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Microsoft Sued Over Vista-To-XP Downgrade Fees

Posted by Soulskill on 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.'"

4 of 479 comments (clear)

  1. Am I missing something...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    You want another one of their products and it's somehow your RIGHT to have it for free ?

    It came with a version of windows on it, if you don't like it, buy another version.

    1. Re:Am I missing something...? by the_humeister · · Score: 0, Troll

      Okay, I want Windows 98 on my computer. I'll sue Microsoft to get it too.

    2. Re:Am I missing something...? by vux984 · · Score: 0, Troll

      The difference here is that there was not anywhere near the percentage of people that preferred 98 over 2000 as there are that prefer xp over vista.

      Doesn't fucking matter. MS holds the copyright to XP. They can choose to give it away, not sell it, or charge whatever they want for it until long after most of us are dead. What people prefer is completely irrelevant. We can either choose to buy what Microsoft decides to offer, or not, but we don't get to decide what they offer... at least that would be true for most companies.

      This isn't that cut and dried because Microsofts status as a "monopoloy" changes the game a bit, but even so, this is bullshit.

      Also back when 2000 came out, it was very easy to still obtain a machine bundled with 98se, for a long time.

      That's primarily because Windows 2000 was more an upgrade to Windows NT4 not Windows 98. 98 wasn't discontinued when 2k was launched. It was discontinued when ME launched. (And it was very difficult to find a Win98 machine after ME launched.)

  2. Re:And for $20 more ... by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 0, Troll

    Who cares. Her vag is TIGHT.

    --
    Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!