A class action lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation is underway according to an article by the Associated Press. Two people filed the original lawsuit against Microsoft for the way the company “falsely” advertised how their personal computers that came with Windows XP are capable of running the more recent Vista operating system.

According to the lawsuit, the label “Windows Vista Capable” was misleading consumers because most of those personal computers were not powerful enough to run all of Vista’s features – most especially the “aero” user interface (which is similar to the Mac OS X interface and requires higher specs to run smoothly).

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman granted the class action status to the lawsuit because according to her “common issues predominate” the case. She said that it is arguable that Microsoft Corporation’s misleading “Windows Vista Capable” labels created an artificial demand for their personal computers before the end of 2006. These labels may have inflated prices for computers whose operating system couldn’t actually be upgraded to the full-featured version of Vista that was released at the beginning of 2007.

“These common issues … are whether Vista Home Basic, in truth, can fairly be called ‘Vista‘ and whether Microsoft’s ‘Windows Vista Capable’ marketing campaign inflated demand market-wide for ‘Windows Vista Capable’ PCs,” the judge wrote.

Lawyers for Microsoft argued that each buying consumer had a different knowledge on Windows Vista (during that holiday season) therefore the lawsuit should not be granted class action status. To counter that claim the lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that all buyers of the “Windows Vista Capable” personal computers were united in that “each person in our class did not get what they paid for.” – therefore a class action lawsuit should be in effect.