Bad Windows

Will you be moving to Windows 7 during the next year, or will Vista disappointment, economic doom and gloom or compatibility concerns keep you away like 84 percent of business folks surveyed have said?

The Windows 7 Release Candidate is nearly with us, complete with plenty of reported security problems, not to mention confusion surrounding there being no less than six versions of Windows 7 to choose from. Yet despite all the carefully timed marketing from Microsoft, it would appear that not everyone is convinced of the desirability of the new OS – at least in the short term.

Read more at DaniWeb

THIS IS PART of a very long series (seemingly endless) about Comes vs Microsoft. Today’s exhibit, Exhibit px07062 (2002/2003) [PDF], is a detailed explanation from Gary Schare of the Windows Digital Media Division about the fight against GNU/Linux in content delivery networks. This follows a review that involved Jim Allchin, who was at the time convinced that Microsoft was losing to GNU/Linux.

From Mr. Schare, here is the summary of Microsoft’s problem:

Read more at Boycott Novell

A federal judge late Friday refused to restore class-action status to the Vista Capable lawsuit, handing Microsoft Corp. its second major victory in the case in the last two months.

U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman denied a motion by the plaintiffs to recertify a smaller group of consumers in the suit that has accused Microsoft of misleading PC buyers in 2006 and 2007 by letting computer makers slap the “Vista Capable” sticker on machines that could run only Home Basic.

Pechman’s order was the second since Feb. 18 denying class-action status to the lawsuit, and it limits the plaintiffs’ options to appealing her decision or moving forward with a trial of the half-dozen individual claims.

Read more at ComputerWorld

Summary: Antitrust exhibit shows how Microsoft changes its pricing to suppress interest in Mandrake (GNU/Linux)

SOME PEOPLE wish to know why certain shop cease to sell GNU/Linux-powered computers (or sub-notebooks with GNU/Linux), or in some cases no longer make available GNU/Linux with comparable hardware. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft systematically sets the prices to deny GNU/Linux entry into the market.

We have just pulled an antitrust exhibit which shows what Microsoft is doing. As far as we are aware, this exhibit was never published or used by the courts before. The full exhibit (2003) [PDF] can be found as text at the bottom of this post. Here is the gist:

Read more at Boycott Novell

The German competition authority, the BundesKartellamt, has fined Microsoft €9m for colluding with retailers to set the price of “Office Home and Student 2007″.

Suppliers are allowed to talk to retailers about prices but need to be careful not to break competition rules.

But in this case, Microsoft staff and a leading German stationer met at least twice to set prices. The two worked together on an advertising campaign in autumn 2008, which Microsoft funded.

Read more at The Register