Just to put things in a different point of view, since this whole thread has degraded in to the usual/. flame-war...
Let's say you went and bought yourself a snappy new car in 2005, let's say a Range Rover, and it cost about $55k. You love this car, you drive it every day, and over time little things need to be fixed, maintenance becomes more frequent, and you say, Hey maybe I should trade the old girl in, and get a new one; it's time. You head down to the dealer, and find a new Range Rover well equipped is $83k. OMG sticker shock! You grumble to the greasy-haired salesman about how you paid nearly $30k less a few years ago. He glances over at your '05 and makes a snarky "that old thing? not bad for her day.." comment. Before you can put your boot in his ass, he lures you in to the drivers' seat of the '13 Rover, and gives you the standard "let me show you how far these cars have come in the past few years" speech. At the end of the day, sticker shocked or not, you decide to keep your car a couple more years, so you can save up for a new one, or buy a "newer" used one, whichever makes the most sense at the time.
It's not that you don't want the new one, but sometimes in the current point of life cycle, it doesn't make sense to upgrade. It makes more sense to plan for it, budget for it, and maybe you won't make the jump straight from the 2005 Range Rover (Win XP) to the brand new 2013 (Win 8), because you won't see the value, but it may make more sense to go to the tried-and-true 2011 Rover (Win 7) with low miles, always garaged, and without the big unknowns that come with a brand-new model (Win 8 again..).
The point is guys, prices go up (and we're discounting inflation), products continue to evolve. You must realize the operational costs of anything you own, and recognize it will not last forever. When you bought your new home computer 5 years ago, you knew it would last you 3-6 years. You'd upgrade the memory, maybe a new video card, possibly a new hard disk over that time. You'll buy games and software. There's also hidden costs: Power, your DSL/cable Internet service, any online subscriptions you may have, any time you spend fixing it (you cannot discount your own skilled labor, even if it's a labor of love). There is some ongoing cost of ownership. Businesses budget Total Cost of Ownership of computers, and plan for replacements (typically when hardware goes out of service agreements).
One last thing to consider: A few years back, ITIL asked Fortune 500 companies to identify the entire operating cost of a Desktop computer over a 3 year span. This means hardware, software, power, IT services, routine maintenance, back-end services such as patch management, Exchange, AD, every last thing. The numbers that every single company came back with were between $27,000 and $36,000. PER desktop computer. Those numbers are staggering, but that's the true cost of ownership. So, when you consider that one constant throughout that 3 year span is the per-seat operating system license, at roughly $120, it's really a small slice.
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Just to put things in a different point of view, since this whole thread has degraded in to the usual /. flame-war...
Let's say you went and bought yourself a snappy new car in 2005, let's say a Range Rover, and it cost about $55k. You love this car, you drive it every day, and over time little things need to be fixed, maintenance becomes more frequent, and you say, Hey maybe I should trade the old girl in, and get a new one; it's time. You head down to the dealer, and find a new Range Rover well equipped is $83k. OMG sticker shock! You grumble to the greasy-haired salesman about how you paid nearly $30k less a few years ago. He glances over at your '05 and makes a snarky "that old thing? not bad for her day.." comment. Before you can put your boot in his ass, he lures you in to the drivers' seat of the '13 Rover, and gives you the standard "let me show you how far these cars have come in the past few years" speech. At the end of the day, sticker shocked or not, you decide to keep your car a couple more years, so you can save up for a new one, or buy a "newer" used one, whichever makes the most sense at the time.
It's not that you don't want the new one, but sometimes in the current point of life cycle, it doesn't make sense to upgrade. It makes more sense to plan for it, budget for it, and maybe you won't make the jump straight from the 2005 Range Rover (Win XP) to the brand new 2013 (Win 8), because you won't see the value, but it may make more sense to go to the tried-and-true 2011 Rover (Win 7) with low miles, always garaged, and without the big unknowns that come with a brand-new model (Win 8 again..).
The point is guys, prices go up (and we're discounting inflation), products continue to evolve. You must realize the operational costs of anything you own, and recognize it will not last forever. When you bought your new home computer 5 years ago, you knew it would last you 3-6 years. You'd upgrade the memory, maybe a new video card, possibly a new hard disk over that time. You'll buy games and software. There's also hidden costs: Power, your DSL/cable Internet service, any online subscriptions you may have, any time you spend fixing it (you cannot discount your own skilled labor, even if it's a labor of love). There is some ongoing cost of ownership. Businesses budget Total Cost of Ownership of computers, and plan for replacements (typically when hardware goes out of service agreements).
One last thing to consider: A few years back, ITIL asked Fortune 500 companies to identify the entire operating cost of a Desktop computer over a 3 year span. This means hardware, software, power, IT services, routine maintenance, back-end services such as patch management, Exchange, AD, every last thing. The numbers that every single company came back with were between $27,000 and $36,000. PER desktop computer. Those numbers are staggering, but that's the true cost of ownership. So, when you consider that one constant throughout that 3 year span is the per-seat operating system license, at roughly $120, it's really a small slice.