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.

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."

Is Windows Vista the biggest PR failure in Microsoft's history?

An anti-market has grown up around Windows Vista that was made possible largely by its haphazard design and high price tag. But that works well for Linux, which is enjoying some strong sales growth at Novell.

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.

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

Some people seem to have a short circuit in their minds when they try to explain why Windows has such an enormous desktop market share. Some of them have the delusion that Windows is technically better than the competition. It never was. It isn't now. And, considering how Vista is staggering along, it never will be.

A few days ago i published a short article describing how Windows Vista would accept incorrect passwords at the login screen. Now, as if God/Microsoft her/himself had intervened, my Vista connected to the network, installed some unspecified update, and the password problem is solved. The weird thing is - Vista refuses to connect to my WLAN, so it shouldn't have been able to get any updates.

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.