Microsoft’s "Vista capable" deceptive marketing won’t be punished?

On Wednesday Judge Marsha Pechman that was trying a case over Microsoft's "Vista capable" marketing program stated that the case will no longer be qualified as a class action suit. The new ruling says that each PC buyer will have to bring their own legal action if they want to seek damages from the software company.

“Absent evidence of class-wide price inflation, Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that common questions predominate over individual considerations,” noted Pechman.

While the suit was not dismissed entirely the ruling became a huge win for Microsoft who didn’t fail to express their content with the outcome as long as otherwise the company could face a serious verdict.

Thus with such a victorious end of the trial Microsoft will get not only less money damages but also less coverage of what the company wants to conceal from the mass media. The case if successful could bring to news companies an invaluable source of information contained in the court documents including a number of juicy e-mails.

It should be recalled that the suit was related to Microsoft’s being deceptive when it labeled PCs as "Vista capable" while in fact those machines were not able to support the soon-to-come platform’s features like Aero user interface. Users were purchasing computers with the "Vista capable" stickers on Windows XP systems when Vista was not available yet.