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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."
Do Yanks start ordering from amazon.co.uk?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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
This will lead to people indulging in arbitrage.
Unless, of course, Microsoft has somehow put in a mechanism that disables a UK-bought Windows 7 when someone attempts to install it on a computer located in the US.
This reminds me of a story once told by Nicholas Wirth:
When he was in Europe - they called him 'Nicholas Wirth', the correct pronunciation.
When he was in USA - they called him 'Nickles Worth', the incorrect pronunciation.
He inferred this was because whilst in Europe they called him by name, when in USA they called him by value.
Well Microsoft seems to have definitely reversed that with this decision.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
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...
Y'all know that £20 isn't really half as much spending power as $40, right?
Better known as 318230.
Dear Microsoft,
I read recently that you have decided to cut Windows 7's price in the UK to about half of what it is here in the US. I don't feel that it does justice to us here in the States, as we're actually getting less value than your UK market.
Take, for example, all the U's that have been dropped from words. My color is not colour, but yet, I have to pay more for the lack of the U. This is unfair. Has the cost of cutting U's from words taken a sharp climb?
Perhaps the letter Z is charging too much these days, and I know how that can be. It only makes sparse appearances in words such as localize and marginalize, but despite its rare occurrence, it, much like a has-been movie star, has the gall to demand top billing. Perhaps your royalties payable to this (not)under-appreciated letter raise the costs here in the US.
Whatever the reasoning, I still find it unfair, and being such a large and powerful corporation, the fact that you can be taken advantage of like this is not only sad, but reprehensible. Use those lawyers of yours and get back at them! Hey, you can even be on the winning end of an anti-trust suit... think of the headlines now: "'Z' Loses Anti-Trust Judgement Thanks to Microsoft". Won't that be good press?
Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen
PS - This message has been brought to you by the letter 5.
The price for my country was going to be twice that in the US, let alone the UK. I dont remember any outrage about that.
Yea, it sucks, but other people most probably have it worse off than you do. Or they use linux.
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.
MS, like many American companies, are fleecing the country.
GB prices for tech are usually close to the same number of pounds as dollars things have eased a bit recently, here are two random examples:
* New Apple iPod Touch 8GB 2nd Generation (amazon UK), £152 = $250
* ditto (amazon US), $215 -> UK one is only 16% more
* Dell M17X laptop (UK), £1699 = $2815
* ditto (US), $1799 -> saving $1000 by purchasing in the US vs in the UK where it is 56% more expensive
Last year it was about $2 = £1; http://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=GBPUSD
You were saying ...? This would make it even more extraordinary for Win 7 to be cheaper here, but when I look ...
* Win 7 ultimate (amazon UK), £170 = $280
* ditto (amazon US), $220 -> so only $60 / 27% more and the UK price is a "discounted" one from an RRP (recommended price) of £230
Um?
"There are alternatives."
Arrrr, that thar be matey!
All crimes against Profit are equally serious, comrade citizen...
[Metric system -] is the U.S. the *last* hold-out?
Nope, you're in good company with Myanmar (Burma) and Liberia.
(less facetiously, the UK still uses miles for distances and miles per hour for speed, and fair number of people still use feet & inches for human height)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
so about the same as us oem price?
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.
it's also Not A Viable Option. Really, they should call it "WINAVO"
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.
He never said the VM wouldn't be on an Apple machine...
Funny, but I find it flabbergasting that Apple still does not allow non-server versions of OS X to run in a virtual machine, even on an Apple machine:
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
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'?
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.