Woman sues Microsoft over XP downgrade charge

[darkassain]

Woman sues Microsoft over XP downgrade charge

A woman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over a $59.25 charge for downgrading her Windows Vista PC to XP.


In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, Los Angeles resident Emma Alvarado is asking that Microsoft return the fee she paid for downgrading a Lenovo PC with the Windows Vista Business OS preinstalled to Windows XP Professional. Alvarado purchased the PC on June 20, 2008, according to the suit.
Alvarado also is inviting others who have paid fees to downgrade to XP to join the suit (PDF) and is requesting refunds for them as well.

Many customers who purchased PCs with Vista installed opted to downgrade to XP because they weren't happy with Vista's "numerous problems," according to Alvarado's suit.

"As a result, many consumers would prefer to purchase a new computer preinstalled with the Windows XP operating system or at least not preinstalled with the Vista operating system," according to the filing.

The suit goes on to accuse Microsoft of using its "market power to take advantage of consumer demand for the Windows XP operating system" by requiring people to buy Vista PCs and then charging them to downgrade to the OS they really want.

This action violates Washington state's Unfair Business Practices Act and the Consumer Protection Act, according to the suit.

thought it would be funny...

via Woman sues Microsoft over XP downgrade charge | IDGNS | News | February 13, 2009 | By Elizabeth Montalbano

 

[smarteyeball]

Read this over at vistax64. This is from the article:

I am not a lawyer (IANAL)

Small things amuse small minds....

 

[jbosa1]

WOW...wonderful story...and of course, it's a fact that many laptops with preinstalled Windows Vista is behaing like syrup...or very, very SLOW...in that situation I guess all one can do is to go back to Windows XP...I like Vista but Vista is all hardware...if you have enough it's great and if you dont have the hardware for it then it's very, very nasty...thats why we throw ourselfes over Windows 7 like hungry wolfs...we need speed, speed and no UAC terror...

 

[ittech]

i have complete xp drivers for my toshiba laptops delivered with vista as default. true, they ran like, well i used my pocket pc more than the lap, that's how they ran. toshiba don't offer a complete set of drivers for the laptops but you can compile them from sources yourself with some hunting around. (took me two days). i did love the practice slipstreaming drivers though.

remember once the op system was superceeded, in theory agreement with toshiba as a partner prohibited them from supplying drivers to downgrade their vista supplied laptops. the period for allowing downgrading from oem suppliers ended long ago.

the only thing i could suggest to the woman in question would be "good luck with that". vista crippled a lot of otherwise good units especially laptops but if someone offered to downgrade for you at under 60 bucks, you would think she would be giggling with glee.

 

[Jacee]

And to think I upgraded (clean install) my XP Pro laptop to Vista Business!