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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.
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?
Not to mention that most of the people who purchase Windows boxed either A) build their own PCs, B) are a business C) are a computer enthusiast or D) are a MS developer. Charging this much for people who are high up on the technology chain is just insane, especially because these people know of alternatives and they see Apple with a cheap but better OS and Linux with a free OS. Plus, what is the point of ultimate? As far as I can tell its nothing but a rip-off, there were none of the promised features, and you would think that MS would give them a free upgrade to 7 but I guess not.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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,
They don't expect people to buy stuff at those prices. The prices are high so that they can pressure OEMs into making shady deals.
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
Most of the people who will pay $29 for snow leopard paid apple for their hardware. How many vista users bought their hardware from microsoft?
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
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.
[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
I have an IntelliMouse, you insensitive clod!
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
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.
grr submit button too close to the preview button (PEBKAC) the link is Naked Computers
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
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
I heard the Pirate Edition was free. Just sayin.
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?
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.
In fact, how can pointing out good qualities [of Windows] be a troll at all?
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