"PC buyers: 'Vista Capable' machines weren't Vista capable
How misleading was Microsoft's 'Windows Vista Capable' campaign? Misleading enough for a judge to approve a federal trial.

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that two PC buyers, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, can proceed with a lawsuit that accuses Microsoft of deliberately deceiving the public with the 'Window Vista Capable' stickers it slapped on Windows XP machines in the run-up to Vista's January debut, InformationWeek reports. Microsoft had asked for a dismissal, but US District Judge Marsha Pechman of Seattle is happy to oversee an October trial.

With their class action suit, filed in March, Kelley and Hansen claim that Microsoft used 'bait and switch' tactics to move XP systems as the world waited for the long-delayed Windows Vista. They argue that Microsoft's stickers reassured buyers "that they were purchasing Vista-capable machines when, in fact, they could obtain only a stripped down operating system." Some 'Vista Capable' machines, they say, were only capable of running versions of the OS that lack things like Microsoft's new Aero interface and a spruced-up Windows Media Center."

I think they're on dodgy ground here - they're basically arguing that whilst the machines in question can run Vista, they will only take a very cut down version. Well, is it Vista or isn't it?

PC buyers: 'Vista Capable' machines weren't Vista capable | The Register