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Windows 7 To Sell In UK For Half the US Price
An anonymous reader writes "In the UK, a full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is going to cost less than half the price Americans will have to pay, and in fact less than Americans have to pay just for the upgrade-only edition. Full details and prices were published in an article on CNet, in which it was concluded that, at least for the time being, Microsoft is honoring the prices it set for the now-discontinued European version of Win7, which did not contain Internet Explorer 8 and was only available as a full-install edition."
I guess they're pricing it for their target market? Surely nobody would ship a copy from the UK over to North America!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
We've got region coding on DVDs that does the same thing -- different prices for different markets because we all know that "one market" just isn't right. We must have several markets because different markets will bear different amounts. It would definitely be counter-productive to not take advantage of markets that will pay more or those that will only pay less.
It also makes sense that markets that are more likely to switch to Linux or Mac OS X should pay less and that markets that are less likely to switch should pay more. I have pondered the notion of how a national switch to Linux could work out for any nation and I have to say, it's really hard to imagine. But with that said, the entire globe managed to switch to the metric system, including the U.K. Oh wait, not the entire world... the U.S. is a hold-out... is the U.S. the *last* hold-out? (I dunno) So while the world might switch away from Windows, the U.S. is probably the least likely to make that change.
Is it illegal to fix prices like this? It is in the U.S. It is in other countries. But is it illegal to fix prices for specific countries so long as the whole country is included in that fixed price? I guess so since no one is charging Microsoft with any crimes... yet...
MS, like many American companies, are fleecing the country. We are regularly charged top prices for drugs, Windows software, Iron, Labor, etc. Heck, the neo-cons passed a drug policy that has the US gov paying the TOP dollar for the drugs, rather than the bottom, even though we are the largest customer. Absolutely ridiculous.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It won't cost you anything if you don't buy it. There are alternatives.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
a common practice among software companies is exploited by slashdot editor.
go look and see how much the price of mathmatica fluctuate between markets and you'll realize this is nothing.
Win7 is selling for half the price over 'ome? Does this mean UK residents are twice as smart as their American counterparts?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
so you might as well just download yourself a copy since you'll be in "violation" of said license either way.
Violation of an EULA is not even the remote equivalent of violation of copyright law.
My pics.
Now that the Philippines has switched, I think it is just Liberia and Burma left. And England still uses miles sometime, where appropriate.
For the record, Celsius sucks for the "how warm is it today?" question (the scale based on 0-100% is better), Meters suck for "how big is this object I hold?" question, and using a drill size 1/64th bigger than the O.D. of the bolt to make the hole just the right size is an inelegant hack in metric sizing.
None the less, the inefficiency the US carries around with it must have some huge long term detriment to the economy, and it's completely wrong on so many levels that NASA refuses to convert to metric.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
All crimes against Profit are equally serious, comrade citizen...
another example: when working with a (foot long) wrench or spanner, with the Foot-pound you can simply & intuitively feel how much force to apply. With the Newton-Meter you need a special gauge to know.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
It's cheaper and you don't have to manually eradicate Internet Explorer?
Where do I sign up?!
I guess everyone from Canada won't have any issues!
This will lead to people indulging in arbitrage.
You say that like that's a bad thing.
so about the same as us oem price?
You need a new hobby. You managed to nail every Microsoft/Win 7 slashdot talking point in one post. What are the rest of us supposed to talk about now?
moox. for a new generation.
It's all simple and intuitive when it's the system you've been taught and used since childhood. Trust me, for someone who's been using metric for all his life, meters and kilograms and degrees Celsius are perfectly easy to use and intuitive, while your pounds, feet, and Fahrenheit are totally weird and incomprehensible. Especially conversions between them.
12 inches in a foot, but 3 feet in a yard - why? And 1760 yards in a mile - gosh, how convenient that must be. Even better when you get to area and volume units - I mean, 1728 cubic inch in a cubic foot sure roll from the tongue, and is easy to remember as well. And 1 acre being 43560 square inch is so obvious! If that wasn't enough, you have separate units of volume, which follow their own, mixed 2/4-based progression (unlike mixed 3/4-based for length) - gallon/quart/pint. I also love how there's 16 ounces in a pound, but then 2000 pounds in a short ton - hey, it's almost metric - yay for consistency!
All the claims about Imperial being more "natural" or easier to use are pure bullshit. The only difference between the systems is that one is decimal-friendly and consistent, and another is not.
lots of alternatives.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
And 1 acre being 43560 square inch is so obvious!
No, it's 43560 square feet in an acre, not square inches though I guess you sort of proved your point as you confused the units while describing how much harder it is to remember conversions in english units versus metric units.
Federal Law != Terms of a Contract
There's one more difference. One system of measure has a group of people so convinced it's the best thing ever that they think the law should prohibit people from using any other.
If the metric system is so great, why is it necessary to try to force people to use it? Let people use whatever measuring system they find most useful and if the metric system is better, it'll become dominant.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You're asking the wrong question. You should ask yourself what tasks you are trying to accomplish. If it then turns out the only software available to accomplish those tasks runs on Windows, bad luck. But if you're focusing on applications instead of tasks, yeah, you'll never find an alternative.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
So like the TFA says, for once the British aren't going to be screwed over by having to pay Yank prices in Sterling. At a time before the recession hit and the exchange rate was sitting nicely at US$2 for 1GBP this was sadly never translated into the Interenets SUper-Combobulating-Exchange-Calculator that all multi-nationals selling software or hardware in the UK and US seemed to use that seemed to be closer to a US$1 to GBP1 mapping. iTunes store and most Apple products being notable offenders. I for one am sick of being shafted for my lunch money by greedy companies.
Yes. I am British.
Actually for £65 I might actually consider buying a full copy of Windows for the first time as opposed to downloading it. It's always been too expensive to justify before.
Let me rephrase it. Can you "feel" what 20 kg weighs like? Most people can. Would you feel comfortable to apply approximately 20 kg of force at the end of a socket wrench? Most people would, it's intuitive and you have experience in how much force* that is. That's how easy a foot-pound is. It's a pound of force at the end of a foot long tool. Now, could you - off the street with no training - trust yourself to apply 60 Newton-meters of force on a socket wrench? No idea how much that is? Exactly my point.
First of all, newton-meters do not measure force. Newtons measure force. Newton-meters measure torque.
Also, given that newton is ~1/10 (not exactly, but good enough for the situation you describe) of "kg of force", and given that you admit that it's not a problem to "feel" and intuitively apply force in kg, why would I have a problem in applying them? I just divide by 10.
As for "how hot is it today?", surely a scale based roughly on 0-100% of full scale is more natural to the answer than one based on the boiling point of a common liquid.
On whose full scale? Los Angeles? Toronto? Vilnius? Norilsk?
By the way, defining 0 as a freezing point is actually pretty damn convenient when speaking of weather specifically, since you know immediately whether to expect snow (and ice on roads) or rain.
Or just plain "WHINE".
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
That's decimal v duodecimal (base 10 v base 12), not imperial v metric. Egg packing doesn't have much to do with either measurement system. They still sell eggs in boxes of 6 or 12 in the UK. Sometimes they sell 10, or 4, or 9.
You could use metric in base 12 (e.g. 2a88 m) if it's useful enough to you.
(PS, it's "honey, I have eleven left". We have a base-12 language up to 12, eleven and twelve have their own words, thirteen doesn't, it means three-ten. It's more obvious in something like German: zehn (10), elf, zwolf, dreizehn, vierzehn.)
You know MS make more money out of Europe than they do out of the US? I say Windows should default to damn UK English on UK keyboards, but it ain't gonna happen. And the reason "nobody buys it" is circular with the reason it's been removed in the first place - nobody buys things like Windows "N" because, basically, you can't from any of the retailers that sell OS pre-installed computers, because Microsoft basically make it prohibitive on a business basis. It's virtually impossible to find - I don't know of a single retailer (even Dell, etc.) that offer it. And because of that, that's why they are under investigation STILL for monopolistic practices.
If you're THAT reliant on a single *application*, you have bigger problems anyway. What if the application breaks, or its creator goes out of business, or become vulnerable to a serious security flaw that doesn't get updated for years, etc.?
If your data is THAT important, you'd at least secure something - whether that be the application (e.g. by bringing it in-house and doing it yourself) or the data (by using more standardised formats, etc.)
"Switching applications", "Switching OS", etc. should be TRANSPARENT to any business that relies on its data that badly. Otherwise the disappearance or modification of those things will break the business, not just the computer system, and permanently, not just for a day or two.
You should ask yourself what tasks you are trying to accomplish.
Develop Windows software.