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.

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.

In a blow to Microsoft Corp., a federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit late Friday alleging that Microsoft unjustly enriched itself by promoting PCs as "Windows Vista Capable" even when they could only run a bare-bones version of the operating system, called "Vista Home Basic."

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.

A Microsoft product manager couldn't correctly explain the "Vista Capable" marketing slogan, according to recent filings in a lawsuit that claims the company misled consumers with a prerelease Vista campaign last year.

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 [...]

The evidence shows that Microsoft’s marketing department has not done particularly well with Windows Vista. Almost every story you see about Vista is a negative one. Even I, as a Linux user, think that Vista is better than its reputation. But Microsoft’s marketing is not always a failure, it appears.

Not only did Windows Vista - billed by Microsoft as its biggest operating system for 10 years - fail to distinguish Microsoft's latest fiscal year from previous, non-Windows-Vista years, but Microsoft also missed its own expectations by several million dollars.

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.