What a Vista Upgrade Will Really Cost You

narramissic writes, "James Gaskin wrote an interesting article this week about what he recons it will really cost organizations to upgrade to Vista. Gaskin estimates that each Vista user will 'cost your company between $3,250 and $5,000. That's each and every Vista user. Money will go to Microsoft for Vista and Office 2007, to hardware vendors for new PCs and components, and possibly a few bucks to Apple for those users jumping to a Mac.'" Any sense of how realistic those figures are?

Comments

Slanted Language

[RAMMS EIN]

Holy cow, what a load of slanted language and unsubstantiated claims.

``New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000. Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero, Vista's primary upgrade inducement. You need 256MB of video RAM to run Aero properly, no matter what Microsoft's marketing says.''

New PCs cost $1500 to $2000? I'm sure I've seen them for less than that. Since when do you even have to buy a new computer? Last I checked, PCs could be upgraded without replacing them. "Darn"? "No matter what Microsoft's marketing says"?

``If your exiting PCs can take full advantage of Vista, I'm happy for you. I don't believe you, but I hope your upgrade goes well.''

I know plenty of people whose PCs meet the requirements he states, and more who have PCs that meet the requirements Microsoft states. I'll judge how many people can run Vista without upgrading their computers when Vista is out and people are installing it.

``Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000.''

I won't comment on the figures, but Office is _not_ Vista. Even if you upgrade Office at the same time you do Vista, that's a separate upgrade. And I bet that's where most of your 750 to 1000 dollars go to.

``The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers.''

Another upgrade that's separate from Vista.

And the best part:

``a few bucks to Apple for those users jumping to a Mac''

I bet you didn't know that you need to buy a Mac to run Vista.

I'm sure that upgrading to Vista won't be cheap. I'm also sure there will be plenty of things wrong with Vista. But that's no reason to be spreading FUD. That one guy does so is one thing. That it gets posted as News for Nerds is quite another. I thought everybody knew FUD by now?