A federal judge has said consumers may go ahead with a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over the way it advertised computers loaded with Windows XP as capable of running the Vista operating system.

The lawsuit said Microsoft's labeling of some PCs as "Windows Vista Capable" was misleading because many of those computers were not powerful enough to run all of Vista's features, including the much-touted "Aero" user interface.

There's a new twist in the "Windows Vista Capable" lawsuit that brought us all those behind-the-scenes e-mails last week: Microsoft has petitioned a federal appeals court in an attempt to overturn the judge's Feb. 22 decision granting the lawsuit class-action status.

The "Windows Vista Capable" lawsuit took another step toward trial—or settlement—Tuesday when US District Court Judge Marsha Pechman denied Microsoft's request for dismissal. The suit was filed in March by a pair of miffed PC buyers.

Cancel, or Cancel?
Well, the Windows Vista-Capable class action lawsuit has taken another pretty interesting turn, with the plaintiffs lawyers having requested that Microsoft use it's own Windows Update service to notify potential class members of the suit.

The Vista Capable lawsuit accuses Microsoft of duping buyers in 2006 and 2007 by letting PC makers slap a [...]

I knew it. Vista simply wasn’t ready for prime time. Some internal documents that emerged from a class-action lawsuit over Vista Capable illustrated that hardware vendor, Dell, pushed back on Microsoft to fix issues with Vista before launching. Microsoft knew fully well of Dell’s feedback as early as Aug 2005.

Two customers charged that Microsoft used deceptive marketing tactics to promote its new Windows Vista operating system.

Microsoft is working very hard to prevent an ongoing class-action lawsuit from involving the CEO (plus other Vista news)

You may think of Wal-Mart as a down-market PC seller, but as emails in the Vista "junk PC" case show, Wal-Mart was furious at Microsoft's Vista Capable scheme, and thought that Vista Home Basic never should have been developed, much less released. They're not alone. Other retailers, notably Office Depot, thought Vista Home Basic should have been killed. Here's all the dirt, including emails.

Back a few weeks ago, we began our examination of the 158 pages of unsealed documents (PDF) released as part of the ongoing Microsoft "Vista Capable" lawsuit.