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Windows Vista Prices and Release Date Leaked
Nieske writes "Prices and the release date for Windows Vista have leaked online. Ed Bott's Microsoft Report has information on pricing, and the release date is currently January 30th, 2007. Are they really going to make the deadline this time?" From the ZDNet article: "In Canada, at least, the rumors of a 'modest' price increase were true, based on this list. Will these same relative prices hold true in the U.S.? Who knows? But if they do, then it's mostly good news for Windows customers. There's no price increase for Home Basic. Home Premium, the Vista version that maps most closely to the OEM-only Windows XP Media Center Edition, will finally be available as a retail product for a slight bump over the Home Basic product, similar to the $39 premium typically charged by large OEMs for Media Center upgrades. And Vista Business buyers will get a break with a small discount relative to XP Professional."
The windows pricing is a classic example of what marketeers call "market segmentation". When deciding how to price a product, you ask "How much will people pay?", and the answer is different people will pay different prices - some people actually want to pay more for essentially the same product.
It is an increasingly unpopular pricing method because people resent it. Note, for instance, the rapid growth of budget airlines (in Europe at least) - a lot of their popularity can be put down to the fact the traditional pricing model for flights was highly segmented - customers have come to resent paying different prices for essentially the same thing and so the budget airlines, with their simpler pricing model, have grown in popularity.
It is interesting that Apple do not do this, they don't even have separate "upgrade" prices. If you want the latest version of their OS or basic software (iWorks or iLife), then you pay one price. As a customer I like that.
Well back in the early days of Microsoft one of their driving mandras was to make it so that the hardware was a commodity and that you'd be paying mainly for the software. Looks like they have finally reaches their goal.
Ok you can all go home now.. Microsoft is closed.
They want me to pay $450 for something that will almost certainly force me to upgrade some bits of hardware to give it a chance of running, will potentially fail to run some of my software and in return does what exactly? Look pretty whilst constantly asking me if I'm sure?
Call me negative but I'm not exactly in hurry to join that particular queue.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Tom, come now. First, the ultimate pricing is $399/$259 (full/upgrade) USD. And can you point to an example where a MS product has been not "fully" working because it is running on a "lower" version? I cannot think of any off the top of my head at least. I have Office professional at work (XP Pro) and at home (XP Home) and I get the exact same functionality. Same with my games, development tools, etc, etc. Now I cannot say for sure there has never been such a case, but as I cannot think of any I'd be very interested to hear any examples.
There are certainly some applications which require a certain version (Media Center, IIS, etc, etc) but I cannot think of a single example where a MS application supported by both Home and Pro versions have ever had the Home version crippled in some way. I may well be wrong and would be interested to hear examples if I am.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
First, you're comparing Canadian Vista prices to US OS X prices. US prices will almost definitely be less (it's lower in TFA).
Second, how many times will you buy OS X in between releases of Windows? Since XP came out, you've likely bought OS X three times (10.2, 10.3, 10.4) at $129 apiece and soon a fourth. The copy of XP you bought or, more likely, got from an OEM in 2001 is only now getting a pay-for update.
OS X is more expensive. If you like it more, that's cool, but your argument that it's cheaper doesn't hold up.
The biggest deal is that the ability to rip a DVD is only in the home upgraded version, and the ability to use non-M$ networking protocols is only in the pro.
Starter is a joke and will only run 3 pieces of software at once. This version of Vista is like an "upgrade" back to Windows 3.1.
I recently came across this exact issue. Some capacitors on the mobo leaked (definitely what I'd call a defect!), and I had to replace it. The thing that annoys me is that no one tells you ahead of time that the license for the OS is tied to the mobo, when you have a OEM version of the OS. (Sure, maybe something was said in the original agreement (and I'm the paranoid type who actually reads those things), but did I understand that the OS was tied to the motherboard it at the time? Obviously not. They need to be more explicit about that fact.) Why do they do that, anyways? Does the OEM distributor (HP, in my case) work with MS to give you a discounted price on the OS for these OEM versions in exchange for only being able to use it with that mobo? If so, I'd like to suggest that they let you pay MS the amount that the OEM'ers originally got as a discount in order to "free/release" that copy of the OS from that mobo, instead of having to pay full price for a new one altogether (or having to waste your money and several weeks (time wasn't a luxury for me in this case) on sending the computer in to the OEM people to get the motherboard re-tattooed).
In the end, after switching out the mobo, windows told me to reactivate. When that didn't work, I wasn't even given an option to talk to a real person. In near desperation, I clicked the "change product key" button (uh, you know, the one that says something like, "ONLY push this button if the MS person on the phone tells you to..."), and saw that the edit box was pre-populated with a key that was different than the product key that was on the side of my box. That was weird... I assume it was because the mobo had changed... Anyways, I just typed in the "real" product key that was on the sticker on the side of the box, and called the MS number again. Again, it didn't work, but this time I actually got to talk to a real person, and they gave me a new installation ID which worked fine.
What does it all mean? It means that that installed copy of XP is on it's last leg, because the installation CD's from HP don't work since the mobo still isn't "tattooed" (it's not in warranty anymore, so it probably would have costed some outrageous price, plus, I didn't have the luxury of time to do that, as I mentioned above). So the OEM's and MS win after all. I'll either have to buy a new OS sooner or later, or else send the machine in to HP to get the motherboard tattooed. But I still wish there was such a thing as a "release" fee which would untie a copy of the OS from the OEM so that you can install it on whatever machine you like.
For my next computer, I might have to build it from scratch so that I actually feel like I own all of MY OWN hardware and software, and I'm not chained to an OEM or MS like a slave (I'm not bitter... Really.) (Plus, then I won't have to pay the Microsoft tax if I decide to just put linux on it.)