MS Trying To Spur Vista Sales With Discounts

Ang writes "Is Microsoft having worries about selling Vista already? Ars reports that Microsoft has announced yet another 'discount program' for Vista, but these new discounts work out to only about 10% off list price — not much when you notice that retailers already sell Vista below list. To make matters worse, the discount program would still end up costing you $100 more than the older 'family' discount built around Vista Ultimate in some situations. Ars spends seven paragraphs explaining this convoluted offer. Is all of this complexity supposed to help sell Vista?" If you must buy Vista, it might be advisable to sit on your wallet for a while. The discounts are bound to get sweeter.

The Choice Is Clear

[lotusleaf]

More and more I'm seeing these types of stories pop up:

* "FREE AT LAST" [freemarketnews.com] by David Bond [freemarketnews.com] 03/19/2007

Quotes from the "FREE AT LAST" linked article above: (bold emphasis mine)

"But we were prepared for this Microsoft gambit. Why, we asked, after thousands of dollars already expended, should we feed the Microsoft maw again? Why this kilobuck penalty because we're getting a new machine? Made no sense."

"So down it came to the nut-cutting time. Brand-new computer, sitting here on top of the desk. Chicken-out, go with Windows, or take the Linux plunge. Let's see: $800 for Vista and Office 2007, single install, or Ubuntu, Firefox and Open Office, all for free."

IMO, I feel the title of that most excellent article pretty much sums up the growing change going on today. Why spend when a free and open alternative exists?

Joel's advice

[Erbo]

I'm sticking with Joel Spolsky's advice, from this column [joelonsoftware.com]:

• Do NOT, under any circumstances, upgrade an existing XP machine to Vista, even if it's Vista Supremo Premium Ultra-Capable.
• When you get a new computer, if it comes with Vista, that's when you'll upgrade.
• Do NOT buy a new computer just to get Vista, if your existing XP-based machine is working well enough.

Of course, Microsoft probably doesn't want me saying that...but screw 'em.

Re:Good deals for retailers

[Technician]

After all, anyone not buying Vista would still buy XP, so what motivates spending $5bn?


Due to the disparity between the OEM copy included on new hardware and the retail price, my older hardware has upgraded to Ubuntu instead. Not everyone not buying Vista would still buy XP. Apple sales has been doing quite well with the Core 2 Duo machines.

The TCO for MS products has become a problem for many with the required number of batteries not included items such as demo photo editor, demo CD writer, Wordpad (nuf said), and the endless AV patches.

The TCO on Ubuntu has been much lower for me. Scanning, full e-mail, office suite, and photo editing is included. Media codecs, Flash 9, and DVD playback are a free download away. AV is generaly not needed yet.

There is lots of history to show consumers that a MS release is a batteries not included distro. You will have to buy something to add some basic functionality such as burning an ISO to a CD or risk a malware freebe with a free program. (free rigntones, animated cursers, weather on the taskbar, video player, audio player, etc.. bundled with adware.)

Re:Good deals for retailers

[pipatron]

Well, not that I don't hate Microsoft as much as any other guy around... I just have to point out that all the free things you talk about with Ubuntu, are also available for Windows, thanks to open source.

Re:Good deals for retailers

[Technician]

basic functionality such as burning an ISO to a CD or risk a malware freebe
Bad example. That functionality is built into XP SP2.

Which part? The burning an ISO or malware freebe?

    **ducks**

I'll have to re-check my wife's XP machine. I tried to use it to burn a Ubuntu ISO and couldn't find any way to burn an ISO with the provided (by Dell) CD application. I had to hit a shareware site to get an ISO burner. I thought we had SP2 installed, but if it's built in SP2, either I couldn't find it or we don't have SP2.

From a search online I find no refrence to the built in ISO burning application. I did find that it is a toy as an additional downloadable add-in.

http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm [alexfeinman.com]

In other words.. not included in SP2.

I now use Ubuntu to burn ISO's.

Re:Good deals for retailers

[Richard W.M. Jones]

What the poster is saying that it doesn't really cost anymore to have 100 boxes on the shelf, than it does to have 500, so they are encouraging shops to take lots of boxes rather than a few, in the hopes they will create massive displays. This is marketing 101.

It's called "channel stuffing" [wikipedia.org] and while it is indeed marketing 101, companies can't get away with it for too long before the channel becomes mighty pissed off and starts sending the product back.

Rich.

Re:Good deals for retailers

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this just copy the iso image to the cd drive? Probably not what the poster intended.

Re:Good deals for retailers

[hr.wien]

There is a very good reason DirectX10 can't be ported back to XP. The entire Windows driver model has changed for DX10 to allow for instance GPU virtualization and GPU memory paging. This cannot be done in XP. To port it back you would have to replace the old XP driver model, which means you will have to replace the kernel, which means you've ended up with Vista anyway.