VISTA SUCKS, DO WE SUE?

When it comes to operating systems (OS), I have always been of the belief that the older system has a lesser number of “bugs” than the newly released versions. Which is why when Microsoft XP was released years ago, I still stubbornly stuck with my Windows 98 OS. Fast forward to 2008, now I am a Microsoft XP user and I still refuse to “upgrade” to the new Microsoft OS, “Vista”, which supposedly could provide more multimedia features.
An online article, They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know, published in nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?pagewanted=1) seemed to have proven this “theory”.
In the article, internal communications between Microsoft senior executives seem to indicate that Vista had a lot of compatibility issues that still needed to be resolved, as well as performance and graphics-related problems when it was released to the public. There must be something wrong when even a Microsoft VP refers to his “Microsoft Vista Capable” laptop, in exasperation, as “a $2,100 e-mail machine.”
After Vista’s release, Microsoft was subsequently flooded with numerous customer complaints about the Vista OS and a class action suit was filed by several of these customers alleging that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista Capable” stickers were misleading when placed on PCs which could not support the features that Microsoft was marketing as distinctive benefits of “upgrading” to Vista.
Putting aside international law issues and the question of adequacy of legislative protection, the more important question to ask is: If our laws, such as the Consumer Act of the Philippines, are adequate enough to protect our consumer rights, do we have the mentality and the wherewithal to fight for our rights as such consumers?
I believe, as a country, we still have a lot to go in order to properly attain a “the customer is always right” mentality. Yes, we occasionally hassle restaurants for lousy service or return defective department store items, but we don’t sue. Even if the circumstances warrant litigation, such as when we get horribly sick by unknowingly eating crap-ridden restaurant food or if we buy a $2000 laptop, due to a "Vista Capable" inducement, but we end up with one very expensive "e-mail machine," which does not even run our peripheral devices.
Consumer rights laws are useless if we don’t use them.
Microsoft rakes in billions of dollars every year, but it has consistently been releasing products which still have a lot of “bugs”. That may be excusable, but when it resorts to a practice which tends to mislead consumers into thinking that the product they’re buying offers more features than what it actually can, then that is false advertising. Microsoft is not some semi-anonymous seller from E-bay, whom we probably couldn’t find in order to sue; it is one of the biggest companies in the world, which is why it should be made accountable for any type of misleading practice.
So ... class suit anyone?