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.

Comments

Those numbers are all the same up there

[damn_registrars]

From the article:

The angry plaintiff wants a judge to force Microsoft to comply with his request in 30 days or pay up $600 million in damagesâ" albeit the judge may interpret the damages as $6 billion due to a redaction error, as the complaint reads "$6,000,000,000.00 (six hundred million dollars)."

I'd love to know how he came up with either of those numbers as being somehow reasonable. I'm not inclined to defend Microsoft in any situation, but that's a lot of money for a laptop that was bricked by an OS upgrade. There is no mention in there of him losing any data either (or having even checked to see if any data was lost). Yeah it's a massive inconvenience but I have never met anyone who uses an ASUS laptop who will do $600,000,000 worth of work in their lifetimes.

Re:Those numbers are all the same up there

[nctritech]

The other thing is that some niche software is very expensive and very tightly controlled, requiring the company to remote into the machine to acquire and install it. It may not be a simple matter of backing up, restoring a system image, and installing the software again, and even if it was it's not likely that a normal user can do all of that themselves. If an unwanted forced Win10 installation had a serious process defect that killed a really important laptop in a crucial period leading up to a multi-million-dollar contract, for example, it's not at all unusual to demand damages of this size. People sometimes forget that computers can be used for actual work and that work can have dollar amounts attached that they'll never see in their entire lives.

Re:Those numbers are all the same up there

[Cederic]

So.. Lets say some bloke called Bob starts a company.

He puts $100k of his own money into it, and uses that money to employ people for 10% higher than market rate to create something his new company sells.

Bob takes no salary, just works 80 hour weeks to assure the success of the company. All the time he's making sure suppliers are paid, customers are happy and the staff are receiving 10% above market rate for their time. 100% of the spare cash is reinvested in the company, so it never makes a profit.

Eight years later Big Corporation offer to buy Bob's company from him for $610m. Bob is the sole shareholder and decides this is a fair offer.

You're saying that Bob didn't do enough to warrant $600m? How much was Bob's work worth, and who does the rest of that cash go to?

Re:The Three Rules of Computing

[twistedcubic]

"No company is going to support the old stuff forever, not even Microsoft, nor should anyone expect them too."

He's not asking for support. If I sell you a TV and destroy it five years later, can I legitimately say I destroyed it because "I can't support the TV forever".

Re:$600 million

[Anonymous Coward]

Independent computer stores often have windows disks that will install any retail or OEM version of windows 7, to match the key you have (or found on a junk PC). I've been photographing the key stickers on machines that IT scraps for quite a while.