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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.'"
If Microsoft were letting OEMs sell either version of Windows for vaguely similar prices, it'd be okay. The issue is that they're effectively giving away Vista, while charging for XP. Now companies often can give things away as loss leaders, but monopolists are more constrained in whether they can undertake that sort of activity.
This case is somewhat unusual because most of the lawsuits regarding dumping are e.g. giving away IE to kill Netscape, not giving away one of your products to try to kill one of your own other products. But it's possible that Washington state business law (vs. federal anti-trust law) has something that reaches that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If they'd simply pulled the plug on XP totally, and said, "that's it, we aren't going to sell XP any more, because it's old and we don't want to be lumbered with the after-sales support forever", then that might be a legitimate manufacturer's decision.
But they didn't do that, because they didn't want to lose the netbook market. So they said that netbook manufacturers could continue to buy, install, and sell-on XP, but laptop manufacturers couldn't. When you say to a company, "We have a product, we're selling it to other people, but we refuse to sell it to you to work with your products, because we now want you to buy a different product from us", then that starts to get dodgy.
It's a bit like if a car-seat manufacturer has two ranges of car seats, their older smaller range and their new wider deluxe range. They want manufacturers to build the wider seats into all new luxury cars that can take them, but if they discontinue the older range, they'll lose the section of the market that supplies cars where the newer seats don't physically fit. So they continue to sell both ranges, but tell manufacturers that they are "banned" from selling the older seats fitted to the larger cars, even if those same cars have been sold fitted with those same seats in the past. That level of interference is getting into "illegal restraint of trade" territory.
The question is, how much control should a dominant component manufacturer have over how their products are used? Should they be allowed to micromanage what people do with their products with these sorts of restrictions and conditions? If a product has already been certified for XP, should they be allowed to then tell a manufacturer that they can still buy copies of XP, but they're are no longer allowed to preinstall them on those particular machines because new MS policy is that those particular customers should be buying something else? Even if this upsets both the suppliers and the customers?
Now to me, it sounds like MS are probably legally in the wrong here (as they have been so many times before when it comes to OEM contracts). And they probably know that they're in the wrong, but figure that the stakes here are so high that they'd rather break the law and worry about the consequences later ... after all, none of their suppliers are going to want to sue them for fear of unofficial retaliation.
So this customer has decided, look, this is complete s**t - I should be able to buy the current software that I want on the machine that I want, without my supplier saying that they aren't allowed to do that because of some arbitrary rule imposed illegally on them by MS. So she figures, (a) it's unlawful and unfair, (b) someone should do something about it, (c) the laptop manufacturers won't, (d) she has the receipts that prove that this illegal behaviour by MS has cost her money, and (e) if it's illegal, and she's provably been damaged by it, then she's in a position to take a stand and sue, and maybe have the court ruling force MS to stop breaking the law (as she sees it).
Eric Baird
Thank you. I was all set to defend the GP for knowing how not to use the word "myriad." I set out to find proof refuting your Wikipedia citation, and instead learned that I've been an ill-informed snob where this word is concerned for years. Seriously -- thanks.
I am not left-handed, either!
Intel 2.2-3.6GHz or AMD 1.8-2.6GHz with 1GB to 2GB of RAM and 80-320GB of HDD space and a Geforce 6200 or the AMD equivalent.
Sorry that I can't put it in nice list form, but ever since Slashdot went "web 2.0" I haven't been able to make lists. I'm a repairman not a web designer, dammit! But I work with both home users as well as SOHO and SMBs and I can tell you that the home users are at the above. Most of the SOHO and SMBs are actually running a little less than that because as long as the software required to do business works they simply see no ROI for buying new hardware. As I was telling a SOHO customer today I truly believe for most home users and small businesses we have already passed the "good enough" stage with computers and more and more folks are going to be fixing what they have instead of buying new.
And MSFT forcing Vista has helped with my business since nobody around here wants it. Thanks MSFT! I have a customer who is about to throw $120 at me after having thrown $50 to recover his files because 4 hours of trying to run Vista with a 2GHz AMD with 1GB of RAM and he said "I'll pay whatever, just make this damned evil thing go away and make XP come back." so I found a former customer who has a brand new copy of XP home sitting in a drawer for $70 and with another $50 for me to throw it on he will finally have his Windows XP. Of course Walmart won't give him his money back for Vista Home Premium(He asked if I could sell it and I told him none of my customers actually WANT Vista) so he paid over $100 for a doorstop. But that's what happens when you don't listen to your repairman. I told him to avoid Vista like the plague, but would he listen? Nope. Sometimes lessons are painful.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.