MS Trying To Spur Vista Sales With Discounts

Ang writes "Is Microsoft having worries about selling Vista already? Ars reports that Microsoft has announced yet another 'discount program' for Vista, but these new discounts work out to only about 10% off list price — not much when you notice that retailers already sell Vista below list. To make matters worse, the discount program would still end up costing you $100 more than the older 'family' discount built around Vista Ultimate in some situations. Ars spends seven paragraphs explaining this convoluted offer. Is all of this complexity supposed to help sell Vista?" If you must buy Vista, it might be advisable to sit on your wallet for a while. The discounts are bound to get sweeter.

Comments

Costco...

[podperson]

Last couple of times I've visited Costco there have been huge and nearly full Vista racks. It's pretty early in a product cycle for Vista to be in Costco... let alone in Costco and not moving.

wtf kind of writeup is this?

[User 956]

Is Microsoft having worries about selling Vista already? ... To make matters worse, the discount program would still end up costing you $100 more than the older 'family' discount

Ok, then they're not worried about selling Vista, if the new discount program is worse than the old discount program. A rational person would draw the opposite conclusion: that they're confident in Vista sales numbers. At least, enough to reduce the incentive.

Keep on waiting...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Not buying Vista at all, ever, will save you the most money in the long run. Not to mention aggravation.

Re:Keep on waiting...

[Seumas]

Not buying Vista at all, ever, will save you the most money in the long run. Not to mention aggravation. Getting most videogames - say Crysis - to run in linux is pretty fucking aggravating.

Between OEMs putting it on all new systems and people opting for it on their home-builds once games start making use of DirectX 10, Vista will rule the market just like XP, 2000, 98, 95, etc have.

It really sucks having to have a special OS just to play videogames.

Oh well.

Re:Keep on waiting...

[aussie_a]

If someone designed a computer/OS that allowed you to just throw a game CD/DVD in, no installing or drivers and just turn on the computer and play it, I would be all over that like a bad rash.

If only there was a computer like that, if only.....

Re:Keep on waiting...

[Moridineas]

omfg are you kidding??

Did you ever game in DOS? In Windows 3.1? I guess you don't remember fiddling with your config.sys, messing around with the amounts and types of memory--EMS, XMS, conventional, etc? Do you not remember having to manually change screen resolution and color in windows 3.1 depending on the program? Fiddling with soundcard settings and environmental variables to get the IRQ/DMA/etc all nice and working with said game?

Not to mention, you had to install games for ANY of those operating systems--more so since DOS games usually were on floppies that had compressed files spread across multiple disks.

Geez, talk about rose tinted forgetting glasses!

Re:Keep on waiting...

[Lumpy]

Hey I always though that was the first level to the game... To see if your IQ was high enough, prove to us your mad skillz with emm386 and driver loading order.

Tom Peterson

[Seumas]

Tom Peterson says "Free is a very good price!".

And I agree.

At this point, I have no interest in paying for Windows. I do, however, require at least one Windows box (currently XP64) for gaming and testing deployment of some of our enterprise applications at home. I also don't really care to go through the trouble of finding a viable crack on bit torrent or anything. I will probably buy it once there are games which I must have that demand DirectX10 for the coolest gaming experience -- and I will do so when I am in the process of building a new machine so that I can get the OEM version.

Even at that, I will not spend $200. I might spend $140. And that's for the full version (4gb+, multi-core, 64bit, etc). Otherwise they can just eat it. The only reason I ever need to jump off my solaris, debian or OSX boxes is to play games. Period.

Why ?

[billcopc]

I still don't quite understand why people would rush to get Vista. XP works the same if not better, there's actually mature driver support (well, mature is a relative term when talking about ATI, NVidia et al), and you know the software you need works on XP. This reminds me of over a decade ago when we all rushed to get Windows 95 the day it came out, only to pummel our PC's into dust with all the problems it caused. Printers no longer printing, internet dialer no longer dialing, and of course the joys of our old 16-bit apps crashing half the time. It was painful. I ended up dual-booting back to classic Dos + Wfw311 for a while longer while the dust settled. Vista is going to be the same story... give it a year, for most users it will have stabilized and 3rd party support will be established. Right now it doesn't even know which end to poop from.

All's well in the world...

[FMota91]

Haiku: Move along...

Sony is failing,
Windows Vista is failing,
Nothing to see here.

Yeah, but...

[Null Nihils]

Microsoft makes most of its money through its OEM deals. I believe the number bandied about is that 80% of its Windows revenue comes not directly from the consumer, but from the "Microsoft tax" on nearly all computers sold. Also, the price MS charges OEMs for Windows is already a lot lower than that charged for an off-the-shelf version. A lot of Microsoft's revenue also depends on businesses and government, not consumers. These "discounts" seem more like the fevered imaginings of a marketing drone who wants to make Windows seem like a "sweet deal". It may not even be a ploy to make more sales in the consumer section, it might be just another trick to increase awareness of the Vista brand; nothing makes consumers perk up their ears like the word "discount", even if they are ultimately not interested in a new operating system.

Re:ATTN: COWARDS!

[OSU ChemE]

Where is the "-1 WTF?" option?

The Choice Is Clear

[lotusleaf]

More and more I'm seeing these types of stories pop up:

* "FREE AT LAST" by David Bond 03/19/2007

Quotes from the "FREE AT LAST" linked article above: (bold emphasis mine)

"But we were prepared for this Microsoft gambit. Why, we asked, after thousands of dollars already expended, should we feed the Microsoft maw again? Why this kilobuck penalty because we're getting a new machine? Made no sense."

"So down it came to the nut-cutting time. Brand-new computer, sitting here on top of the desk. Chicken-out, go with Windows, or take the Linux plunge. Let's see: $800 for Vista and Office 2007, single install, or Ubuntu, Firefox and Open Office, all for free."

IMO, I feel the title of that most excellent article pretty much sums up the growing change going on today. Why spend when a free and open alternative exists?

Re:All I know...

[Forrest Kyle]

I think some of the negativity comes from being asked to spend $200 on a big thing that is so complex it requires me to upgrade my computer, and it does pretty much exactly what my current thing does. Not to mention that it will probably have an unknown (But larger than zero) amount of DRM and snooping software woven throughout.

For instance, here is a basic list of the applications I use regularly:

Firefox
Office XP
Notepad
DevC++
ZSNES
MathCAD
Games purchased before 2005
Winamp
Cakewalk Recording Studio
FruityLoops


And here is a list of applications I won't be able to use without Vista:
Games made after 2008

Good deals for retailers

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Unlike "real goods" which cost "real money" to make, a Vista product (ie. DVD + packaging) costs virtually nothing. No doubt MS is running sweet deals for retailers to get as many sales as possible.

Apart from generating revenue, MS has to prove to share holders that the $5bn that was spent on Vista development was worth doing and they can only do that by showing an increase in sales vs XP. There must be a lot of shareholders wondering whether it would have been better to just put the money in the bank and ride XP for longer. After all, anyone not buying Vista would still buy XP, so what motivates spending $5bn?

Re:Good deals for retailers

[edwardpickman]

I couldn't help thinking about what $5 billion would buy in the software world. It's hard to compare graphics softwares and OSs but look at it this way you could buy most of the major CG software companies for that and probably pick up some choice 2D software companies to boot. That's a lot of complex software. Was the Vista upgrade worth $5 billion? If I was a shareholder I'd be pissed and want some one to explain. Mac is pulling off more innovative OS upgrades almost on a yearly basis for a tiny fraction of the cost. As a stockholder I'd want some heads to roll because all that wasted money could have gone to paying dividends instead of fat bonuses for a questionable upgrade. Microsoft's primary assest is market share which is formitable but can it last if they don't do better with future upgrades? Vista is a marginal upgrade for the user to XP so in a sense they are five years behind where they should be in development. Investors and customers may let them slide on this one but if the next upgrade doesn't look much better they will have a lot of explaining to do since Mac and Linux are constantly upgrading during the overly long Windows development cycle.

Re:Good deals for retailers

[Technician]

After all, anyone not buying Vista would still buy XP, so what motivates spending $5bn?


Due to the disparity between the OEM copy included on new hardware and the retail price, my older hardware has upgraded to Ubuntu instead. Not everyone not buying Vista would still buy XP. Apple sales has been doing quite well with the Core 2 Duo machines.

The TCO for MS products has become a problem for many with the required number of batteries not included items such as demo photo editor, demo CD writer, Wordpad (nuf said), and the endless AV patches.

The TCO on Ubuntu has been much lower for me. Scanning, full e-mail, office suite, and photo editing is included. Media codecs, Flash 9, and DVD playback are a free download away. AV is generaly not needed yet.

There is lots of history to show consumers that a MS release is a batteries not included distro. You will have to buy something to add some basic functionality such as burning an ISO to a CD or risk a malware freebe with a free program. (free rigntones, animated cursers, weather on the taskbar, video player, audio player, etc.. bundled with adware.)

Re:Good deals for retailers

[Technician]

basic functionality such as burning an ISO to a CD or risk a malware freebe
Bad example. That functionality is built into XP SP2.

Which part? The burning an ISO or malware freebe?

    **ducks**

I'll have to re-check my wife's XP machine. I tried to use it to burn a Ubuntu ISO and couldn't find any way to burn an ISO with the provided (by Dell) CD application. I had to hit a shareware site to get an ISO burner. I thought we had SP2 installed, but if it's built in SP2, either I couldn't find it or we don't have SP2.

From a search online I find no refrence to the built in ISO burning application. I did find that it is a toy as an additional downloadable add-in.

http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

In other words.. not included in SP2.

I now use Ubuntu to burn ISO's.

Re:Good deals for retailers

[hr.wien]

There is a very good reason DirectX10 can't be ported back to XP. The entire Windows driver model has changed for DX10 to allow for instance GPU virtualization and GPU memory paging. This cannot be done in XP. To port it back you would have to replace the old XP driver model, which means you will have to replace the kernel, which means you've ended up with Vista anyway.

Re:All I know...

[RobertM1968]

Funny.... not a single tech where I work thinks it's worth upgrading except to play with and learn to fulfill our job duties. We use it all the time. We field tons of questions that end up being answered with "Sorry you just bought a machine with Vista on it. Now you have to wait for the compatible ___________ (driver/app/game patch) to run that ___________ (piece of hardware/app/game)". We have a ton of HP laptops that dont even have proper webcam support in Vista - even though the webcam is built in to the machine. We have lots of multi-function "Vista Ready" printers that only print on Vista... no scan, no fax via computer, no reading from the card readers built into them. We have numerous machines with the most horrendous video support imaginable - right out of the box. The "lower end" systems running the Vista Demo video are getting 5-10 frames per second... and by lower end, I mean AMD 4000+ and similar speed Intels, with what otherwise would be at least mid-range or decent video chipsets. We have people coming in all the time asking why WoW (and dozens of other games) doesnt run properly, or does weird things. Or why Sleep/Suspend/Hibernate does weird things. Or why so many "Vista Capable"/"Vista Ready" pieces of hardware or software dont run or run poorly.

As for sales slumping... well, at the CompUSA we work at, we didnt start to move Vista until recently - and I think that was due to two factors (1) we sold out of XP finally and (2) since we are a closing store, we are discounting it by 15%. Yes, they are finally selling, but still at a snails pace... a handful before this change happened has become two handfuls now. Anyone wants to buy a copy or three, come on in, we have TONS still. And they are discounted 15% at my store at the least - if not in all the closing stores (some may even have higher discounts already). Our Mac sales, oddly, have tripled - we are near out of them (and they are more expensive and barely discounted at all), but have tons of Vista machines, and people coming in to buy every last XP machine we have (only thing left are some Systemax boxes that no one seems too keen on buying... anything else with XP RAN out the door rather quickly).

Robert

The Only problem

[kilodelta]

Is that it doesn't play nicely with AD domains. I know, we tried it and it failed miserably. Microsoft really dropped the ball on this one. I mean, even 2000 and XP could connect to both standard NT domains and AD domains. But Vista has issues, even going so far as completely screwing up the network settings. And friends in the market for a laptop are begging me to downgrade their machines to XP because critical applications they use will NOT run on Vista.

having so many editions is part of the problem

[jonwil]

You have Vista Home, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate.

IMO, Vista Enterprise shouldn't exist with the bitlocker and other "enterprise" features being either made available in Vista Business or as some kind of add-on.

The "N" versions need to exist to comply with anti-trust rulings and really are just the normal versions with windows media player files removed from the CD/DVD
and the installer.

That would basically leave 4 editions of vista, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate

The only way to sell Vista

[BillGatesLoveChild]

How about "Buy Vista, and we'll throw in XP for free! XP! The operating system that works:

* High Productivity. None of those annoying UAC messages!
* Device Driver Compatibility. Hardware will work out of the box!
* Applications just work: Even Firefox! Even Visual Studio 2003!
* No DRM. Watch your movies and listen to your music when you want how you want.
* More efficient code, so works on today's hardware! Not only tomorrows!
* XP is cheaper and doesn't have a dozen different versions: 'Oh sir you'll need the Vista Sub Pro Business Home Basic Version!'
* Doesn't make you call Microsoft everytime you want permission to pee

Vista is to XP what New Coke(R) was to Classic Coke(R).

Re:All I know...

[DigitAl56K]

How does one persons random opinion with no surrounding discussion get modded insightful?

Here, I'll give you my opinion too:
I have installed it and I have used it, and I hated it.

Well, I guess you're going to have to toss a coin on who to believe...

Joel's advice

[Erbo]

I'm sticking with Joel Spolsky's advice, from this column:

• Do NOT, under any circumstances, upgrade an existing XP machine to Vista, even if it's Vista Supremo Premium Ultra-Capable.
• When you get a new computer, if it comes with Vista, that's when you'll upgrade.
• Do NOT buy a new computer just to get Vista, if your existing XP-based machine is working well enough.

Of course, Microsoft probably doesn't want me saying that...but screw 'em.

OS X performance does increase with each iteration

[iendedi]

The main reason I'd avoid Vista is the price and the loss in performance, though no new OS generally increases performance on the same hardware Apple's OS X operating system performs better with each iteration, on the same hardware. The rumor is that Apple achieves this remarkable result through a little known, and apparently forgotten, exercise called "optimization". Apparently, this activity is something that ancient computer-scientists used to do, according to some archeologists, but the ancient art of optimization was abandoned sometime during the Microsoft dark-ages.

Many people dismiss this topic of optimization as a conspiracy theory, but I must admit that I am starting to believe that such techniques exist.