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.'"

Comments

it's not cash they need

[joeflies]

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.

Re:Windows 7 still better than OS X 10.2

[Ant P.]

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.

Solution: Pre-install linux and windows?

[atmurray]

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.

Yeah, right

[davmoo]

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".