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Dell Indicates Windows 7 Pricing Will Be Higher
ausekilis sends us word that a Dell spokesman said, without giving numbers, that Windows 7 pricing will be higher than Vista's or XP's. "Windows 7 pricing is potentially an obstacle to Windows 7 adoption for some users, though in just about every other aspect the operating system is beating Vista, according to a Dell marketing executive. ... [Darrell] Ward continued, 'In tough economic times, I think it's naive to believe that you can increase your prices on average and then still see a stronger swell than if you held prices flat or even lowered them. I can tell you that the licensing tiers at retail are more expensive than they were for Vista. ... Schools and government agencies may not be able to afford (the additional cost). Some of the smaller businesses may not be able to enjoy the software as soon as they'd like,' Ward said.'"
they need to demonstrate to investors that they are indeed a money making business that will continue to make a lot of money in the future. Regardless of their cash position, if the investors leave, who already got shaky feelings from vista, then the market cap of the whole company goes down and ballmer will go looking for a job.
Now whether higher prices will help them make their sales goals, that's yet to be seen. In the short term, perhaps yes, with all the built in sales to the OEMs. In the long term, I bet the retail sales trail the oem sales for a while, so this might have been a pretty good plan overall anyways.
If you don't have $150 for an OS X licence, how about $5 to burn a Debian CD-R? Better than leaving it as an electronic paperweight.
I wonder what it's like inside Microsoft's little bubble world? It's as if they're oblivious to everyone and everything outside of it. A recession is on but hey!, lets go ahead and raise the price! I mean, after all everyone hates Vista so they should be kicking Microsoft's door in to have to opportunity to pay more for the next version, right?
Meanwhile I just upgraded my laptop to Jaunty and had it completely setup and configured to my needs in under a half hour. For free. It really makes me rethink the whole idea of upgrading my Vista machine.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
I believe 10 years ago or so there was a project that was called FreePC that would basically give you a fairly decent machine, in exchange for you letting them monitor your surfing habits and always display ads to you.
It didn't work.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
I wonder if it would be possible for someone like Dell to allow people to choose to have linux and windows pre-installed except leave windows on a 30 day trial. Then people are free to try out linux and see if it suits their needs. If they then decide they need windows, they can purchase a key for activation.
MS's latest move might bear out my theory about why they sold those bonds:
MS sold bonds at a rock bottom price because they know those bonds are going to get massively devalued when inflation goes bonkers over the next couple years.
MS is raising its prices ahead of this (hyper?)inflation scenario so that they can continue to turn a reasonable profit. Once they set the cost there isn't really any going back. Inflate the costs now for the OS that has to sell for at least a few years.
That's my theory.
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In reading these comments, its amazing how many of you actually believe that Dell (or any other top-tier PC maker) pays anything even near retail for any Microsoft OS.
I know for a fact that back in the days before Vista when XP was still king that HP was typically paying Microsoft $35 a copy. I'm sure Dell gets a similar discount, and I'm sure they aren't paying any more than $60 or so a copy now.
In addition, the makers of all that shitware that comes preinstalled on your new PC pays Dell a fee for putting it there. That's another reason that getting Linux on a PC from Dell would not necessarily reduce your price.
This sounds to me like Dell wants to raise prices and increase their margins (which are currently very thin in the PC industry), and this is a cool way to blame it on Microsoft. They simply don't have the balls to say "Dell needs to make more profit".
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.