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Man, Seeking New Copy of Windows 7 After Forced Windows 10 Upgrade, Sues Microsoft (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: An Albuquerque man has sued Microsoft and its CEO -- Satya Nadella -- seeking a fresh copy of Windows 7 or $600 million in damages. According to a civil complaint filed last week on February 14, Frank K. Dickman Jr. of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is suing Microsoft because of a botched forced Windows 10 upgrade. "I own a ASUS 54L laptop computer which has an OEM license for Windows Version 7," Dickman's claim reads. "The computer was upgraded to Windows Version 10 and became non-functional immediately. The upgrade deleted the cached, or backup, version of Windows 7." Dickman says that the laptop's original OEM vendor is "untrustworthy," hence, he cannot obtain a legitimate copy of Windows 7 to downgrade his laptop.
I may be wrong, but I think once you(r computer on its own) upgrade to Win10, your Win7 key is listed on Microsoft's activation servers as no longer valid. Thus you might install Win7, but you can't activate it.
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Well, you joke, but we haven't bought a new Windows machine since 7 was no longer available, and we're now using non-Windows platforms for our new machines instead of going anywhere near Windows 10. So for us, it literally is the year of Linux on the desktop. Turns out that for development work it's probably better anyway, and for all the online stuff a browser or email client on Linux is kinda like a browser or email client on Windows.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Rule 1: Backup
Rule 2: BACKUP
Rule 3: See Rules 1 & 2
So, when did your data become important to you, before or after you lost it?
If he had anything important and didn't have it backed up, he's an idiot.
There's no way his damages come anywhere near $600 million, unless he's utterly incompetent, in which case, he deserves to lose it.
The unreliability of his OEM isn't Microsofts fault.
Most computer OEMs don't provide disks for you for the installed software. Instead they use a legal loophole and when you first run the computer it prompts you to make a set of backup/restore disks. Those will essentially be an image of the drive and can be used to restore the computer if you have to nuke & pave. Guess he neglected to do that, or lost his disks. Whichever case is correct, it's still his fault, and not that of Microsoft or the OEM.
It's not like the increasing persistence about upgrading people wasn't known, and if he still didn't have a backup, he's an incompetent idiot.
Yes, Microsoft shouldn't be forcing people to upgrade, but that's a different lawsuit, and I believe it's a class action as well. (It is.)
The laptop is now "non-functional". How about letting a real tech see about that. You never know, I've "fixed" machines by booting into safemode and disabling the old dos crap they had been forcing to run for ages.
No company is going to support the old stuff forever, not even Microsoft, nor should anyone expect them too. Windows 7 mainstream support ended a couple of years ago, and when it comes to software, life cycles are fast and short compared to other things in the world. The saying is that software ages 10 times faster than the rest of the world.
It's still possible to buy Windows 7. Suing Microsoft for a copy is stupid. It would be cheaper for him to go buy a new copy than to file the lawsuit. It would also seem to be cheaper for Microsoft to capitulate and just send him one, but that would potentially set a bad precedent that could get really expensive and embarrassing for them, so there's no way in hell they'll do that.
That guy is an idiot as he doesn't know the difference between "$6,000,000,000.00" and "six hundred million dollars". Sure, you could claim it's a simple typo, but it's got the correct comma separations for six billion, and if you don't correct mistakes like that before sending it to a judge, you can expect to get slapped down by the judge and forced to either go away, or start over from scratch without the screwups.
We all hate it when our computers go chips up, but it happens, and we have to be prepared for it or it's our fault, like it or not.
Microsoft disagrees:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
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HP is even more fun with this. they'll let you back up to either a USB stick or a set of CDs ONCE. Then lock you out from ever backing up that partition again.
There are ways around this, but it's still annoying.
Karnal
I think his point is: Don't treat me like a piece of shit and force an update on me that wastes my time, causes me lost productivity and then refuse to correct the issue.
MS acted in an arrogant manner, his lawsuit is trying to address their respect of care for their users.
Asking MS to fork out for a new laptop, licence, etc is not going to cause them any grief and is pointless.
$600 million on the other hand may make them look and listen.
I don't for a second think he is claiming he suffered $600 million in damages, but he wants the amount to be enough for MS to give a shit.
Never happened. True story.
Here's the thing though, Microsoft gave users plenty of options to not upgrade to the free Windows 10 upgrade. I believe at least a year. PEBKAC.
Microsoft didn't give users plenty of options to not upgrade to the free Windows 10 upgrade. The options that Microsoft gave, especially towards the end of the pre-release period for Win10, were that could upgrade now or later. I had to use a 3rd party application to keep them from forcibly upgrading an old Win7 box of mine whose hardware wasn't up to running Win10. I hear that towards the end, legal threats and general bad PR got them to make a public show of backing off on the "Do you want to upgrade now or later?" push, but I don't remember hearing any reports that they actually got around to having it so you could refuse the upgrade without deliberately blocking several updates among other measures, because they did things like relabel the relevant updates and those updates had their traditional vague descriptions that gave no indication that they would attempt to forcibly upgrade you.
The general theory I remember was that M$ was doing all of this to forcibly inflate the numbers early on for Win10...