Frivolous lawsuit if you ask me. Businesses should research an OS before purchasing it, regular consumers as well. The Specs are on the box, aren't they? (that's a serious question, my laptop came with vista pre-installed and an anytime upgrade disc to home premium). I'm not usually one to defend Microsoft (can't really stand Microsoft, what with that bill that they (tried?) to get passed that would allow them to search any computer randomly, whenever they wanted), but it is not Microsoft's problem that people don't have good computers.
However, I strongly suspect that many of the businesses who put Vista on the boxes were privvy to this issue. After all, they get a cut of the profit and from what I know about many branded pcs, the full specifications are not always listed on the box. Instead, one sometimes gets a listing like this:
- Meet your multimedia needs with leading graphics technology
- Fully-featured 2.1 sound quality
- Edit your photos quickly and easily
- Stable storage
- Supports WinXP/Vista (Usually, "supports" means more like "might be able to run")
And then sometimes in addition to that, you get a more detailed listing:
- 40gb hard disk (many times it's PATA not even SATA)
- ATI/Nvidia graphics card(usually this means integrated graphics chip, not really a graphics card)
- 256 mb ram(I've learnt that many makers use onboard graphics cards and thus, this figure often includes memory shared by other components and sometimes, it's Sdram, not even DDR. Or if it's DDR, quite often, it's CL3 not even 2.5.)
- In-built microphone(probably some shoddy build that crackles too often)
- Intel Pentium 4 1.6 ghz(or sometimes, they don't list the processor at all)
Often, the detailed listing doesn't include much of the hardware and you'd probably have to open up the casing(thus voiding the warranty) or run some software like Everest or even Speedfan or Sandra Sisoft. But how many people know anything about such procedures?
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