Tech vendors and analysts dragged into Vista ‘junk’ PC case

Acer America, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Sony, Toshiba, Gartner, Wal-Mart and Amazon have been subpoenaed for the Vista Capable class-action suit taking place in US District Court in Seattle, Washington.

In the current tale of the saga, two subpoenas were filed with the US District Court in Seattle, Washington. Plaintiffs were seeking more document support from top technology vendors, Jim Allchin from Microsoft, retailers and even IT analysts, for the case against Microsoft. Both subpoenas were posted Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog on the Seattle Post Intelligencer site.

One of the subpoenas stated: “documents which; reflected an organisations business/contractual relationship with Microsoft; all documents reflecting concerns about Microsoft’s Windows Vista Capable program; Windows Vista Home Basic, and/or Windows 2006; all correspondence to and from Microsoft relating to the Windows Vista Capable program and/or Windows Home Basic” were to be produced before the court.

The plaintiffs hope to obtain any written evidence which would vindicate their appeal, similar to when Federal Court judges in Washington State unsealed internal Microsoft e-mails. At the time it confirmed suspicions that the vendor was aware of problems with Vista capable PCs.

The class-action suit first came to the attention of the public when US District Court Judge Marsha Pechman granted class-action status to a lawsuit that claimed Microsoft Corp duped consumers when it promoted PCs as "Vista Capable".

The original lawsuit was filed in April 2006 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington. At the time the lawsuit sought class action status and plaintiffs asked for damages. The suit also noted that the amount in controversy exceeded US$5 million and the size of the class likely exceeded 10,000 people.