Microsoft Sued Over Vista-To-XP Downgrade Fees

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 13, 2009 @12:22PM from the can't-win-for-losing dept.

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.'"

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Re:$1 Billion a Month in Dumb Down. by Achromatic1978 · 2009-02-13 18:28 · Score: 1, Flamebait

"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?