CAFC Gives Microsoft Word Stay, and I HATE Vista!

By now most probably know that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted Microsoft a stay of the injunction against Word pending its expedited patent appeal.  The Federal Circuit granted the stay of the permanent injunction on September 3, 2009, but I had a very difficult time finding the ruling.  Being ever suspicious of the popular press given that they get patent news wrong more often than they get it right, I set out searching for the order to confirm it before I wrote out it.  I could find the Federal Circuit ruling no where.  It was not on the Federal Circuit Motion page, it was not on the Federal Circuit Opinions & Orders page, and I looked through the Federal Circuit PACER database, which incidentally has the most illogical set up I have ever seen, and I still couldn’t find it.  I gave up and wrote Federal Circuit Grant Stay to Microsoft Injunction? I was not about to continue on a wild goose chase, and with such an important Order why would the Federal Circuit go to such lengths to hide it?  I didn’t know, didn’t care and was frustrated.  Then someone pointed out to me in a comment that it was on PACER, just indexed under the filing date of Microsoft’s request for the stay rather than the date it was granted, which is ridiculous enough, but then things took a much weirder turn for me.  I HATE VISTA!!!!!

Like virtually everyone that owns a Vista machine, my primary computer, which is a laptop I carry with me everywhere in my travels, has seen its better days.  This particular machine is the ripe old age of 6 months old, and as near as I can tell its better days were those days prior to the loading of Vista, which as far as I can tell is a computer virus!  Nothing operates properly on a Vista machine, not even Internet Explorer.  Oddly enough, Mozilla Firefox is more stable on a Vista machine than IE, go figure.

In any event, my machine has been freezing up, not responding, the live update stopped updating for the machine, and for the anti-virus software, which by the way does not recognize Vista as a virus, but that is another story for another day.  I could tolerate Cut and Paste not working with the ubiquitous CTRL+C and CTRL+V, and you needing to right click on the mouse.  I could put up with things freezing occasionally, but over the last week prior to September 4, 2009, my FTP program stopped responding, Word stopped responding and then when Firefox stopped responding and started crashing I new I needed to reload the operating system.  I burned everything on my computer to DVD, or so I thought.  I even did the most important stuff twice and checked it to make sure it was recognized on the DVD.  Then I reinstalled the operating system, which by the way is clearly a virus, did I mention that already?  After I reloaded my operating system I went to load back the files and the DVDs, all of them, are not readable.  I lost virtually everything, and have been recreating ever since.  Thank God for web applications, Gmail, WordPress and periodically backing up stuff (a long story for another time) otherwise everything would have been gone.  The biggest loss seems to be pictures from our family vacation.

It was after I lost everything that I learned that the Order was on the Federal Circuit PACER, just not indexed in any logical fashion.  I then went to sign on to PACER and realized that my cheat sheet with my PACER login and password was now deleted and gone.  Of course, PACER being run by the federal government is not what you would call the most user friendly of services.  You do not pick your user name, and you do not pick your password, and I can verify that there is no relevant way to retrieve your username or password.  If you go through the “I lost my password/username” feature you are notified that a new one will be snail mailed to you in about a week.  No doubt this comes from the same genius federal mind that several years ago thought the Patent Office had a paperless system when they would print EFS filings and then scan them in because the front end system was not compatible with the back end system.  And these people want to run health care?

Well, I can now attest that the Federal Circuit did in fact grant Microsoft a stay of the injunction, and now that document is available on the Federal Circuit Opinions & Orders page.  I suspect I had something to do with that, making a big deal about how the Federal Circuit wasn’t making it easy to find an Order of such popular interest and overall importance.  See for yourself…

Federal Circuit Opinions and Order page before my post:

Federal Circuit Opinions an Order page after my post:

Notice the insertion of the Microsoft Order between Vazquez and Martek.  Oh well, all this agony trying to find an Order, and for what?  The Order says nothing.  It is a conclusion.  Microsoft asked for us to issue a stay, and we issue the stay without prejudice or determination of the merits of the case.  The legal reasoning is stunning: “the court determines that based on the motion papers submitted Microsoft has met its burden to obtain a stay of the injunction.”  You have to be kidding me!  One of the most popular software products in the world is facing an Order to stop production and distribution in a little over a month and the Federal Circuit says only that Microsoft has met its burden?  That is a little like treating Microsoft like the media treated Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, and treating the rest of us and i4i in particular like the media treated Hillary Clinton and John McCain.  Stunning.

One thing is for certain.  I hate Vista.  I am fed up and with Twisted Sister conviction, I’m not going to take it any more!  I was livid to learn that Microsoft actually is going to charge $120 to upgrade to version next of its operating virus, I mean system.  I refuse.  I just purchased a couple old XP machines off eBay to get me to the other side, and I am going to convert to Mac before the end of the year.  I refuse to pay to upgrade a defective product, and I refuse to upgrade Vista to Pro so I can have the privilege of downgrading to XP.  If the federal government wants to do something useful they can investigate Microsoft for consumer fraud.  When did we start tolerating defective products and then paying to upgrade, downgrade or otherwise fix said defective product?

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17 comments so far.

  • [Avatar for twitter]
    twitter
    September 13, 2009 03:48 pm

    Don’t throw your computer out the window, throw Windows out of your computer. There are many good Free Software distributions that will run very well on your old computers. I bought my 2002 vintage Thinkpad X30 used in 2005 and it continues to serve me well every day. If anything, free software has gotten better on it. Many distributions of free software will run off CD, so you can try it out without touching your hard drive. Mepis and Ubuntu are good for this but Mepis would probably be the easiest for you. Replace Vista and XP with it and you won’t look back.

  • [Avatar for patent leather]
    patent leather
    September 9, 2009 04:54 pm

    Vista was a nightmare for me too. But what I find funny about this thread is that a column about the ills of Vista gets triple the comments than your column about John Doll resigning!! That tells you something right there…

  • [Avatar for Gene Quinn]
    Gene Quinn
    September 9, 2009 03:40 pm

    Gareth-

    Thanks for your comment. I know Mac has compatibility issues, due to straight out poor business decisions by Apple and the continued doubling and tripling down of those bad business decisions. But at least the computer works. Vista is a nightmare. I am going to go to XP with new machines, but cannot down grade my current machines without first upgrading Vista and then paying for XP. I refuse to pay extortion to Microsoft both to upgrade Vista for the privilege of then paying again to downgrade, and I to pay for upgrading to 7. Vista is crap, doesn’t work, has compatibility issues with Microsoft’s own products, not to mention others and hardware and there is no way I will ever pay to upgrade a horribly defective operating system, so paying to upgrade to 7 is out of the question. I cannot believe the government and consumer groups are going to allow them to force people to pay to upgrade from their horribly defective release. That is corruption if you ask me. I am through with Microsoft and will be switching over to Apple soon enough. I will still have use for the XP machines though because the search software I am acquiring will run on XP only, cannot work on Vista, and even though future generations will work on 7 I will never find out.

    -Gene

  • [Avatar for Gareth Dickson]
    Gareth Dickson
    September 9, 2009 03:25 pm

    I posted last week (https://ipwatchdog.com/2009/08/21/cafc-grants-microsoft-expedited-patent-appeal-in-word-case/id=5135/#comment-8101) that I too had had a straightforward experience with Vista. Seriously, compatibility is better on Vista than on a Mac (I’ve used both), but your best course of action is to go back to XP until Windows 7 comes out.

    Also make sure to try your DVDs on a completely different machine – I’ve burnt DVDs which aren’t recognized on the machine that burnt them but are recognized on other machines running different OSs! Go figure!

  • [Avatar for Gene Quinn]
    Gene Quinn
    September 9, 2009 12:36 pm

    Ron-

    In lieu of flowers please send a donation to the ASPCA in the name of “The IP Watchdog.” LOL.

    Lucky for you! Stay away from Vista if you can at all costs!

    -Gene

  • [Avatar for Peter]
    Peter
    September 9, 2009 12:16 pm

    Gene,

    Most folks I know don’t have problems with Vista, but I bought a laptop with Vista that never worked from day one (although in the spirit of full disclosure, it was at on sale for a substantial discount at CompUSA because it was “broken”). Turns out it wasn’t broken, it just had Vista pre-installed. Once I put Windows 7 on it, it worked like a charm.

    Windows 7, so far, is as good as Vista is bad. I’ve upgraded some friends’ computers with it and they couldn’t be happier.

    -Pete

    P.S. Rick, I sympathize with you re: .NET. I am still using VB6 for application development. You’ll be happy to know that WIndows 7 will support apps written in VB6 (it won’t run the IDE, though).

  • [Avatar for Nick Toth]
    Nick Toth
    September 9, 2009 12:04 pm

    I switched to Mac from XP a while back to avoid using Vista, and have been sending condolences to other people ever since. Apple gave me 90 days of free telephone support, which I used extensively during the first frustrating week or two when I was getting used to the Mac. For example, I searched for hours trying to figure out how to uninstall an application, only to find out that you just move it to trash. No “uninstall” required. One you get used to the ease of use of the Mac, you’ll never go back.

  • [Avatar for Ron Reardon]
    Ron Reardon
    September 9, 2009 11:48 am

    Gene,

    You have my sympathy. I am still using XP on a several year old laptop that is running out of hard drive. I have heard too many horror stories about VISTA to change over. Where do I send flowers? 🙂

    Ron

  • [Avatar for Gene Quinn]
    Gene Quinn
    September 9, 2009 11:27 am

    Tom-

    I don’t know the answer to your question really, perhaps others can chime in. This case deals with Word infringing though, not another product infringing on Word.

    -Gene

  • [Avatar for Gene Quinn]
    Gene Quinn
    September 9, 2009 11:26 am

    Ken-

    Another good idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

    -Gene

  • [Avatar for ken]
    ken
    September 9, 2009 11:01 am

    Gene-
    You should do what I do when it’s time to reinstall. Just buy a new hard drive. Even laptop drives are cheap, and generally easy to install–3 to 5 screws at the most. Unless your original drive is totally wasted (in which case you wouldn’t be trying to reinstall on it, would you?) you are guaranteed to lose nothing. With a little caution when you purchase, your new drive will most likely be both larger and faster. And when you’re done copying your data back, you have someplace to put backups.

  • [Avatar for Tom]
    Tom
    September 9, 2009 10:40 am

    Gene,
    Has anyone looked to see if the Word infringement is also found in OpenOffice Writer? I don’t pretend to understand the infringement.

  • [Avatar for Gene Quinn]
    Gene Quinn
    September 9, 2009 10:25 am

    Stephen-

    Thanks for commiserating with me. I agree, and I am looking into some computer whiz options for reclaiming whatever can be reclaimed. I should have known better. As hard as it is to believe, Vista is worse than ME. I am not sure I would have said XP is the bomb, but it sure is leaps and bounds better than Vista. How MS could have screwed up so badly is almost unbelievable.

    I am coming to the realization that the way to go is with Mac. If I had known that Vista would not be compatible with virtually all the software I own and would not be compatible with laser printers, etc., I would have made the switch with my last iteration of computer upgrades. Now I am going to limp through and then upgrade with Mac soon enough and be done with the Redmond Monster. How they can continue to have operating systems that are not as good as the Apple operating system from the mid 1980s is one of the great mysteries in life if you ask me.

    -Gene

  • [Avatar for Gene Quinn]
    Gene Quinn
    September 9, 2009 10:15 am

    Rick-

    You are the only person I have ever heard from that says Vista is fine. The universal opinion of everyone else seems to be that Vista is horribly flawed, there are tremendous compatibility issues and things just do not work properly. I am glad to hear at least someone doesn’t have issues, but I almost find it impossible to believe. Perhaps your karma is particularly good!

    -Gene

  • [Avatar for Bill  Hollimon]
    Bill Hollimon
    September 9, 2009 09:05 am

    Gene,

    you need to get a MAC.

  • [Avatar for stephen]
    stephen
    September 9, 2009 12:11 am

    Dude: I’ve been using Windoze 7 and Windoze Vista for about a month now. Yep, Vista blows chunks. Win 7 on the other hand, is good. I didn’t actually have a problem with XP but my new Core i7 64-bit quad processor definitely enjoys the new OS.

    If you’re using old hardware, Win XP is the bomb. Vista is an even worse innovation that windows ME and that’s saying something. It has no redeeming features.

    Sorry you lost all your photos. The trick there would have been to check them on another PC before wadding the OS. What I like to do is use a Live Knoppix CD to image the whole OS drive to an external drive. You can then mount the external drive under windows and make sure it’s readable before doing anything that might wipe your data.

    You might find that a forensic place can get the data off the DVDs, but it’ll cost ya.

    Good luck,

    Stephen

  • [Avatar for Rick Novak]
    Rick Novak
    September 8, 2009 11:40 pm

    I’ve been using Vista on three computers since it was released and it works fine. I’m a software developer and I’m not happy with Microsoft since they made some programming languages obsolete with .NET. While Vista is no better than XP, it works fine. It was just a big waste of money and if you paid to upgrade to Vista, well here, I’ll lend you an hanky.