo notebook to XP, Alvarado said that Microsoft had used its position as the dominant operating system maker to 'require consumers to purchase computers pre-installed with the Vista operating system and to pay additional sums to "downgrade" to the Windows XP operating system.'"

Comments

Re:And for $20 more ...

[MrNaz]

"myriad other" NOT "myriad of other"
The word "myriad" is not used in the same way collective nouns are.

paying for two

[falconwolf]

I just bought a car and want a different engine in my car. Why should I have to pay for the two engines when I'm only going to use one?

You can sell the engine you don't want and someone can install and use it in another car. Try to install Dell's OEM version of Vista in another PC and there's a good chance it will not work.

Falcon

Re:$1 Billion a Month in Dumb Down.

[Achromatic1978]

"We recommend Microsoft Windows" and never providing a fair price for any other OS, people believe what they have heard from everywhere else. With the FUD, many people are afraid a LiveCD will ruin their computer and think free software advocates are wreckless subversives, terrorists of the desktop even.

Right. I guess that explains why Dell sells Red Hat Enterprise Linux for substantially (2/3) less than Red Hat does, right?

Oh, wait, it's twitter.

Curious, what does your wife think of your obsession with this place?

Re:$1 Billion a Month in Dumb Down.

[Risen888]

I don't get this obsession with twitter on this site. I've always thought that one of the greatest things about internet forums (fora?) is that we argue ideas, not people. (Yes, you did provide a refutation of the argument at hand, I'm not specifically talking about you here, just the whole anti-twitter brigade in general).

What is it that pisses people off so damn much? Is it the whole sockpuppet/mod-gaming thing? I agree, that sucks and it kind of shows him as an obsessive lame-o, but so what? If I think someone's wrong (anyone) I argue the point. If my argument is stronger than theirs I get modded up and they get modded down. Isn't that how this is supposed to work? Why not just do that, then?

(This is not a rhetorical post, I'd love it if someone could explain this to me, because it's always kind of been a mystery to me.)

-risen (is a real boy, not a sockpuppet)

Re:And for $20 more ...

[Risen888]

Buy a damn soldering iron, you lazy shit. I do it.