Microsoft's Windows Vista 'Capable' bill could hit $8.5bn

i still don't understand this

the minimum spec stated for games has been a long running joke since the windows 95 days, and vista capable machines are certainly capable of running vista, no claims are made to performance though!

I do wonder whether any of the claimed problems are vista related though, one of my non-tech savvy friends bought a vista laptop that they asked me to have a quick look at before they returned it as completely unuseable( it was 2-3 mins to open a window!!). 5mins uninstalling all the crap dell/hp etc had preinstalled on it, removing some pointless startup programs and services, and it was like a different machine!

$3 - 8.5 billion

And the fact that the leeches^H^H^H^H^H^Hawyers bringing this action would expect to cream off a big fat percentage of this amount would in no way lead them to inflate the numbers. No sirree Bob!

Welcome to the United States - the finest justice money can buy.

Correct This Date - Add One Bit

Please correct this article as follows:

Date: Beginning of infinity to present time.

Added Bit: Mickysoft (in the head) screws customers and "partners."

Now that we've finished that, Thank You for the article Mr Reg.

Vista Incapable

Of course, they can cut the cost by "upgrading" all those machines to Linux.

What the fuss is about

MS advertised Vista features, then did not clearly state that Vista capable systems could not use these features (regardless of what OS happened to come on the system).

If an automobile manufacturer advertised a car as road-worthy, would you accept that it can only hit 20 MPH on roads, or would you assume it can travel at least at the legal minimum speed limit on an interstate highway?

Rather than upgrade the hardware...

...Microsoft could rebadge Win7 as a Service Pack for Vista (and therefore a free upgrade). Everyone who has tried it seems to agree that it differs from Vista only in being faster and less buggy. You'd probably find that all those Vista Incapable machines are in fact Seven Capable, at which point not only does the case against them collapse, but Win7 doesn't face an uphill struggle for consumer confidence, since it already has an installed base of millions.

OK MS would lose money on Win7 sales, but only in that fraction of the customer base who upgrade the OS of an existing machine. I suspect that is a tiny fraction.

@ JC

"MS advertised Vista features, then did not clearly state that Vista capable systems could not use these features (regardless of what OS happened to come on the system)."

Err actually they did state that not all systems could use the features, all there adverts said "not avilable on all versions" and made links to not being available on all hardware specs, the underbelly is the same on all versions, same kernal, same driver architecure.

"If an automobile manufacturer advertised a car as road-worthy, would you accept that it can only hit 20 MPH on roads, or would you assume it can travel at least at the legal minimum speed limit on an interstate highway?"

Wrong analogy as all versions of vista run the same you jsut get different features, its the same as seeing a car advertise on tv , them putting up the price and putting a nice message saying "not available on all models", then someone complaining because they bought the cheapest car but didn't get a satnav and sunroof.

A case of marketing, not software

This is more a case about greater honesty in marketing surely ?

If you pre-ordered a dvd recorder on the basis of the marketing blurb, only to find a number of the buttons disabled, then I think you'd be just a little unhappy.

It's about time software was treated like any consumer product.

Strange...

....they did it because of the expected wait and then rush to get Vista when it came out, now i'd imagine most people who bought a laptop with XP on are really glad as they aren't currently suffering with Vista!

In agreement with JC + more

The question is whether customers were deliberately mislead, which I guess is a similar test to the the UK contract law concept of misrepresentation - you can misrepresent by selectively giving half facts if you intend them to be misleading, even if you haven't technically said anything false. For example, if I were a car salesman and someone said "is there much wear on the gearbox?" to which I replied "the car is only a year old and has less than 1,000 miles on the clock" then that would be misrepresentation if I conveniently omitting to mention that I switched the gearbox with one from a twenty-year old car that morning even though technically I'd not have said anything false.

As JC says, if the court feel that Microsoft said to most customers "these machines can run Vista, and this is what Vista can do" then it doesn't matter that industry insiders with specialist technical knowledge happen to know that Vista is a range of products rather than one.

To focus on whether what Microsoft said could be construed as true is to completely miss the point and to ignore the actual law.

Wasn't it Intel . . .

Wasn't it Intel that pressured MS into lowering the requirements for Vista, because they still needed to shift another 6 months worth of chips that couldn't meet the spec? Or is that my imagination?

@David Kairns

" Please correct this article as follows:

Date: Beginning of infinity to present time."

Can Infinity have a beginning?

re:Wasn't it Intel . . .

I think that was Intel telling MS to allow their IGP chipset to be considered "Vista Capable".

Only part of the problem, since many motherboards don't use it (and non Intel CPU's can't).

@Stu Reeves, sleepy

Stu: that's an example of using one product at a different scale. The Microsoft allegation concerns misleading advertising. They said simultaneously "this is Vista" and "this machine can run Vista". They did not make it clear to most consumers that the two references to Vista were not to the same set of software.

It is a matter of measure and degree and whether, on the specific evidence, the judge thinks that Microsoft made statements that were likely to be misleading. It's not about abstract arguments, in the same way that the EU's recent Internet Explorer decision is about the specific effect on the market as it was at the time of bundling that particular browser in the exact manner that Microsoft did so, not on the abstract notion of whether OSs may come with browsers.

sleepy: if that's true then Microsoft may be able to recover against Intel should they lose this case, or have Intel brought into the current case as a codefendant. The severity of Intel's actions would determine what proportion of any fine Microsoft could recover.

If only they kept it simple

And just produced 1 or two versions ..... why on gods earth would it make sense to make more and more versions of your product with each new release .... oh yeah ... that's because we can confuse people and get more money. Also weren't Intel in on this too ?

I'd like to see Microsoft pushed to name every version of their Operating System a completely different name. This is a bit more like the Linux world where essentially they run on the same kernel but come with different features. Then people wouldn't be duped into buying the wrong version of an OS because it sounds just like another version and they'd have to apply the right lables to the PC/laptops being sold. I think that would be enough of a fine to Microsoft instead of any monetary gains and it would level the playing field just that little bit more.......

Basic

The point is that Home Basic is an especially cut down version compared to ANY other Vista. No DX10

The machines in question can only run the subset in Basic. If you put any higher version on you don't get Aero etc.

Min Spec PCs for Win95, 98, NT4.0, Win2K and XP did run any version of the OS. Though maybe in some cases S L O W L E Y and lacking ability to open many programs at once.

@ Mark

Simple fact is , his acer one DOES RUN VISTA, it might not be the version you ASSUMED you were going to get but it runs it.

If this was a company other than ms most of you lot would be saying "yeah its ok the users are stupid", the only reason you are against ms is because.. you are against ms.

The only thing wrong here is marketing bs that every other company does , inlcuding the car companyies for showing you advert with cars with satnavs but only putting the satnavs on more expensives cars!

Isn't the important part the "reasonable person" bit?

IANAL, but IIRC most contracts / adverts where something is not explicitly stated are held by a court to mean whatever a reasonable, knowledgeable person would believe it to mean.

"knowledgeable" here refers more to someone who knows what a computer is than an IT professional, such as a typical non-Mac owning user.

So the question would be whether a normal computer user would consider it reasonable to advertise Vista with bells and whistles and then identify Vista capable as being without the bells and whistles.

@Mark

Vista Ultimate will in fact install and run on that box - but features such as Aero will be disabled.

And you can install Vista Business on a Vista Capable machine, and log it into a Domain. You won't get Aero, though.

Some of you guys are extremely willing to express falsehoods as facts. The funny thing is that that makes you guilty of doing exactly what makes you hate Microsoft.

Microsoft had 2 logos - Vista Ready and Vista Capable. They made plenty of information available about the difference between the 2. If anyone was misled, it was by the retailers, not by Microsoft.

What does/did Aero mean?

MS partially fouled this one up by using the term Aero too loosely in their marketing. When Vista was in beta, Aero clearly meant the windowing scheme, the layout of the Start panel, search in window functionality etc -- all of which work in 2D mode. Aero Glass (the full Vista experience) adds the 3D effects and requires a different video driver model capable of DX10. MS handily provided sample images that demonstrated overlapping desktop windows: with Aero Glass, the overlapping area was semi transparent, and with Aero it was "flat" as in XP. When Vista was released, it was clear that Aero =/= Aero Glass.

Vista Capable meant that a PC could run Vista. Most beta testers used virtual machines or machine room junk for their evaluation, experiencing the Aero experience. When they wanted to show it off, they installed Vista on a PC with a meaty graphics card so that Aero Glass was enabled. But even the machine room junk was "Vista capable" -- I ran Office 2007, IE7 and (heavens forbid) SMS client with Vista Enterprise in an AD environment on an Intel 845 board.

I have little sympathy with the whingers who claim that Vista runs slowly on the PC that they bought last week. If the OS does not work, blame the PC manufacturer. I've just booted Vista SP1 into a virtual machine on a three year old PC that predates the Vista launch: i'd be happy to use that VM as my desktop system.

@AC 19:17

But is Vista without Aero Glass truly Vista?

All the adverts I saw for Vista were with Aero Glass fully working and really as a main selling point.

Any court case will depend on whether a judge / jury think that Aero Glass is a material part of the reason people would buy Vista or a nice to have add-on if your hardware will support it.

I followed the whole Vista release thing fairly well, I knew someone would want support for it and I still couldn't tell you the difference between Vista capable and Vista ready.

And to be perfectly honest and subjective (I work almost exclusively with MS products on the server and desktop - anyone reading my previous posts will know I view Macs as pointless toys for inbred Welsh people and Linux as a failed attempt by bearded virgins to stick it to da man) there is no real world semantic difference between capable and ready.

I am well aware that ready implies will work now and capable implies will work with some additional "things" but no-one when buying a laptop for example would believe that their lappy is vista capable as long as they shell out a load more money on a new laptop to run their copy of Vista fully.

And finally (for now) in the UK at least we have a clause called "fit for purpose" in the various sales of goods acts which state quite clearly that anything you buy must be fit for purpose of which it is sold, with purpose being anything specified by the manufacturer / retailer or should be believed to be so by any reasonable, knowledgeable person.

So, If I buy a crap computer with Vista Ultimate the retailer has a duty to tell me Vista will not work properly. If Vista Ultimate is pre-installed then I would assume it is the lappy manufacturer's responsibility (or at least the retailer would have a case for compensation against the manufacturer) to clearly state what will not work. This is, as many have pointed out, not directly Microsoft's torte, however if MS applied pressure or specified "ambitious" criteria for being able to run Vista then there will potentially be a line of redress for those selling / manufacturing goods not fit for purpose.