Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Raises UK Prices By a Third and Can't Rule Out Future Hikes
New submitter DerekduPreez writes "Microsoft has revealed that it will increase volume licencing prices in the UK by an average of 29 percent to adjust for the 'sustained currency differences between European countries'. UK businesses have until 1st July to place their orders under the current prices before the changes take effect. Microsoft claims that because of sustained differences between the British Pound and the Euro, price spikes are necessary to maintain consistency across the region. Microsoft also confirmed that it could not rule out future increases, as it will continue to monitor currency movements and may make further adjustments if there are large fluctuations."
Isn't the issue the other way around?
The pound down more than the euro and hence price increases in pound?
You've got massive QE and hence weak pound.
So, M$ are urging people to order, respectively buy Win7's 'till 1st of July, so they can release Win8 in August...
Nice!
Human-speak recognizes 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/4, 3/4 and maybe 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, and 4/5. Once you go beyond that, the normal human brain will have to think for a period of time.
So the nearby choices are 50%, 33%, 25%, or 20%. In the interest of extra dramatization, it was the one higher that was picked. 1/3.
Where would you draw the line? Would you use two-seventh?
Exactly this. Euro is pretty much where it has always been. Pound is losing its value. Microsoft has every right to do it. Compared to Google they just have to do it openly - even Google has been steadily rising their advertising for the UK because of differences in currency values. They just do it silently behind the scenes.
the U.S. dollar has been growing against the pound
Not sure what you mean by growing, I see a weakening US dollar. But we all know that - the Fed keeps printing them, how can the US dollar not get weaker? And your graph supports this. So if the US dollar gets weaker the answer is to charge more pounds? This is just a cash grab by Microsoft with some currency exchange gloss to hide the fact that they're being greedy suckers, they see more value in holding pounds than dollars, and hardly anyone bothers to take 30 secs to understand exchange rates properly.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The graph you linked shows the opposite of that.
If dissent is not permitted, how long do you think it will be before the secret police show up to take you away?
Microsoft is widely misunderstood. People think Microsoft is a software company that is sometimes abusive. That's wrong. Microsoft is an abuse company that uses software to deliver abuse.
Just my opinion, but I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
You need $1.61 to buy a pound today, when yesterday you needed $1.55 to buy the same pound. That is a weakening dollar (or a strengthening pound) and not the opposite.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This price increase is a measure against http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market
Two years ago 1 Pound = 1.5 Euro, now it is 1.3 Euro. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GBPEUR%3DX
MS is increasing the price in GB so that M$ price is around the same in Europe zone.
That's the nicest thing about Google's business model. They don't have to raise their prices, as the prices are "automaticaly" set by their clients on bids.
Rethinking email
The pound sterling may be doing worse than it ever has, but it's certainly faring better than the euro. View the last year's trend from yahoo!
"Nor do you need an European Parliament, and Commission, to decide laws affecting each country."
That's because it's not just about free trade, but utilising Europe's combined resources to make Europe more prosperous as a whole - bringing the poorer Eastern European nations up to the standards of Western Europe and also making sure Europeans share some bare minimum sets of rights. This in itself has an effect on free trade though, as free trade isn't a good thing if one country in the free trade group has no laws on slave Labour and so can jack all the manufacturing business from the others.
"VAT is still all over the place in each country for example"
What do you mean all over the place? there are restrictions on how high and high low it can be so it's only "all over the place" within a fairly narrow boundary of values. I'm not really sure what you're arguing for either, on one hand you seem to think it's bad Europe takes power away from individual nations, yet here you seem to also think it's bad that countries have the freedom to at least change VAT to some extent? It's like you're contradicting your own argument for the sake of having a pop at the EU.
"Many eurosceptics want trade and integration with the rest of Europe"
They don't want integration, they just want to be able to exploit it where it suits them, and ignore it when it doesn't. The problem is that's not a sound basis for a two way relationship and ultimately most Eurosceptic viewpoints tend to boil down to outright xenophobia. UKIP comes up with some good ideas, but the more you watch them, the more you read their policies, the more you realise they're really no that much different to the BNP, they're just only slightly less overtly racist but are certainly at least just as fascist. Ironically they're also the ones who have been most guilty of corruption in terms of stealing expenses and so forth.
Some of the UK's Tories are less xenophobic, but their intentions are no more moral, their arguments come down to the fact they're just demanding more power for themselves, not for a care for the country and the people in it - it's no suprise there is a strong correlation between the Tories that are anti-EU and the Tories that support the undemocratic first past the post system that gives parties like the Tories and Labour grossly more power than the electorate voted them to have. The number of eurosceptics whose position is genuinely based on rationality and a care for the British population rather than a lust for greater power or irrational xenophobia is probably less than 10 out of 650 MPs.
Whilst the European Parliament and Commission is without a doubt nowhere near perfect and has many problems, I find it rather odd when Eurosceptics, complain about corruption as a reason for wanting to get out. Britain is after all the country that has for the last few years seen scandal after scandal after scandal, and not just small ones - we're referring to those that hit right at the heart of democracy, whether it's expenses, peerages for sale, cash for votes, or phone hacking at every level of British society, to Jeremy Hunt not fulfilling his legal obligation to be impartial. There's a good reason Murdoch is himself a Eurosceptic and pushes that agenda in his British media - because he recognises that it's the biggest threat to his immensly corrupt stranglehold on the British establishment.
Europe may well be corrupt, but compared to our government? It's still far better.
All socialism fails
Correct, however you need to head to the library and do some reading on what socialism actually is (unless the library is too 'socialist' for you).
Europe, Canada etc. are not socialist nations. Do they have social programs for their citizens? Yes. However, socialism is defined as state ownership of enterprises. A good example of a socialst nation is Cuba - The state owns all means of production. Cuba is failing, which is why they are moving away from socialism.
Since yesterday. I'm talking long term trends. You can't look at 24 hours and say the dollar is weakening. As little as a year ago it was more like $2 to the Pound. There were variations even then, but "in general" the dollar has been getting much stronger lately. Right now we're approximately where were against European currencies before the recession. For quite a while we were 25-50% lower than we were pre-recession.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The Euro is going down against the Pound, not vice versa.
EUR vs GBP 1992-2012. Whether it is up or down depends on the dates you measure from and to. Nobody knows what will happen in the future.
There is less justification for this price hike than there has been at pretty much any time since late 2008.
For the last few years the pounds has been down on the euro in contrast to the preceding decade. Most large corporations don't regularly change end-user prices to track currency variations, unless they are in the currency or oil/gas business. It is entirely possible that Microsoft was willing to absorb a lower profit margin in the UK relative to other countries for a few years, but now predict that the weaker pound is a long term trend for the next decade, and are resetting prices accordingly. It is also possible that the Microsoft accountants believe that the UK market is more willing to bear higher profit margins.