Slashdot | Microsoft Sued Over Vista Marketing
I wondered if someone would get angry at Microsoft over this. I’m still waiting for the FTC to sock it to Dell some time over the same sort of issue. These guys are absolute crooks, swindling home and business buyers alike with their fraudulent sales tactics. Don’t we have laws against selling snake oil and claiming it’s medicine, or love potion? To those of us watching from Mars, it’s amazing that they get away with so much. With Windows Vista, Microsoft divided the one product line into four “editions”, not counting the “Enterprise” edition and a special “Starter” edition for third world countries. (WTF?) Each comes in a different color box (Woah!) and are named “Home Basic,” “Home Premium,” “Business,” and “Ultimate.” No word on whether “Ultimate” is for Home or Business use, and the matrix doesn’t include the Enterprise edition, so I wonder if it’s the same as “Ultimate”? Who knows? Who cares?
Well, actually, a lot of consumers care once they realize they forgot to read the Vista footnotes on that new computer they just bought. The computer says it’s “Vista Ready,” but that’s only if you think an operating system that looks and talks like Windows XP but has a Vista label is really Windows Vista. The low end of the OEM market—all those cheap computers that some tech writers claim are evidence that Windows PCs are cheaper than Macs—is dominated by machines that only run “Home Basic,” which, as the footnotes so clearly state, does not support Windows Aero and Windows Flip 3D navigation, the Mac OS X copycat eye-candy that’s one of the main distinguishing features of the product. Oh, you also don’t get the new Windows DVD Maker, HD support for Windows Movie Maker, or the cool new Windows games (Chess Titans and Mahjong Titans). But that’s not all! You also don’t get Windows Media Center software, backup and restore tools, fax and scan tools, scheduled backup, and so on.
Did I mention that all of these features are standard parts of Mac OS X in the one non-server edition of that product? And that Mac users can run Mac OS X 10.4 on the same hardware they’ve been using for years? The only thing you might absolutely have to upgrade is your video card and RAM. It’s ridiculous that Microsoft is trying to establish a new class system based on which version of Windows you can afford. Geez. When will they learn?
What is it Puck says to Oberon at the end of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
