Microsoft Cuts Vista Price In 70 Countries

dforristall alerts us to an odd move by Microsoft: cutting the price of retail boxes of Vista in many markets. Analysts didn't see this one coming, and they are scratching their heads a bit over it; one called it "very unheard of." The price cuts vary by country — they're largest in the developing world where piracy levels are high — and they don't apply to OEM copies of Vista, which account for 90% of sales. "Gartner analyst Michael Silver said the move... is puzzling... [He] noted that the market for such upgrades is fairly limited. Those who bought XP in the fourth quarter of 2006 got a coupon for a free Vista upgrade, while most of those who have bought systems since then have gotten Vista. Machines purchased prior to 2006 probably aren't all that attractive as candidates for a Vista upgrade... 'The whole notion of upgrading PCs has sort of fallen by the wayside.'"

Comments

This is aimed at power users...

[tjstork]

I have a dual Opteron with a fairly decent graphics controller that would be an ideal candidate for Vista x64 Ultimate. But, for about $400 cheaper, (or $200 if you get the system builder edition), I downloaded Ubuntu and it works great.

Taken together, Microsoft's actions of the last few weeks : decreasing the price of Vista, giving away Visual Studio to Students, publishing specifications, all point towards an effort to attract developers to their platform. Even the channel partnerships that I railed about earlier are structured to attract developers. Clearly, Microsoft knows something that we don't know, and, I think it is that Linux development is starting to reach a critical mass for them to be really concerned about it. I wonder how much trouble Microsoft realizes it is in.

There is a demographic factor going on as well. A lot of we formerly reliable Windows zealots are now in our 30s and 40s, and suddenly money that would be spent on graphics cards and Windows upgrades is now getting plowed into our over-priced houses and our children. It's like, I would have stayed up in line to get Vista Ultimate the day it came out, but instead, I bought diapers, soy milk and a thomas the tank engine train set for my son. Having jonesed for some sort of an upgrade to my PC, I went with Ubuntu instead, and its pretty satisfying.

Linux has hit that point where, it may not be the best in terms of a consumer operating system, but its often good enough, and installing it just works.

Why on earth were they surprised?

[sheldon]

In an interview, newly minted Windows consumer marketing vice president Brad Brooks said that Microsoft had been testing lower prices over the past few months and was surprised to find that the amount of revenue lost was more than made up for by an increase in the number of PC buyers willing to shell out for an upgrade.

Didn't they learn this lesson with the Student/Teacher version of Office?

Duh

Wireless Ubuntu Works

[tjstork]

So you didn't save as much, and good luck if you ever want to use wireless with that Ubuntu computer.

I am wireless with the Ubuntu computer. I didn't have to do anything. When I installed Ubuntu, I got the little wireless icon on my upper right hand corner, hit connect... to my wireless network, and it completely worked, just like the little wireless icon on my Windows XP does.