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Microsoft Cuts Vista Price To $66 In China
narramissic writes "Microsoft this week cut the retail price of Windows Vista Home Basic in China by 67% — from 1,521 renminbi to 499 renminbi ($65.80). This is a steep discount compared to what users in the US and elsewhere are charged for the software. The reason for the price reduction? Battling piracy, of course. The new pricing 'narrows the price gap between original versions of Microsoft's software and pirated copies,' making it that much easier for consumers to 'do the right thing.'"
IT's silly, why pay $66 bucks for a copy of watered down Dista when you can steal Ultimate? I mean, if you are in a country that has no IP enforcment, why not just steal the best one?
This is my sig.
Does this mean we need more piracy in the US to bring the price down?
So what is that, like 2 months of a person's income there?
Reduce it to two or three day's income like it is here for the average person. Then you'll hit the point where they can afford it instead of stealing it.
The piracy of one is a tragedy. The piracy of millions is a discount.
The real question is why will users allow this? And can businesses and gov. make use of this
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
MS does it in China; yet here in the western world, the software companies use piracy as an excuse to need to raise prices. (To recoup alleged losses from e-shrink)
Depending on where you go for the data, that's still 1/2 to a full month's wages.
I'm very interested to discover how that price decrease decision was made. e.g. was it just not selling? Did the government "recommend" it?
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
At that price, assuming it is the same as other versions sold elsewhere, it is almost at a point where bulk purchasing and shipping make it worthwhile to sell on the gray market.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I hate to say it, but,... even "pirated Windows Vista" is still "Windows Vista",... you're better off sticking with Windows XP, ... or MacOS X ... or Linux.
I read a very interesting article on Microsoft's policies in China in the latest Fortune magazine. They were talking about how for years Microsoft would try to battle piracy in China, and realized it was a losing battle, so they gave up. Instead, they opened up research institutes and kissed the ass of the government. This made the government more apt to enforce IP policy, and MSFT had a big hand in dictating it.
I remember reading that Windows + Office was about $3 US to students. In fact, in China, pirated Windows is often less expensive than Linux because Linux has more cds, which increases the cost dramatically.
Also interesting was when the interviewer asked Gates about China's policy on suppressing free speech, and Bill Gates had an internal BSOD and basically froze. After an uncomfortable period of time, the interviewer said "That's quite a pregnant pause" and Gates said "I don't think I want to answer that question."
The great thing about capitalism is that CEOs like Bill Gates who wants to make hand-over-fist in terms of money, doesn't have to give a rat's ass about basic human rights, he can choose to hide behind his business like a coward. Craig Mundie's answer was "I don't think that is my area of expertise." Cowards.
But the distro only contains free and open-source pirates. We can't have any of this proprietary pirate bull crap.
I know it is the "less money is better than no money" mantra that they are trying to apply, but I still find it fascinating that a relatively non-free market is getting a better price for the same product than a supposedly free market like the US and European countries. It looks like "illegal" activities can be an artificial competitor when no direct competitor exists. The question is, will people in China buy it, even at this price? I really doubt it. I wonder what the EULA looks like...
Vista Ethylene Glycol Edition
So are we saying there is a good side to piracy? Shocking!! You mean the music industry could have just reduced their prices to compete with piracy instead of sueing every single person?
Maybe the money saved isn't enough for vista basic users to learn Chinese?
Just a thought.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
hey maybe thats why chinese became so popular in the firefly future...
Some of us already do the right thing here, and the dollar amount is exactly 0.
http://www.mhall119.com
that's why i pirate linux.
Are we sending Windows to China in retaliation for the lead-paint and poisonous pet food that China is shipping to us?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Microsoft was always been weak on piracy prevention. They've always known it helps them to solidify their stranglehold on the market. But they'd rather have the best of both worlds:
Posturing about how piracy is wrong and illegal. Threaten. Remind people of the legal consequences, then drop prices. Most will continue to pirate regardless, some will be frightened into/enticed to buy a legal copy. They srengthen their market dominance AND sell their O/S. Perfect. It's a win-win (pun intended) situation for Microsoft.
Honestly, when was the last time you saw Microsoft going after end users like the *IAA does? (SCO-related conspiracy theories aside).
It's very similar to how one needs to protect their patents to retain them; Microsoft needs to at the least pretend that they're losing out to piracy, and pretend that they're trying hard to stop it. Otherwise, can you imagine the anti-trust allegations?
Talking about "average wages" in the industrializing world is pretty misleading.
China is a third world country that contains a first world country. Vista, computers, and internet access is being sold to the first worlders. I've seen $300 / month quoted as the base starting salary for white collar work. Which puts a Chinese office drone at about 1/4 what a US temp staffer makes. This seems about right, given that the kind of consumer price disparities here are primarily the results of China's heavy hand in their own currency market. The government keeps the local currency artificially weak to make sure that outside investment remains dirt cheap.
Now according to basic economic theory, this shouldn't work. It doesn't cost (significantly) less to market a consumer product to the Chinese middle class than anyone elses, so how can they support comparable standards of living with such weak currency, and how does the currency not strengthen as more imports and local consumer spending occurs? The Vista pricing is a good illustration of why basic economic theory is frequently inadequate to describe the real world. Most consumer goods simply don't behave like widgets or pork bellies, advertising and IP law (among many other forces that prevent commoditization of goods) prevent market effects and allow large players like Microsoft and the Chinese Government to keep prices of goods at wildly different levels in some parts of the world rather than others.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
How is buying a legitimate licence which activates and passes all Microsofts checks copyright infringement?
Perhaps it could be a licencing issue, if the licence specifically says for use with a Chinese OS only. However, last time I checked and English Vista pack, it didn't say anything about that.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Perhaps because in China, stealing is still treated as a serious crime, and is often (I think) enforced quite heavily. A better course of action for people in China would be to infringe on the copyright, which is not seriously enforced.
Unless, of course, you've fallen into the semantics of the stop-copyright-infringement lobby groups, who would love it if everyone saw the complicated artificial legal definition of copyright infringement as being equivalent to horrible crime of stealing. In that case, yes, they should steal the best one.