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Fuzzy Logic Ballmer set to do Monkey Dance in court?
Fuzzy Logic Ballmer set to do Monkey Dance in court? | Ballmer set to do Monkey Dance in court? |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Sunday, 23 November 2008 | |
  
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U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman has ruled that Ballmer must meet with plaintiff’s lawyers within 30 days and that he will be required to testify for no more than three hours. The class-action lawsuit revolves around consumers buying Vista Capable PCs that weren’t able to run more advanced versions of Vista, and accusations between Intel and Microsoft over who demanded changes to the Vista Capable program so lower-spec Intel graphics chips could be classed as “Vista Capable”. Part of the problem stems from Intel’s graphics chipset at the time simply not being powerful enough to display the “Aero glass” graphics that Vista is known for. At the time it was reported in the press that there would be at least two stickers on computers – Vista Capable, meaning a computer would be able to at least run Vista Home Basic, and Vista Premium, meaning the PCs in question could run those advanced Vista versions with the glassy Aero graphics. While the media understood this, and even wrote articles suggesting it was going to be confusing, it clearly did end up confusing some some consumers who felt they were misled into believing that Vista Capable meant being able to run all versions of Vista, and so we now have a class-action lawsuit to try and sort out the mess. The lawsuit has uncovered all kinds of interesting email correspondence between Intel and Microsoft, and while Ballmer says he left the decisions up to Microsoft executives Jim Allchin and Will Poole. Both have now left the company but Microsoft says that both were involved in making the Vista Capable sticker decisions internally and with Intel. As there seems to be at least one email to indicate Ballmer knows more than he is letting on, despite Microsoft’s insistence Ballmer left it all up to his executives, it appears that Judge Pechman is relying on this to seek Ballmer’s presence in court to answer questions. Whether Intel, Microsoft or both are responsible for the Vista Capable labelling mess, the entire episode is very disappointing, and the final result threatens to look financially ugly. We can only hope these companies learn their lessons, whether big payouts are ordered or not, and all companies should remember that honesty to consumers is the best policy, otherwise class-action lawsuits are almost always guaranteed to await. ComputerWorld and PCMag have more details. |
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