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."

Comments

Market segmentation

[pubjames]

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.

Let's get this straight

[clickclickdrone]

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.