Now that Cuba is out of the control of Fidel Castro and is in the hands of Raul Castro, some things are definitely changing; one of those things is a lift on the ban of computers. Though it’s probably very exciting for Cubans, there’s only 1 model of PC being sold, and its just a bit more than underwhelming.

Microsoft should prepare to let more embarrassment fly.  The company filed an appeal in order to attempt to reverse a lower courts decision that the Vista Capable lawsuit would be allowed to continue.  That appeal has been denied and the case will now resume.

With all the problems surrounding Vista, it’s been suggested that Vista could actually be more along the lines of beta software than the final version. Microsoft spent five years developing Vista but half of that was spent with Longhorn which was trashed about half way through and Vista was built, at least partially, from the ground up.

Just when everyone thought that Microsoft’s goose was near to fully cooked in all its greasy goodness, it seems as though the goose is getting some breathing room; though mounds of incriminating evidence against Microsoft in the “Vista-capable” lawsuit has been piling up in rapid fashion, the well-paid lawyers at Microsoft have found a loophole and earned a bit of time to either rally a defense or order a tombstone epitaph. 

Ok, ok, we can all laugh and joke about some of the rather humorous ends eBay has gone to in the interest of protecting its customers, but there’s a real chance that the latest caper moves from lighthearted humor to rather arguable controversy.  Ebay has removed a laptop that contains an attack code used to crack Vista in the interesting of its buyers’ “safety.” 

I think we can all agree at this point in time that Microsoft is sitting not-so-pretty in a pot of boiling water over the whole “Vista-capable” debacle.  Though the bundle of corporate emails originally seemed to indicate that Intel was the bully responsible for the early release of Vista and the ensuing disaster of a marketing strategy, continued research has shown that graphical giant Nvidia has had the most adverse affect on Vista operating systems thus far.

Jim Allchin, the former co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms and Service division has been subpoenaed in the Vista Capable class action lawsuit.  For those of you that haven’t been following the case, back in 2006 Microsoft came up with the idea that computers would be rated with two-tiers of performance when upgrading to Vista.  Those that could only run the most basic features would be “Vista Capable” and those that could handle all the features would be “Premium Ready.”

That’s right, its finally here — the salvation for sinners, the roof for the homeless, the bread for the hungry — service pack 1 for Microsoft’s acclaimed Vista operating system is here.  But is it too late?  Is SP1 showing up to a party that’s already been busted?

It all goes back to the Vista Capable “certification” program that Microsoft labeled all those computers with that couldn’t run the advanced features of Vista.  In fact, the company did so to help Intel sell systems with it’s low-end graphics chips that were not capable of running Aero Glass.  Intel now has Aero Glass capable chips on the market but that wasn’t the case when Vista released.  The program helped Microsoft sell Vista and Intel sell it’s useless chips.  Microsoft is now facing what could be its largest and most damaging court case ever.

Everyone had their suspicions as to what Microsoft may or may not have been doing when it released Vista with different stickers like “capable,” and “ready.”  Many consumers felt cheated when they purchased hardware that flat out couldn’t handle Vista.  Well, the truth has finally surfaced:  In the class-action lawsuit brought against Microsoft regarding the labeling system for Vista, the court has released a series of emails between Microsoft execs that show how Microsoft plain deceived customers into buying hardware that couldn’t handle Vista to help Intel and to release Vista earlier than it should have been.

It’s clear by now that not even Microsoft is happy with what it “achieved” with Vista.  Some internal emails have been made available after a federal judge ordered them unsealed.  They are being used to support the plaintiff’s position over the “Vista capable” lawsuit.

Microsoft was unable to launch Vista for the holiday season of 2006 and decided to initiate a program with free upgrades to Vista.  Depending on the version of XP that shipped with the computer determined which version of Vista the person was able to get.  At the same time it also launched the “Vista Capable” and “Premium Ready” programs.  This confused consumers and has led to a class action lawsuit against the company.

  Microsoft said that Vista SP1 would disable two of the most common hacks for making illegal copies of the operating system “think” they were legitimate.  The two hacks are the OEM BIOS and the grace timer exploit.  The OEM BIOS hack attempted to make the copy legitimate by telling the operating system that it was installed from a manufacture like HP, Acer or other.  The grace timer hack just kept resetting the “time bomb” that told Vista when to deactivate.  Both have been shown to work.  But they work no more, not with Vista SP1.

The status on whether to certify “Vista capable” suit as a nationwide class-action case is now in the hands of a US federal court after Microsoft filed its official opposition to the request of the plaintiffs for class-action status.

In an effort to placate Google, Microsoft has submitted a test version of Vista to the Justice Department with features that make it easier to use non-Microsoft programs to search local PC hard drives.