Vista Capable Lawyers Try Another Class-Action Angle

Previously, the class-action suit involved all parties that bought Vista Capable PCs, but last week's court ruling whittled that down to six individual plaintiffs.

In an attempt to recertify the case's class-action status, lawyers have narrowed its scope to PC buyers in Microsoft's Express Upgrade Guarantee program who requested a Vista upgrade, and buyers of Vista Capable PCs that lacked support for the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) .

In a Thursday court filing, lawyers for the plaintiffs asked U.S. District Court Judge Marsha J. Pechman to postpone the April 13 trial date to consider their request to redefine the scope of the class action.

There's a lot riding on the court's decision. In January, University of Washington economist Keith Leffler estimated that after the April 1, 2006, launch of the Vista Capable labeling campaign, about 19.4 million PCs —13.75 million notebooks and 5.65 million desktops—were labeled Vista Capable.

As a result, Leffler estimated that Microsoft could be on the hook for between $3.92 billion and $8.52 billion for the memory and graphics cards necessary to upgrade PCs labeled Vista Capable that weren't, in fact, capable enough.

Microsoft launched Windows Vista in January 2007 after a nine-month marketing campaign involving components manufacturers, PC makers and retailers.

During that time, Microsoft and partners affixed Vista Capable labels to PCs that ended up not having enough processing power to run more advanced versions of Vista, even though they were able to run the entry-level Vista Home Basic.

The Vista Capable case has become emblematic of the consumer and business market's deep-seated loathing for Vista, and has cemented the operating system's status as one of the least popular products in Microsoft history.