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Hidden Fees Discovered For "Free" Windows 7 Upgrade
An anonymous reader writes 'Thousands of recent computer purchasers who are expecting to receive free upgrades to Windows 7 when it is released on October 22 may be surprised to learn that some big computer makers are quietly tacking on hefty processing fees as high as $17 to mail out those disks to some buyers.' How about they process $0 to click a link and download a file?
The RTM of windows 7 has been out for 2 months now? 3 by the street date of Oct 22nd.
This time is of course used for manufacturing, marketing, etc.
Meanwhile they should be offering fully updated ISOs directly on the windows site for everyone and anyone to download - the OS itself contains its own validation so there's no harm in letting anyone download it. Then you buy your key digitally with a steam-like system, this would even benefit Microsoft by serving as a key registration system.
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When I mentioned this to my office colleague, he said $17 was a quite a bargain if that's what it takes to it makes Vista go away.
Not the dreaded upgrad fees! Those sound expensive!
While not the free promised, the terms hefty and $17 haven't been used together since the 1930s.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
Yeah except Microsoft and the stores are saying Win7 is a free upgrade. Misleading and deceptive. Like when I visited a car dealer and "won" an 1 gigabyte MP4 player for "free". Yeah the actual item may have been technically free, but the S&H cost $30 so basically I paid for it.
I returned it and now I'm going after paypal to get a refund, since the battery only lasted 15 minutes. What good is that?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
But, yeah a download or something would be a neat idea, but then it would likely be hacked in like 2 seconds.
As opposed to any other software ever released by MS?
I am the lawn!
"Shipping and Handling" is a scam in whatever form it takes. This is especially true when those charges are excessive.
Yes - charging shipping to pass along a variable, customer dependent charge is outrageous!
Get back under your bridge.
If you are paying $2million/year for the bandwidth of a small company that doesn't have a large web site and doesn't do digital distribution, you're overpaying by a whole lot.
It sounds like:
A. you're getting majorly ripped off
B. your company claiming to be spending $2m/year but in fact paying a lot less and pocketing the rest of the money
C. all the computers in your company are a zombies spamming 2 million emails per day and performing dos attacks
D. your employees are undercover couriers for 0day warez scene
E. you're an idiot who really doesn't know anything and you make up nonsense
http://gigaom.com/2008/10/07/wholesale-internet-bandwidth-prices-keep-falling/