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Vista Capable Lawsuit Loses Class-Action Status
nandemoari writes "The long-running 'Vista Capable' lawsuit challenging Microsoft's marketing of PCs capable of running only the most basic version of the Windows Vista operating system has reportedly lost its class-action status. Federal judge Marsha Pechman decertified the class-action lawsuit, saying that plaintiffs had failed to show that consumers paid more for PCs with the 'Vista Capable' label than they would have otherwise."
Also, why don't vendors include stickers for all OS' a piece of hardware will function with. My HP laptop shipped with a Vista-capable sticker but it works wonderfully with Debian/Ubuntu and it even works with my non-Vista-compatible digital camera!
Bored at work? Play Game!
I'm confused by the judge's comment -- I thought the whole issue was *not* that users paid higher prices for "Vista Capable" machines, but rather that they bought such machines that were not actually capable of running Vista.
What gives?
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The summary (and, indeed, the article) is a little misleading. It is not that they didn't show that the plaintiffs didn't pay more (if the judge had found that, the case probably would have been dismissed). Rather, they lost their clase certification because they hadn't shown that all the plaintiffs in the class had uniformly overpaid.
To form a class, the plaintiffs' situations situations have to be relevantly similar. Her ruling was just that, in essence, the cases hadn't been shown to be similar enough to be litigated as a class.
Now the cases will proceed individually, with each plaintiff having to show individually that they overpaid.
caritj.org
Darn, my mouse was not vista capable! I wasted $75 on this MightyMouse thinking its gonna run on my lovely Vista laptop. I'm filing a class-action suit for this, hopefully I should get my $$ back.
nobody remains virgin, life fscks everyone...
I was part of one of the previous class action suits. After years of waiting all I got was a coupon for a $15 discount on windows or office.
The issue was about users getting a POS that wouldn't give them the minimum acceptable user experience. It has been proven that Microsoft lowered their standards after caving into hardware vendors who wanted to dump their inventory. This was deceptive to the consumers who had been informed of Microsoft's assurances about "Vista Ready" and as a result they spent their money on something that was less useful than they expected. An almost identical scenario occurred during the USB 1.0 to USB 2.0 transition. The USB consortium (HP, Compaq, Toshiba, etc.) decided to re-number the specs so USB 1.1 could be called USB 2.0 (full speed). USB 2.0 got renamed to "high speed". Everybody who was waiting to buy hardware that supported USB 2.0 ran out and bought it even though it still only ran at 11 megabits. This judge is either brain dead or corrupt.
Could have been a DRM thing. I'm too tired to look up the exact acronym (though HDCP is sounding familiar), but Vista implemented new support for certain monitors having end to end encryption between the video card and the display, so that it wasn't possible to directly capture the video from the video cable. There was originally plans (that I'm not sure if they ever came to fruition) to downgrade HD video on monitors that didn't conform to this standard (or were connected using standard DSUB cables instead of HDMI or DVI).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I think the problem is really that their lawsuit was not class-action capable...
http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/hardwareprogramme
The case was dismissed because the low end laptops were "Vista Capable" but there was also a "Premium Ready" sticker on other models. It was a case of read the fine print.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE51I4KF20090219
I hear vendors won't do that until an OS has 3% marketshare. Come back in 2035.
Is that the year of the Linux Desktop that I keep hearing so much about?
The complaint in the court of public opinion is that when Vista is marketed they talk about all the great shit it does on the highest end hardware and make it seem like you get that stuff if you get Vista. Lots of machines were sold as "Vista Capable" that couldn't do a bunch of that shit and on which Vista ran like a squashed turd (arguably it ran like that on anything without a special disk AND a special USB stick AND at least 4GB of memory until SP1 and now it's only a round turd so it can at least roll, in Windows 7 they made it into a sphere and it can roll in any direction) and people are upset that they fell for the marketing hype and now they want some free money. They can still run the same Vista-requiring programs, and the programs themselves have requirements on the box, which haven't changed. If there's no Vista requirements on the box, then perhaps you need to contact your vendor, and it's not Microsoft's fault.
Obviously I have my own opinion about this lawsuit. On one hand, as a marketing tactic it's kind of sleazy. On the other hand, the OEMs begged and pleaded with Microsoft to allow them to put the "Vista Ready" sticker on machines which don't support the full Vista "experience" (choke) and they eventually gave in; The OEMs deserve at least as much blame as the evil empire. On the gripping hand, the specifications of the machines and the requirements for Aero were made available to customers before purchase, and no fraudulent claims were made. Caveat Emptor, motherfuckers! Read the fucking specifications. Just because an operating system will run on your hardware, it doesn't mean you have access to all its features, and it never has. Windows Movie Maker might let you capture video, but if you don't have any video capture hardware, you probably can't use that feature.
People too stupid to read computer specifications and compare them to the required specifications should be given an Etch-a-Sketch and if they complain about its limitations, give them a fucking Speak and Spell. That ought to keep them busy for a while. I don't even expect them to understand what they're reading. Why do we expect a commercial to provide us with a full education on a product? The vendor in this case made available more than enough information for you to figure out whether you'd get the experience you were looking for out of given hardware. You might have to actually visit their site to gain an education though, and I could understand how all that clicking and reading could be too much for the average bozo to comprehend.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A good idea, but I don't think that's the argument. Actually reading TFA (I know, I know), it sure sounds like the judge is saying that the prosecution is arguing that the low-end machines labeled as "Vista Capable" were somehow deliberately overpriced, thereby leading to 'unjust enrichment' for Microsoft. If so, this really seems like a royal screw-up for the prosecution, since it's your version of the argument that makes much more sense (at least to me, but IANAL).
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Here you go. The PDF linked in the article shows the actual email thread, including the "I now have a $2100 email machine" money quote by MS executive Mike Nash.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Cigarettes use computers! Who knew?
How ya like dat?
Maybe that's the issue you had a problem with, but the judge can only really rule on the issue the plaintiffs brought up. Their case did not allege "users getting a POS that wouldn't give them the minimum acceptable user experience". Instead, the case alleged "unjust enrichment" on the part of Microsoft, which requires showing that Microsoft made more money via the allegedly misleading behavior than they would have otherwise.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Face it, Vista got a bad name for three reasons:
1. The lowest-end computers certified to run it were not really capable (since fixed).
Microsoft ran the certification program that certified those low end computers as being capable of running vista. This was under Microsoft's control.
2. Nvidia's drivers sucked for the first 6 months.
While Nvidia's drivers sucking is not under Microsoft's direct control, the certification program that signs the drivers for use in Vista is. Were those drivers signed?
I will agree that the signing of the drivers doesn't necessarily mean that they don't suck, just that they wont harm your system; so in that way this one really shouldn't be Microsoft's responsibility as long as the drivers weren't actually destructive.
3. The I/O subsystem was poorly designed (fixed in SP1), and the virtualization of video memory was a poor idea for Vista-32 that makes game memory usage balloon (hence the higher memory requirements for games under Vista, and problems running out of memory that players don't see on XP). REALITY: Vista should have pushed 64-bit as the primary OS.
clearly Microsoft's fault.
Only one of the above was really under Microsoft's control.
Two of them. Why do you think the first one is not Microsoft's fault?
I also don't agree that these are the only reasons Vista got a bad name, but I'm leaving that part alone.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
OBVIOUSLY no dude, by night, when everyone leaves the factory, some Latino dude with indigenous heritage make some ritual (involving Win 95 floppies, WinME complain letters and spit from RIAA representatives) so magical pixies emerge from the pile of Vista licenses and roam the factory automagically putting the sticker on. Does not apply if is a Chinese factory because you should know that nobody sleeps in th... errr because pixies does not get along with dragons and that all I'm going to say about it. Get the facts!
I thought FOSS stood for Free Operating System Stickers.
What's that? It's Free Open Source Software? Wow, that explains a lot. Excuse me, I need to go make some apologies on some Linux forums.
While I see your point, I've also seen and touched computer speakers labeled as "Y2K compliant" back in 1999. And even that wasn't the most ludicrious thing. IIRC _the_ most ludicrious thing was a network cable sold as Y2K compliant.
I'm not even sure how a cable or speakers could _possibly_ have had a Y2K problem, seeing that neither even had a CPU, much less anything capable of knowing the date or depending on it.
The only sane explanation was that some marketer figured out they'd sell more of them with that extra claim.
And it wouldn't surprise me one bit if the Vista thing created similar effects.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This lawsuit was a joke. For once I have to say I'm happy Microsoft won.
Why?
Simple.
There is nothing wrong with advertising a PC as "Vista Capable".
Even if it only runs Basic Home Edition of Vista, certainly it doesn't contradicted its ability as being "Vista Capable".
Furthermore, retailers and manufacturers who have been pushing Vista with their products (PCs, laptops, notebooks, etc...) have usually also made sure that they recommended their products with words such as "runs best with (insert flavor of Vista)".
This is one of those times where clearly, greed was the only reason for this lawsuit.
On another note, the cost of a laptop being "Vista Capable" and how much they overpaid? Oye Vay! Are they retarded? Even I know there are no collation between a product being branded as "Vista Capable" and a higher cost of purchase. If anything, I recall laptops being sold for like 400$ with Vista Basic. Dirt Cheap.
Now, let's not think I like Vista, heck no, in my honest opinion, it's a crappy product, but, this isn't about what I like, it's just about being fair.
Again, this lawsuit and the people behind it are just trying to make a quick buck on Microsoft by conning the system.
What a waste of time and resources...
OK. So I've read the order now and here's the story:
Under the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), one has to show not only that the practices at issue were deceptive, but that the deception injured the plaintiffs. Makes sense, I think.
The injury that these plaintiffs are alleging is having overpaid for their computers. That is, their computers were priced higher than they would have been had they not been advertised as Vista-Capable.
For class certification, of course, the plaintiffs have to show that this price inflation was uniform for all members of the class (in a nationwide class action lawsuit, this means they have to show that the prices were inflated throughout the US). And this is where they run into trouble, because MS has pointed out, and the judge has agreed, that the plaintiffs have not introduced any specific evidence that would indicate that this is the case (for example, they could have provided an economic study of the effect that a Vista-Capable certification has on the price of a PC, by way of supply and demand)
So, yes, the plaintiffs perhaps could have tried a different damage theory as you suggested (hassle of finding a replacement) but it looks like these didn't go that way.
And, yes, under the CPA at least, deceptive marketing in and of itself is OK, so long as it does not injure anyone. ...of course, I can't see why you would deceptively label something without intending to injure customers somehow.
(again, not legal advice and IANAL yet)
caritj.org
Then explain to me why it's on my ANALOG 22" LCD as well, then. There is no HDMI or DVI connection, so just how is HDCP implemented?
The Vista Capable is just a marketing scheme.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm confused -- I had assumed it was the other way around.
That is, I'd assumed that hardware vendors would want their hardware to be known as compatible, thus resulting in higher sales. And that to obtain such status, they would have to follow Microsoft's standards -- implying that if anything, they'd be paying Microsoft for the privilege, not the other way around.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Well, that's what they'll have to do now. The down side with this strategy is that:
1. It will he harder for the plaintiffs to get good lawyers because there will be a lot less money involved. (The way it attracts top lawyers to take up the plaintiffs' cause - due to the large paydays - is one of the benefits of the class action system). Though, as you say, they may not need lawyers at all this way.
2. Similarly, MS will almost certainly pay less in damages if the suits are individually litigated. Remember, MS wants the cases to be litigated individually.
caritj.org