Microsoft has achieved a major win in the “Vista Capable” class action lawsuit against the company. The suit, which is about if Microsoft knew the PCs it labelled as “Vista capable” weren’t actually capable of running Vista’s more advanced features, has lost its class action status.
This means that the people involved in the lawsuit now have to seek damages from Microsoft on an individual basis, greatly reducing their chances of success. In the ruling, the judge wrote: “Absent evidence of class-wide price inflation, Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that common questions predominate over individual considerations.”
Microsoft was obviously pretty pleased with this latest development. “We’re pleased that the court granted our motion to decertify the class, leaving only the claims of six individuals,” Microsoft said, “We look forward to presenting our case to the jury, should the plaintiffs elect to pursue their individual claims.”
Not being American, what is a “class action” suit, and why do I care? Honest question. The term has no meaning in British law as far as I am aware.
I just wikipedia’ed it and found it means a suit that has been bought about by a large number of people; for example, 15 people are hit by a steam roller, so the 15 people join together to sue the person driving the steam roller.
In this case it can be used to demonstrate that the definition of capable wasn’t just a matter of one or two people being idiots but actually there were a large number who interpreted capable as ‘running Windows Vista to the same standard as Windows XP’ – that the view was common in the public of what capable actually meant.
It basically means a large group of people (or State) has decided to represent the entire public as a whole, regardless of the public knows about it (or cares). So in this case a few people complained to some state officials who decided that they’re going to represent the entire public. The benefit to the defendant is that it’s one lawsuit, not several so it saves time….the down side is that it’s a massive lawsuit, if you lose, you lose big. Lawyers prefer this since they’re going to get a larger cut of money, thus they usually push for a class action lawsuit….image the difference between get 66% (max allowed) of a refund money for a handful of copies of Vista vs 66% of all of the copies sold in the US. The bottom line is is that the system is abused and its no longer about justice and fairness and more about getting free money for local & state govt. to fund worthless projects.
I was recently the beneficiary of a class action lawsuit where the defending company ended up losing billions, going out of business, which lead to hundreds (I’m guessing) of unemployed people who are now living off of my tax dollars….and out of all of this I was entitle to $5.50, which wasn’t worth my time to take to the bank and deposit, the law firm that filed the suit ended up with several hundred million.
It was always going to be a tough case to crack as those machines are/were capable of running Vista. It’s just Vista would run crappy and have a number of signature add-on’s disabled.
Sure I believe MS mislead those folk into thinking Vista would perform better, but because there is truth in the, admittedly rather vague, “capable” term – these folk are going to have a tough time proving their case.
I guess the lesson here is try before you buy (not always practical i know, but the only way you can be sure of a product)
Some of the emails they uncovered in the case so far are interesting.
Jim Allchin, who has since retired from Microsoft:
…..
I’m sorry to say that I think this plan is terrible and it will have to be changed.
I believe we are going to be misleading customers with the Capable program. OEMs (computer makers) will say a machine is Capable and customers will believe that it will run all the core Vista features. The fact that aero won’t be there EVER for many of these machines is misleading to customers. …
http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/New_e-mails_detail_internal_Micr…
As mentioned in the article from the link above.
Prior to Vista’s January 2007 release, the e-mails show, Intel was stuck with a large supply of chipsets that didn’t meet Microsoft’s original requirements.
The lack of a “Vista Capable” designation would have significantly diminished the standing of those Intel 915 chipsets in the market. In one e-mail quoted in the filing, a Microsoft executive estimated that Intel’s potential costs “could get into the billions.”
HP exchange with MS
http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/HP_Microsoft_e-mails_reveal_more…
Edited 2009-02-19 16:56 UTC
Thanks for those links – as you said, made for a very interesting read.
Couldn’t mod you up though (obviously because I’d already posted)
Should be fairly easily to prove using laymen terms. Microsoft has to prove that capable means, ‘has the capacity to run Windows Vista” and the reference point as to how well it should run it would be the operating system that was pre-loaded on it at the time of purchase.
Analogy time: If I said to you that you were capable of running 100 metres in under 15 seconds what would it be based on? it would be based on your current fitness and current training regime. I’ve stated this based on current circumstances – if I said you had the ‘potential’ to run 100 under 15 seconds it is based on you sticking to some sort of training regiment and all things being consistent.
Microsoft said that their operating system was capable of running on these said computers; in other words, as long as the system specifications stayed the same (that is, the end users didn’t downgrade them for some reason), it had the capacity to run Windows Vista. The quality of how well Vista runs? the prior operating system. If Windows Vista runs worse than the prior operating system then it obviously wasn’t Windows Vista capable.
The problem isn’t the idea of ‘capable’ but the fact that they threw the sticker on any old damn thing. My sisters laptop, for example had Windows Vista preloaded and came with, by default, 512mb of memory; is that really going to allow her to do her work in a ‘capable’ fashion? there were many ‘capable’ laptops sold with Windows XP and told Windows Vista was capable of running; not potential, if it was ‘potential’ then one could argue, ‘yeah, it could run it, but it needs a memory upgrade’.
The moment they put capable it on any old crap, people assumed that a machine with 512mb would run Windows Vista. Sure, not the top of the range, wiz-bang version but atleast the standard Windows Vista Home Premium (which is the middle of the road version) on the hardware they were sold.
Edited 2009-02-19 19:34 UTC
re the whole post: You’ve not proved anything though.
In fact you’ve ended you post (as quoted) nicely leading right back to my original point:
those system _DID_ run Vista – it’s just Vista ran crap. However Microsoft never specified how well Vista would run, just that it _would_ run.
Sure many many customers misunderstood the ‘capable’ statement, but proving they were _deliberatly_ mislead is the tricky bit.
Personally, I never expected ‘capable’ to mean anything other than what those machines were – crappy budget computers that shouldn’t be shipped with Vista. However I’m a techy and have been burnt by MS before so I have a greater understanding of these things – where as most people don’t.
So the tricky bit is deciding who’s to blame: MS for misleading the customers, or the customers for not understanding the nature of the term?
Personally I think the blame is 100% in MS’s camp, but, unfortunatly, the judges opinion differed.
Edited 2009-02-20 12:38 UTC
Even more then that, it didn’t say it could run Vista Home Premium. Vista Basic has substantially less requirements.
People, by and large, are lazy. At least in the US.
I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t take the extra time to *research* a product before purchase — especially an expensive one, such as a PC.
And, how the hell does “capable” mean “best-in-class performer?” Glad they threw it out, these dolts will learn something.
I know what you mean about lazy but I’d like to extend that to western Europe and Japan as well.
I’ve traveled around Europe and Japan and I’ve found that usually, the more money somebody has, the less the look into what they are actually spending that money on.
Obviously, this is a bit of an over simplification and just my experience of the matter.
As for the defendants, I wish them the best of luck. Now that their cases have been reduced to individual status, they are going to have a much harder time proving that they have been purposely misled. It’s also going to cost them a hell of a lot more to pursue it.
Believe it or not, people interpreted the word “capable” to mean the machine would be able to run Vista well enough to give a satisfying user experience and further, would run all of Vista’s functions acceptably at least in terms of the version of Vista provided with their machine. So yes, let’s blame the consumer for interpreting a word to mean… well, exactly what the word usually means. Brilliant strategy, it’s a pity our legal system is as screwed up as Microsoft is. And they wondered why Vista was stigmatized forever, perhaps they should look inward before blaming the consumer. Most consumers aren’t computer literate, isn’t that exactly the argument *you* always make when people mention desktop Linux, though usually with a lot of expletives thrown in for good measure? Why should they have to know what Vista’s minimum specs are. The machine said it was capable, they bought it from a well-known brand, and were deceived. How is that the fault of the consumer?
Not all Vista-capable machines were incapable, but a good majority of those sold were less than ideal for running Vista. Still, if Microsoft wants to keep digging themselves deeper into user dissatisfaction, who am I to object?
Interesting we now know, what MS feels is an acceptable user experience and that it has legal standing (at least in the US).
Personally I’d rather lay on a bed of nails than use Vista on a low Celeron laptop with 512 Meg ram.
But if MS feels that’s good for there users and their reputation why should the courts disagree.
Personally, I’d rather lay on a bed of nails than use OS X tiger on a G4 1.2 Ghz Mac Mini with 1 GB RAM. But Apple says such hardware is OS X – Tiger capable.
Edited 2009-02-19 22:06 UTC
Whilst living in the US, I helped my mother-in-law buy a cheap Compaq laptop. It came with 512Mb with ram Vista Home Basic installed. It had a large sales sticker attached, claiming it was ‘Vista Ready’.
Ignoring the missing features in Home Edition (which she really doesn’t need). The machine took almost five minutes to boot and even longer to shut down. Apps took forever to launch and simple operations like switching the active application took an unreasonable amount of time.
In my view, this is not ‘capable’ by anyone’s standard.
I returned the laptop within a week and demanded an exchange for a 1GB model running Vista Home Premium (ironically it was cheaper due to a sales discount). After a little disagreement and arguing the sales assistant agreed to the exchange. He looked weary as if this kind of exchange occurred frequently regarding ‘Vista-ready’ devices.
What bugged me is that when I mentioned that it ran like ass. He mentioned ‘of course it does. It only has 1/2 a gig of ram’. I then went on to ask why they would sell something that would clearly piss customers off. He didn’t have an answer for that.
Consumers, hell maybe even retailers were clearly misled here. It’s not sufficient to claim that consumers should do their homework before buying anything, especially when that thing should be expected to fulfill a minimum standard. We have something called ‘fit for the purpose’ described in the Trades Description Act in the UK. In my opinion this machine was not fit for the purpose.
For the record, the newer machine ran much, much better. I’m still thinking I should have had her stretch her budget a little and buy a Macbook though 🙂
Edited 2009-02-19 18:27 UTC
Did she buy that laptop pre-SP1?
It’s about time a judge finally agreed with common sense. This was just another case where some state thought they could get some free money from a large corporation. All of the machines labeled “Vista Capable” were more than sufficient to run Vista. They may not have been the best at running Vista, but that little sticker, nor any documentation claims that it will.
Why do people always come in here defending Microsoft? The pc’s ran like crap and were not worthy of being put in stores. Microsoft deserved to get sued for this so they wouldn’t do this to customers again.
Its really to bad this couldn’t go through, since no one is going to sue over $300-500, it just isn’t practical, and is why these types of suits exists.
Indeed, and this would be the opposite of FUD, in lieu of it being brought up yesterday. Marketing. FUD doesn’t have to be lies, it can just skew the truth. The same thing they do in marketing, but they don’t offer college degrees in FUD (yet).
So Microsoft wasn’t lying, but they did imply something which isn’t. If the sticker said, “This machine will barely run Vista” just wouldn’t have been very effective, would it?