Vista lawsuits a go

A Seattle court had ruled that two complaints against Microsoft's Windows Vista marketing campaign can proceed to court. District Court judge Marsha Pechman denied a Microsoft dismissal petition, which claimed that plaintiffs Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen lack the standing necessary for a lawsuit. The two have accused Microsoft of deceiving customers through its "Vista Capable" campaign, which attempted to assure computer buyers that their system would be able to run Vista even though it was bought before the January launch.

In reality, say Kelley and Hansen, many systems bearing the label could only run Vista Home Basic, a "stripped down" edition of the OS missing the features defining other versions, such as Aero translucency or Flip3D program switching. Basic machines also have noticeably lower hardware requirements: they need only an 800MHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 20GB of hard drive space, versus the 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 40GB of storage demanded by Home Premium.

Microsoft has in the past defended itself by saying that it also had a "Vista Premium Ready" campaign, in which it clearly indicated the requirement differences between Home Basic and Home Premium. A trial date for the lawsuit has been set for October. [via InformationWeek]

By Electronista Staff

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