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Microsoft Discloses Windows 7 Pricing
It's the tripnaut! writes "Information Week has posted prices for Windows 7. From the article: 'The full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is priced at $199, with an upgrade from Vista or XP costing $119. The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, with upgrades going for $199. Windows 7 Ultimate is priced at $319, with the upgrade version at $219.' In a nod to the global economic downturn, it is interesting to note that prices are 10% lower than Vista."
It's too much!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I ended up getting Vista Ultimate.
Never saw ANY of the benefits/Ultimate Content that was promised.
The upgrade from Vista Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate should be free.
That will teach me for buying a boxed, non-OEM version of Windows I guess.
Yeesh... apple is releasing snow leopard for $29 and microsoft is still pricing stuff like this? When will they learn that a lower price will likely increase the number of people willing to pay for it instead of pirating it.
I'm glad that with Windows 7 Microsoft mostly reverted back to the kind of editions they marketed Windows XP with. It's now much more clear which one to buy when it is distinguised by Home and Professional, then Ultimate for the power user.
It seems to me that everyone I know has a pirated copy of windows: the few people people that have legal copies have them because they were bundled with the computer they bought. When was the last time someone actually went out specifically to bought a copy?
And I do not mean the store 7-11.
Here:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/06/25/cnet.windows7.pricing.upgrade/index.html
From the article: "From Friday through July 11, consumers in the U.S. will be able to buy an upgrade copy of Windows 7 Home premium for $49 or Windows 7 Professional for $99."
No ultimate and an upgrade not full though. But the upgrade from XP is a full wipe install anyway.
And I do agree with others who said that upgrade from vista ultimate should be free to win 7 ultimate.
Why should Microsoft care if the Win7 prices are "competitive" or not? They've got a captive audience consisting mainly of new PC buyers and existing corporate seats. I suspect they simply did an analysis to determine the amount that maximizes license revenue from those two fish in a barrel and didn't even consider the cost of other alternatives.
Best,
I agree with you, but to be fair, Apple knows that 99.5% of every boxed copy of OSX thats sold is going to be installed on a Mac which they already made money on. And up until now, every boxed version of OSX (which apple considers to be an upgrade) has been $129.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
I can't believe those cocksuckers at Microsoft didn't plan their release dates around an unforseen event happening to one fucking person. They're definitely at fault here. You know, as opposed to the guy that stole the laptop.
Whale
Agreed.
MS should give the crippled version away free. The one that runs only 3 apps. Then there would be no getting your money back when you purchase a computer. It would also compete with the price of Linux and BSD. Then drop your tiered pricing by a lot. Home basic at $30, Home premium $50, Professional $150 and Ultimate at $175.
I bet a lot more people would "purchase" their OS if they structured it like that. I also think it would help in the level of illegal copies.
How did MS win in the web browser market? They made it free and included it in their OS.
Why not give away the lowest level of your OS for free to retain your market share?
That makes better sense to me at least.
Regards, Ben
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8118749.stm
Wait, a copy of DOS 6.0 would have solved the Northrup Grumman problem in the other story?
"All exiting drives must be reformatted with Dos 6.0, which will Promote Data Volatility past the expected recovery half life."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I skipped Vista entirely. Tried it a few days and went back to XP until recently.
When Win 7RC came out I decided to give it a shot and quite frankly, I'm hooked.....
It's a damn fine OS for a average to power user. If you're still running XP this is a upgrade to consider. If you're running Vista.. hmm, might aswell wait until pricing dropped a bit.
But.. this is the first time I'm actually considering to buy Windows.
It runs smooth, behaves as one would expect from a OS.. In the end Win7 might end up as their best OS till now.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Snow Leopards adds no significant (home-)user visible changes - most of the changes are architectural and under the hood, aimed at developers. You won't get developers using features that most users don't have, so you can't sell a platform based on developer potential alone.
Apple has recognised this and priced Snow Leopard to tempt developers, so that they can use the same base in future OSes (Open CL, 64-bit, full Cocoa etc). On the other hand, Vista is that new base and MS doesn't really care if you develop for Vista or 7, although you could argue they should've priced Vista more competitively.
Oh, and you seem to be neglecting the fact that Snow Leopard is only that cheap for Leopard users - Tiger users need to shell out $169 for iWork, iLife and Snow Leopard. And let's not forget that Apple uses software to sell hardware - users will upgrade to Snow Leopard then realise they need a 64-bit processor (so no first-gen Intels) and a recent graphics processor (last couple of years) to take advantage of the most of the improvements. PowerPC users will also need to buy a whole new PC to use the new OS.
MS' pricing may not be as low as we may have hoped, but let's not paint Apple as the angel it clearly isn't.
....And the $120 price is if you already have Windows, considering that Snow Leopard is x86 only and most machines with x86 CPUs shipped with Leopard (a few shipped with Tiger though) its really the most average situation for a Mac owner to only pay $30.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
[flame suit on]
I know much of slashdot would vehemently disagree, but for the majority of users, Windows comes 'for free' with their PC. They buy a computer from Dell or whomever and it comes with Windows, then when the buy a new PC 4 or 5 years later, it comes with Windows again. Virtually no one I know 'buys' the OS - They'll simply get a the newest / latest when they buy a new computer.
[/flame]
How does MS think this pricing is competitive in the least? Snow Leopard is going to be sold for $30 for upgrades while 7 costs $120?!!?!
Keep in mind that OS X is, to a certain degree, subsidized by the fact that it will only run on official Apple hardware. Apple doesn't need to charge as much for the OS, because you've given them additional money for the hardware it runs on.
I'm not claiming this is the only reason their OS is cheaper. Nor even that it is a major reason why their OS is cheaper. But it is something to keep in mind.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
How many of you zealots have actually used the W7 release candidate? From the look of the comments, not many. It's a fantastic OS already, and I'm betting it will be very successful, increasing Microsoft's market share.
Oh, but this is slashdot. Anything Microsoft = bloat, crashes, unsecure. Get out of the 90's.
If you buy a new computer, it'll come with Windows 7. You'll wind up paying for it whether you want it or not.
According to that pricelist, you're buying Windows 7 and getting a free computer that comes with it.
I have been using Windows 7 for the last month or so (since it went from beta to RC) and, I have to say that I have liked MOST of the experience so far.
Stability is at least on par with XP (have not had to restart since I finished driver installs). Annoying messages have been minimal - they only appear when I am doing something that should require administrator credentials, such as installing a new application or driver.
Performance... I have no concrete figures but this also seems on par with XP.
The only down-side has been the installation time (hours, even on my beast) and the size of the OS(how DO you fit 20GB of data on a 3GB DVD anyways????).
So, the reason I want Windows 7 is so I can use all of my system's memory without a ramdisk/virtual memory hack and 64-bit support. There is really no other reason to upgrade because everything else seems on par with XP.
Snow Leopard is going to be sold for $30 [...]
...If you already have 10.5.
Well if you don't have 10.5 already then Snow Leopard is $120 for the non-upgrade FULL VERSION pricing. Compare that to the equivalent Windows 7 Professional at $299. And yes, you compare the regular version of Snow Leopard to Windows 7 Professional. Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn't cripple their product for the home user. All the "professional" features in Windows 7 Professional are pretty much the same as what's in regular version of Snow Leopard.
Apple has 3 pricing levels for their consumer (non-server) operating systems:
$29 upgrade
$120 home (same as Windows Professional)
$199 family (5 license version of home)
You can get discounts on these if you are a student, an educator, or a developer.
Sapere aude!
perhaps I could direct your attention to a fine catalog of vendors prepared to sell a PC in the natural state - start naked and free from all operating systems. For those who prefer not to pay for an unwanted proprietary operating system there are Naked Computers. If anyone sees a vendor out there with a naked system for sale please let me know. It has to be an up front option (full frontal if you prefer) not an under the counter, if you ask specially kind of deal. We are also mostly interested in complete computers, not a pile of bits, and we want a minimum order quantity of a single unit.
I have purchased only one copy of Windows(tm) in the last years; XP Professional(tm), and I paid almost $300 for it (all in, after taxes). Yes, I know I was taken for a fool, more on this later.
Now, I know that OEMs can't possibly be paying anything CLOSE to that, because I can buy a computer now WITH Windows and pay just a bit more than that.
So, I was led to believe that as a single consumer, I was being ripped off, and the only way to get a reasonable price for Windows was with a new computer. Simple, right?
Wrong. My wife works as a middle-school teach in the TDSB (Toronto District School Board). They have, what, 40,000 (more?) employees. My wife just got an offer - buy Windows Vista(tm) (Business?) for $21, and Office(tm) for $21. As far as I can tell (from the literature), there don't seem to any resale restrictions. And no "OEM" restrictions. The literature also mentions that the retail price for Office is north of $600.
How much DO Windows and Office cost? Since only idiots would buy retail Windows or Office (yes, I used to be in that category), the only reason to have ANY "suggested retail price" is to attempt to establish some sort of valuation.
"It's expensive, it MUST be good",
but no-one actually pays that price
"but I got a GREAT deal on the software!".
And now the suggested retail pricing pops up here, just to help spread the meme.
Of course, it is possible that the purchase was subsidized by the TDSB, in which case I will be very upset. The TDSB just ok'd the use of OpenOffice, and thus should have no need to spend the money.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Where's the part of the summary telling people that they can upgrade for $49.99 by pre-ordering?
"Finally, as a way of saying thank you to our loyal Windows customers, we are excited to introduce a special time limited offer! We will offer people in select markets the opportunity to pre-order Windows 7 at a more than 50% discount. In the US, this will mean you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium for USD $49.99 or Windows 7 Professional for USD $99.99. You can take advantage of this special offer online via select retail partners such as Best Buy or Amazon, or the online Microsoft Store (in participating markets).
This program begins tomorrow in the U.S., Canada and Japan. The offer ends July 11th in the U.S. and Canada and on July 5th for Japan or while supplies last. Customers in the UK, France and Germany, can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 starting July 15th and will run until August 14th (or supplies last) to ensure folks donâ(TM)t miss out on this. Act fast if you want to be the first in line to get Windows 7 at this screaming deal! Note: The special low pre-order price will vary per country."
Granted, it's a small window for a bloated Windows, but you have to applaud Microsoft for this. If you hate Vista and are convinced you want an upgrade, it's only $49.99 if you do in in the next few weeks.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
honestly, I haven't seen any features yet that I really consider an upgrade over XP, so perhaps someone could enlighten me about why I would even consider buying an upgrade?
Windows are stored as vector graphics in video memory under Vista and 7. Previously, they were stored as bitmaps that needed to be redrawn every frame. This enables things like viewing a thumbnail of a window from the taskbar (including video) and windows still drawing their last good state when the process locks (unlike XP and before, where the window will be plain white). It's similar to the OS X system.
There are security upgrades as well, but this reason is good enough for me.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
An OS should never cost more than $80.
Maybe $100, but that's it. An OS is basically supposed to make your computer work - not be the focus of your attention on the machine. It's supposed to more-or-less stay out of your way and let you get work done. I don't want to pay more for my OS than for the application I'm trying to run.
System Utilities should never cost more than $40.
I'd go as high as $50... But again, it's supposed to basically make your computer work and get out of the way. I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars just to keep my computer working correctly. And I sure as hell shouldn't have to pay another $50+ every year to keep getting updates... If I want the new version, I'll go out and buy it. If I just want the antivirus definitions they should be free... Or maybe some nominal fee to cover the bandwidth... $10 or so a year.
Games should never cost more than $50.
Especially not with how little gameplay you get these days... My son bought something for $60 (+tax) last week, played through it in one day over the weekend... I thought maybe he just skipped over side-quests or gave up and quit early or something... Read a review or two on-line... There's apparently about 6 hours of gameplay in the thing. WTF?!
Productivity apps can cost whatever, based on the size of their target market.
Agreed. If you actually need PhotoShop, you need PhotoShop, and it is worth your money to shell out hundreds of dollars for it. If you don't actually need PhotoShop there are plenty of perfectly good alternatives that are much cheaper if not free. The same thing goes for just about any other product... If you really need the features that Acrobat/Microsoft Office/QuickBooks/whatever offers, you can afford to pay for it. If not, use something else.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
64-bit execution that works. XP-x64 has poor application compatibility compared with Vista-x64 and Win7-x64.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Apple charges $29 for their OS upgrade, but the Mac user who's getting that cheap upgrade paid 50% more up front for the computer that he bought from Apple. Microsoft, despite selling a few keyboards and mice, is not a hardware company, and doesn't make its money by maintaining exclusive manufacturing control of the hardware that Windows runs on.
But in reality, I buy an OEM copy of Windows Ultimate Whatever from Newegg for $129. I don't have to deal with the utterly retarded upgrade process every time I have to nuke & pave, and I've got an ugly little sticker to refer to when nuke & pave time rolls around.
You're assuming I give two shits about honoring the finer points of Microsoft's licensing, which I don't. Is MS going to come after me? Are they going to deactivate my Windows randomly? They deactivate retail copies randomly.
To be honest, It's more convenient for me to get a legit serial number that doesn't self-destruct than to deal with suspect WGA patches & cracks that work like an arms race and require constant vigilance.
As long as you don't reinstall more often than quarterly, activation goes through without the need for a dreaded phone call. In the case that it fails, I make the phone call and say (and I quote): "I had to replace the motherboard" and get an activation key in about five minutes. If you do this once a week, the phone drones sound vaguely annoyed with you, but you still end up with the number.
So, really, what's the downside here (apart from paying for it at all)? I'm curious.
I heard the Pirate Edition was free. Just sayin.
This sort of attitude is one of the main reasons why anti-piracy lobbyists get so much love from legislators.
If you pirate Windows, why the hell would you care about "alternatives" ? And vice-versa: if you're a linux fan, you don't need to pirate Windows.
One thing is certain: bragging about your hypocritical stance on /. is not going to make Microsoft lower their prices.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Dropping the price may well increase the number of copies sold, but Microsoft doesn't directly care about that metric. It's all about the bottom line.
If you sell 100 copies at $300, you have $30,000 total, and 100 users to support.
If you sell 1000 copies at $30, you still have $30,000, but now you must support 1000 users.
The lower volume at a higher price is thus more profitable due to reduced support/maintenance costs. There is also the argument to be said that people who pirate Windows are likely to pirate it regardless of price, because there is little if any incentive to go legit.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Following this logic, ancient computer makers should have been sued years ago for bundling their OS on their mainframes. There could have been an independent market for OSes.
Err, that's exactly what happened.
"Then in January 1969 the US Justice Department brought an antitrust action against IBM for monopolizing the computer market. At the time IBM sold its hardware, software, training, and all services as a bundled product. That is, if someone wanted the mainframe software they also had to purchase hardware, training, and everything else from IBM. So in the July 1969 IBM signed another consent decree to unbundle which led to the development of hundreds of companies for supplying software (like University Computing and Computer Associates), hardware (disk drives, memory, and the like)."
cited from Peter Vogel's blog.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I had hoped that they would do like Apple this time and offer a family pack license. I can get Leopard with five licenses for a little over $130, less than half the cost of a second standalone copy. With four PCs in my household (my game PC, wife's, and two the kids use), even the cheapest upgrade option is nearly $500 if I upgraded all of them.
Which is why someone needs to start one of those anti-trust lawsuits Microsoft loves so much. How can any marketplace be competitive when an expensive product is sold cheaper than a free product. Really, the only way to stop Windows marketshare is to ensure that when you buy a Dell, you have to pay the retail price (ok, or a discounted price - but you have to pay extra) for the OS too.
If Dell had to be more transparent in its pricing, you might have the situation where you bought the hardware for X, the software for Y and a Dell-engineer installation (ie the disk duplication step) fee of Z. For Windows Y might be $100 and the installation $10, and Linux Y might be $0 but Z $200, but you'd see those prices and could decide to buy just the hardware and install your own OS. With the current situation, you just see that Windows is the cheapest option, which would be impossible in any other non-monopoly-based industry.
> Well if you don't have 10.5 already then Snow Leopard is $120 for the non-upgrade FULL VERSION pricing.
I'm really tired of that bullshit line. If the boxed copies of OS X were "non-upgrade FULL VERSION" then Apple wouldn't have a case against Pystar. It really is time for Apple and you fanbois to stop trying to have it both ways. Either the "non-upgrade FULL VERSION" is what it says or it is just an upgrade that will upgrade an older version than the $30 upgrade does. But being able to run around saying OS X is less expensive than Windows (see the $130 FULL VERSION") yet launching lawyers at anyone who actually believes it is dishonest to the core. Decide one way or the other and live with the consequences.
Democrat delenda est
In fact, how can pointing out good qualities [of Windows] be a troll at all?
You must be new here.
Uuuhhhhh....You Do know nobody actually does that,right? They just take it to a guy like me who uses something like driverpack and then uses something like Almeza to install the programs. Makes my job real easy and the customers are happy. I actually use a driver disc on DVD, but the guy puts out updates often on Rapidshare and since I haven't downloaded the last .rar for the latest I'd rather it not be Slashdotted.
And I know the Linux guys will hate me for saying this, but you really want to know why Linux didn't gain squat even with a super turkey like Vista as competition? Because of the trinity of shopping-Best Buy, Staples, Walmart. You see almost nothing you buy in those three stores actually works in Linux. The few things that do will require major research to make sure that you don't get the "wrong" model, and from nearly 15 years in the PC biz I can tell you folks don't research anything that costs less than a car. And no matter how popular online shopping is to us geeks, ordinary folks like walking into those stores and going "Oooh...Sale!" and putting stuff in their cart. And the odds are when they get that stuff home it won't work in Linux.
Which makes sense, actually. Linus can talk about desktops ALL he wants, but as in anything all you have to do is follow the money to see that talk of desktops is bullshit. Red Hat, IBM, Oracle, all the companies that spend major bucks on development and support for Linux spend it on server not on desktop. That is why things in the server market "just work" in Linux. By contrast unless you can write your own drivers a lot of times with the consumer level stuff in Linux just "don't work". And please let go of that "It's not our fault, they won't write drivers for us" because that is also bullshit. It is COMPLETELY your fault, because there is no stable ABI and writing a binary driver for Linux and having it work long term is like trying to hit a dartboard with a bumblebee. And give it up the vast majority of companies will NEVER release their specs and code under GPL, okay? Not going to happen.
So if you want to know why MSFT can release a pile of poo and Apple can "fart in your general direction" while having crazy prices and Linux can't catch a break, that's why. The stuff consumers want to buy won't work without research they'll never do. This makes returns 400-600% higher when selling a Linux machines over Windows, which makes Linux a more expensive proposition from a retail standpoint than Windows. Sorry, that is the truth and that is just the way things are.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.