Microsoft Sued For Charging To Downgrade Vista To XP

[...] Microsoft Sued For Charging To Downgrade Vista To XP ~ The Blade … All of the people who have been charged for the right to downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP may be able to join a class action lawsuit against Microsoft. A suit filed in Seattle by one disgruntled consumer alleges that the … Original post by somebody [...]

I guess it all depends on how one looks at it Ron. “Downgrading” is the lawyers term. Actually, the cost of the Vista OS as it comes in OEM version is included in the price of the pc. Once MS ended the availability of XP in new pc purchases, that more or less ended the choice for the consumer. Wanting XP on your pc now requires making a 2nd purchase. This of course is how I see the situation.

My problem is in NOT having the choice, but since that’s no longer an option, I would actually own two separate OS’s … the one that came with my pc (VISTA) and the one I opted to install (XP), purchased separately. I think that, even though the courts may frown upon MS in the way they do business, I seriously doubt they will find anything illegal with this.

GOD BLESS LAWYERS AND LITIGATION .. DEPRESSION PROOF FOR SURE!

Hello Don,
Good points. Thanks for sharing your opinion with us.
Have a great weekend, Ron

[...] See more here: Microsoft Sued For Charging To Downgrade Vista To XP ~ The Blade … [...]

Pardon my naivete but my Vista Ultimate, running on a top-of-the-line Dell, is great. I’ve had no problems whatsoever and I don’t understand what the bitching is all about. I mainly upgraded because I wanted to get remote access to my desktop. Mission accomplished!

Hello George,
Same here. My new laptop with Vista works great as well.
Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

I tend to agree with the last chap who has experienced no problems with VISTA. Although my Gateway is NOT top-of-the-line, it came with VISTA Home Premium and after spending a couple of weeks getting all the “bundled crap-ware” off and installing my programs, I had no problems. Yes it’s a power-hungry OS, but I knew that up front. I suspect most people who’ve had problems with VISTA were installing it on an XP pc and did an upgrade. This of course opened up a can of worms with non-compatible software/hardware issues.

I went so far as to purchase an OEM version of XP Pro initially, and it’s still tucked away in my closet with the seal still intact! I missed some of the XP features (at the time) but learned to adjust to VISTA’s way of doing things. It does contain features that I utilize and I have no wish to return to “the good ol’ days” LOL.

Keep up the good work Ron and have a great weekend!

Hi Don,
You have a great weekend as well.

Vista is not as bad as people think, though it really eats up my power supply. Right now i’m using Vista Home Basic. I have thought of downgrading to XP before, but still stick to Vista.

A few months ago, my laptop with Vista OS couldn’t start up at all. It always got stuck during the updating process, at stage 3. It just kept restarting itself several times until i decided that i have had enough. So i sent my laptop for repair. The guy that fixed my laptop told me not to update anything on my windows. So i disabled my automatic update function.

Being so determined at fixing my laptop, i google searched for a solution. Alas, it seemed that i need to install a specific driver on my laptop before performing any updating process. So far, everything seems fine on my laptop. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I don’t see a problem with Microsoft charging for XP, that is additional cost they incur if someone ops to have XP over Vista. Think about it as if you were in business for yourself. You make widgets for a couple of years and sell them. Then you come out with a new model widget. You sell all the old ones first. Then as you start selling the newer model, some customers want the old one instead. So now you have to incur the cost of making more of the old ones when you inventory is full of the new ones. Shouldn’t you be allowed to charge for the cost of selling them an older model you have had to pay to have more made? I think so. It is part of free enterprise. I am all for consumer protection when it comes to health & safety issues, but when you start letting the government tell you what you can & can’t charge for your impeding free enterprise. Microsoft, if forced to refund the fees by court order, will loose revenue used to cover the cost of manufacturing, distributing, licensing, & tech support for both downgraded Vista & the replacement XP. Microsoft as with any business, would have to take that cost as well as court cost involved and add it to future overhead expenses, thus driving up the cost of future products. Costs have to be covered to stay in business. “If a business fails to charge enough to stay in business, and fails, then the cost of a low price product can suddenly become much more expensive than that of a competing product sold for a higher price.”

If you are a software developer, then XP is 10x nicer to use, far fewer restrictions, advanced settings are where you expect them and the system runs faster. Business users (or specifically their internal IT support) would to a certain extent agree with me I think.

If I was not a software dev then Vista would probably be fine for me.

Thanks to all of you who have posted comments. It is appreciated.
Regards, Ron

I have a PC that runs on Vista. I am not complaining about how it works, I am complaining about what I can do and not do with it. I am sick and tired of paying for things I have already paid for. I am currently testing Windows 7 and it is not half as bad as I thought it may be.

While they may (or may not) be within their “legal” rights to charge to downgrade in a civil action, the court of public opinion has a much lower level of proof, and as a juror in the latter, I find in favor of the consumer.

I am a web developer, and have elected to neither use Vista nor downgrade. I find Ubuntu linux to be a great development platform that is very fast and an efficient use of the memory and CPU in my current laptop.

This is more like a question of ethics, yes, it is unethical but is it against the law, probably not.

I agree with the first comment that it should be legal to charge for XP in this situation. It’s like buying something from a junkyard. It’s no longer sold or supported, but someone still wants it. However, I do think this is a very bad business practice.

I’ve never been a fan of Microsoft’s products, with exception of Excel and OneNote. My answer to this one is simple. I’m not a Mac-head. Yet, honestly, after having owned a MacBook Pro from Apple for about a year now and being an IT professional, I would say stop wasting your money on Microsoft junk and spend it on a Mac. You will be so glad not to have to wait a long time for an app to load or to have to reboot so frequently. Updates are a breeze and the cost to maintenance/upgrade ratio is much, much better.