MS Offers Vista Upgrade Pricing To All

SlinkySausage writes "With a vague whiff of desperation, Microsoft is offering anyone who downloaded one of the betas or release candidates of Vista upgrade pricing for the full version. The 'special' deal is a sweetener for the fact that the betas will start expiring and becoming non-functional from May 31st. APC Magazine in Australia writes: 'Windows Vista is starting to look like those Persian rug stores which are always having a "closing down" sale... All stock has been slashed, save $$$, why pay more?'" Perhaps Microsoft is cognizant of straws in the wind such as a recent InformationWeek survey indicating that 30% of business have no intention of moving to Vista, ever.

What's the benefit?

[Colin Smith]

Same old, same old. But with a few extra hassles.

Mmmmm, compelling proposition there. Course, what they should have done is made sure that MS Office was subtly broken on XP. Well, you never know, now I've made that particular suggestion on this highly read web site we might well see that feature in future windows updates.

 

Hmm

[El Lobo]

Repeating a lie a thousand times will not make it true. Vista may be selling slow, but not slowly than Ubuntu users are upgrading to the last Fety thingy (and THAT is free!!!!) , or not slowly than Borland^H^H^H^H^H^HCodegear users are upgrading to Delphi 2007....
Eventually it will become more and more common, but don't hold your breath. It won't go away.

Re:What's the benefit?

[CastrTroy]

I think that would only have caused companies not to upgrade MS Office either. MS Office 2000 is probably good enough for most businesses (as is 97). With the amount of retraining that 2007 will take, I don't think than most businesses will want to make that move either.

Re:Profit??

[OffTheLip]

You don't just buy Microsoft, you buy _into_ Microsoft. It often is a life sentence.

Re:What's the benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want full disk encryption it's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to roll out something like PointSec onto your current XP machines than it is to upgrade to Vista and no enterprise in their right mind would deploy Vista full disk encryption in an organisation already using a different product (Because then you have two different tracking and management systems to deal with). It's hardly a major bullet list item that has enterprises scrambling to upgrade.

ZOMG

[Chicken04GTO]

Microsoft is adjusting prices to meet demand? Every sane business does this.

ZOMG get the torches and lets march!

How pratical can it be to hold out?

[HighOrbit]

"Extended Support" for XP will be until April 2014. So that is seven years. But long before that seven years, some hardware (some with XP from 2001) will start to die. The replacement hardware will be sold with Vista. Even if the replacement is 'naked' or wiped and installed with XP, some of the devices may not have XP drivers. Also some of the user software that runs on XP will probably become unsupported or abandon-ware before 2014.

I think the talk of holdouts 'never' installing Vista is bravado. Sooner or later they will be compelled to start supporting Vista or its successor (Blackcomb/Vienna). Maybe they will skip Vista and go to straight to Vienna (provided Vienna gets out the door before 2014, IIRC it is currently scheduled for 2009), but they can't stay with XP forever. The hardware and software won't allow it.

Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[mumblestheclown]

People: it's time for a bit of intellectual honesty.

Either:

A. Microsoft is a giant evil behemoth that has created for itself a permanent and insurmountable monopoly that needs to be curtailed through government intervention and snide slashdot comments. Microsoft could shiat on a brick and most IT departments would have to buy it. The agreements that it makes with computer manufacturers to pre-install its product, which typically costs about 10% of the actual cost of the PC, is fundamentally wrong.

OR

B. Microsoft is a company that, despite the existence of free-as-in-beer alternatives, has nevertheless managed for many years to become fabulously wealthy by delivering products that seem to be what the market wants. However, as this episode shows, they are neither invincible nor infallible - like all of the software giants that have come before them, despite at one point building an enviable market position, they will erode through some combination of changing technology, bad marketing / product decisions, and so forth. Furthermore, as we see from Dell's (among others') recent actions, computer manufacturers can and will tailor their operating system offerings as they feel the market warrants - Microsoft can no more afford to lose dell than vice versa.

Ignoring History

[ChaoticCoyote]

The same things were said about Windows XP. And look where we are today...

It might surprise the Slashdot crowd to know that *some* people like Vista. I do. I'm no MS fanboy, and I've cursed Bill Gates so many times its become a household cliche -- but the reality is, Vista is just fine. I use it every day, 10-12 hours a day, and my only complaint is the annoying slowness of file copies. Vista has a number of nice features that improve on XP.

Will I upgrade the other four machines in my office? Heck no. The Linux machines will remain with Gentoo; the Windows XP and MCE systems will not be upgraded any time soon. That doesn't mean I hate Vista, or nor did it fail because 80% of my computers are staying with their current OS.

Just like 2000 and XP, Vista works best on a new system; upgrading is always a mess, because vendors want to sell you today's tech instead of supporting what you bought last month. So the older systems stay with what works, and the new computer runs Vista (very well, I might add).

It's popular and trendy to hate Microsoft and Vista; heaven forbid you should think for yourselves.

This isn't that big of a deal

[steelcobra]

Just Microsoft telling people who've clung onto the beta versions that they can keep using it without paying $400. And as to the 30% figure, there are a ton of companies still using Win2000pro.

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Billosaur]

However, whilst we got the wireless working fairly easily, there were too big unforeseen problems that my relation suffered:

1. She has a legitimate 3 PC student licence for Office 2003 and has used only one of those licenses on the family desktop PC so far. Vista would not accept the license key for Office 2003 no matter what I tried and in the end I had to tell her to call Microsoft to get them to sort it out.

2. There are no drivers for her Lexmark printer and Lexmark have no plans to release any.

1. Well, Microsoft wants Vista users to upgrade to Office 2007, so this is no surprise. I suspect MS Tech Support will get it to work, though you can bet she'll be subjected to the "hard sell" the whole time.
2. That's Lexmark's particular problem. If true, it shows how short-sighted they are. Even if you don't like Vista, you have customers who will use it, and if you choose not to support you printers on Vista, you'll see those users go to someone else who will. Not good business strategy.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Cygfrydd]

... and, of course, XP was terrifying until SP2.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[MontyApollo]

As an average user, I really don't see what the complaints are about Vista. Average consumers really don't care that much about the operating system to begin with. As you said, they care about programs.

I recently built a new computer and went ahead with Vista because I could get OEM pricing now but maybe not in the future, and I already had copy of XP that I could dual boot. For routine everyday stuff Vista has been fine; I have XP set up in case I play around with any programming, but I find myself always using Vista. One of the main advantages I noticed with Vista is that for some reason the fonts are more readable on my 22" wide-screen in native resolution than they are in XP. It also doesn't seem to have the weird window re-draw problems. In general the display just seems to work better for me.

Like all versions of Windows, there is no reason for the average consumer to upgrade an existing computer - just wait until you get a new computer. The new computer will likely be equipped to better run Vista too. Vista will eventually take over because of this, like XP did. I have never understood why people would think a majority of average consumers will want to go out and spend money to replace their operating system that is working fine without going ahead and getting a faster, newer computer with all the latest hardware. Instead, it seems to be big news that people are showing some since and waiting.

Re:Hmm

[Apocalypse111]

Consider the following...

Windows ME

That is all.

Works for me :)

[NickFortune]

People: it's time for a bit of intellectual honesty.

Oh goody! Can we start with the false dichotomies [wikipedia.org], please?

The difference

[Opportunist]

When XP came out, I looked at it, considered it shiny, didn't care about shiny, looked again, saw that it was essentially as good as 2k and that I can turn off the shiny and still can get a few additional features out of it. It did not remove anything essential that I was used to in 2k, and it ran as fast as 2k, so I eventually switched.

When Vista came out, I looked at it, considered it bloated, cared about bloated, looked again, saw that it was worse than XP and that even with the shiny and bloated turned off, it's no better than XP and still slower. It did take away a few liberties that I came to enjoy in XP, and so I will never switch.

If XP doesn't work anymore, I will move on to another OS. Wine is hopefully ready to run at XP level by the time I have to go, so I know where my next home will be built.

Re:Why buy new?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I'm breaking the spirit of your post by saying this, but with that $300 computer, you could install XP and have it run pretty fast!

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[DevNova]

OR

It's a combination of both. A company who started off by delivering what the market wanted and over time, found itself with agressive business models that took advantage of their position to further their market dominance.

Indeed, it was Windows that gave Microsoft the monopoly. It's very difficult to build a monopoly on applications, but designing a GUI for a prevalent OS where its success is more or less dependent on being universally adopted? Yeah, you're going to take some pretty ballsy steps to ensure that happens.

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[Opportunist]

Don't get your hopes up.

Whether it works or not, whether it's more stable or not, no manager will jump into that cold pond. Let's look at a manager's brains (bring your microscope, kids!) and see how it ticks.

The manager will ponder what course to take. Should he buy Vista and accept the lock-in, or should he go Linux with Wine, take the road of liberty? This, dear reader, matters little to him. What matters to him is, that his superiors will never ever fire him for buying Vista. Because it's the tried way, and if it doesn't work out, hell, how should he have known? If he buys Linux and Wine, even the slightest problem that may occasionally occur will make his comfy chair shake, because he left the tried and true way of upgrading and decided that some unproven methodes are better.

Now, which path will our manager take?

Re:ZOMG

[markjo]

Microsoft is adjusting prices to meet lack of demand? Every sane business does this.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Profit??

[westlake]

At $751 for the only version worth a damn, it's no wonder Vista isn't selling.

The Geek quotes retail list, for the ultimate boxed set, in whatever currency makes the numbers look most dramatic. Everyone else buys the OEM install, the academic version, etc.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Go punch your parents in the face for raising an idiot.

Re:Profit??

[baadger]

$751? You can get a retail version of Vista Ultimate on NewEgg for $380 [newegg.com]. Besides, you'd have to be a complete moron to buy the retail version when for the majority of people there are likely to be essentially three scenarios:

1) You're buying entirely new hardware and moving to Vista. Get an OEM version at $199 [newegg.com]
2) You're just upgrading the OS from XP with perhaps a memory and/or GPU upgrade to boot. Get an upgrade version at $250 [newegg.com]
3) You are buying an OEM PC in which case you'll pay the Vistatax, paying no more than you would have for XP.

So yes, Vista is expensive, but quit spreading fudd.

Re:Hmm

[Goaway]

Actually Linux users are just as forced to upgrade, if not more so, than Windows users. Linux distros tend to go out of support far quicker than Windows versions.

I think

[Sycraft-fu]

It's a hardware bug, driver bug, or something like it. I'm not saying people haven't had the problem, but I sure haven't seen it on our Vista systems at work. I've copied a ton of data too, shuffling around VMs and such. No appreciable speed difference between Vista and XP that I can see. Well when a problem happens for some people, but not for me, that tells me that it isn't something universally broken in the OS, but rather in their setup.

Re:Nuts pricing

[Phisbut]

I think one of Microsoft's big problems has they have overpriced the boxed versions of Vista. It is a crazy state of affairs when my local computer shop is selling complete PCs cheaper than the boxed versions of Vista.

But then, isn't that Bill Gates' vision of the future? Hardware will be free [wired.com] and people will only pay for software.

Re:Ignoring History

[painQuin]

hey, I hated Microsoft and DOS all the way back when it didn't support any of the fun things you could do in a posix style shell, like pipes and redirects and scrolling through your history, or (gasp!) color!

I also hated them when their telnet app repeatedly failed to meet the standards of every other telnet app out there

this is no fad. this is a deep seated hatred.

Re:What the hell?

[ozmanjusri]

This article is major FUD and bullshit.

Recommended Retail Pricing (RRP) is as follows:

Vista SKUs Recommended Retail Price (AU)
Windows Vista Home Basic $385
Windows Vista Home Basic Upgrade $199
Window Vista Home Premium $455
Window Vista Home Premium Upgrade Academic $179
Window Vista Home Premium Upgrade $299
Windows Vista Ultimate $751
Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade $495
Windows Vista Business $565
Windows Vista Business Upgrade $379

Ain't it great to have a monopoly?

Re:The curse of Vista...

[Krinsath]

It's quite true that most users and small businesses don't upgrade until they buy a new machine, and that is by far the wisest course of action when dealing with any new OS is to put it on the best you can give it. However, to put an OS out that only works well on a new computer is a very short-sighted strategy. We always spec our machines much higher than they need to be because we never know just how long a given box will be in service. Even the machines we were buying in 2001 would miss the current Vista requirements by 67Mhz on the processor and 512MB of RAM, which overall would be a minimal cost to upgrade if those machines were even still in service. However, the problem for most enterprises is the amount of that hardware that is being consumed (for little justifiable reason) by something with an intended purpose of being a facilitator between applications and hardware. If applications perform noticeably slower, there must be a reason to accept the lower user productivity and, to date, Vista has yet to provide that reason. That's not to say a reason does not or will not exist, just that it has yet to be uncovered to date in my own personal experiences.

Each previous Windows OS upped the requirements by a small, fairly acceptable degree. Windows 95 to Windows 98 was a small change, 98 to Me/2k hardly bigger and even the jump from 2k to XP wasn't that massive. To triple the requirements, even for an OS that was delayed as long as Vista was and accounting that technology changes much more in a six year span than a three year...it begs the question of "why?"

Does every modern Linux distribution share this jump? Does OS X have this requirements jump? Why does Vista bring with it such drastically higher hardware requirements for something that doesn't directly contribute to my computer being useful to me? Remember, the OS allows my applications to be useful, and hence it is indirectly useful to me. To have it consume that many resources when it's predecessors did not is what is causing people to take a very hard look at Vista and prompting people to ask why their hardware is being diverted to do things that have nothing to do with what they want to be doing. As MS discovered with DirectX, the best things Windows can do is get the hell out of the way. Really it feels a bit unfair to single out MS there because every OS could do well to learn that once the user has decided an application to run the OS should become largely transparent (much like a good waiter that leaves you to enjoy your meal, not one that interrupts you every five seconds asking if everything is ok)...but MS has clearly learned the lesson once and didn't retain it.

Re:Hmm

[everphilski]

Well, forced because Microsoft will end support for their previous versions

and like I'm getting support from the Linux community on kernel 1.0 ...

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Before you go overboard with your conspiracy theory, consider this:

This is Slashdot. Home to the world's IT experts, with access to the world's computers. IT experts that work for big businesses, and are responsible for hundreds (if not thousands) of potential Vista licences. They realise that there is no good reason to introduce delay (intentionally or unintentionally), especially when used in a business context, and the business would be paying a couple of hundred dollars per computer to upgrade. Such a move would be sheer stupidity, and Microsoft is not stupid (I gotta give them credit for that, at least). If, perhaps, you could have demonstrated that it only affected home editions of Vista, I might have believed that, but as it stands, it just seems an unfortunate symptom of some other problem.

irrelevant, forced OEM preloads = $$ gravy train

[Locutus]

financially, this means nothing to Microsoft and the press given to this is worth more than anything. OEM pre-installations of ANY version of Microsoft Windows is what continues Microsofts massive profit gravy train. The fact that OEMs are forced to put MS Windows Vista on most, if not all, shipped units is all that matters and any discussions(press, PR, etc) otherwise is just a peripheral expense to make it seem like it really matters. It took over 2 years before businesses 'accepted' MS Windows XP even though there was a huge hardware upgrade expense and the EULA changes gave Microsoft 'legal' rights to extract information from every MS Windows XP system.

So it is a waste of time/effort discussing if MS Windows Vista will fail or not and if there's any financial impact on MSFT as a result. They will keep extracting profits from OEMs for Windows Vista immediately and for Windows XP for the next few years. Only when OEMs and/or businesses start pre-installing Mozilla products and/or OpenOffice can there be any worthwhile discussions of Microsoft Windows productlines. IMO. Nothing else effects the monopoly control and gravy train as much.

LoB
   

Re:What's the benefit?

[Arterion]

I don't think that's quite fair. The RIAA, MPAA, etc., are in the business of litigation, and seek to win in court. That's about all they care about. Everyone already hates them, but it doesn't matter because the law works whether you like it or not.

With Microsoft, they're about sales. So they're going to do whatever they can to get sales. Making a product people want to buy is close to the top of the list of how to get sales. Granted, Microsoft is a monopolist, so it's by far not their only strategy, or perhaps not even their main strategy. It's still an important part of their business model, though. I think Vista is going to be a stumble for them, unless the upcoming service pack changes the OS in a significant way (like SP2 for XP). Either they'll fix a lot of the problems people have with it, or they'll quickly develop the next windows, and Vista will turn into an ME. I do hope the misstep gives other OS's an opportunity to increase market share.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[tftp]

In addition to that, XP could be set up to be indistinguishable from Win2K in practically all aspects, and it ran all Win2K software, and it contained some usable improvements (ClearType, more USB goodies, built-in firewall eventually, and some more.) Win2K drivers worked on XP, and there was no need to upgrade the hardware. There were only two versions of XP, clearly marked "for home" and "for work", easy to understand, and they left no room for a doubt. So there was a good reason to buy XP instead of Win2K if you were buying one of them anyway; but there was less of a reason to upgrade - and many people delayed upgrading for years.

Vista however is different from previous Windows OSes, runs fewer applications, has tons of broken drivers, has performance issues and requires hardware upgrades, and has new features that nobody asked for. XP does the same job faster, better and requires no retraining. There are so many versions, with different feature sets and prices, it creates a Buridan's donkey problem (a customer would rather buy nothing than to decide on what to buy.) Assuming that DirectX 10 is backported to XP (as it seems to be), the first and last theoretically valid reason for moving to Vista is gone.

Re:Nuts pricing

[blankaBrew]

The ram doesn't come with photoshop.... the pc does come with windows. You're talking apple's and oranges. There is a correlation between windows box pricing the cost of a pc with that same version of windows. The correlation is M$' OEM pricing which is significantly lower than the retail pricing only because of hardware. There's your correlation.

Re:Hmm

[u38cg]

Well, the 2.0 branch released 2.0.40 in 2004, well after 2.6 came out. The 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4 branches all have active maintainers. Given that 2.0 was released in June of '96, I'd say we don't compare too badly to the evil empire.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[Jester@TheHouse]

No no, someone at microsoft must be a big star trek dork and believes in that every other release for the average consumer needs to be bad....

3.1 = just had to be there
TMP = Just had to be there

95 = good
Wrath of Khan = New Direction

98 = bad
Search for Spock = Needed to be there for the setup

98SE = good
The Voyage Home = There for comic relief??

ME = bad
The Final Frontier = Oh dear lord was this bad

XP = good
The Undiscovered Country = The one of the best of the old actors/code.

Vista = bad
Generations = Had to be there to drag us kicking and screaming to into something new?

The Parallels are a tad scary in my point of view.

Re:Hmm

[Em Ellel]

and like I'm getting support from the Linux community on kernel 1.0 ...

You CAN in fact get support for 1.0 kernel. The source is out there and if sufficiently motivated, ANYONE can make a patch and get something fixed even if Linus/RedHat/Novell/etc could care less. This is simply NOT the case with closed source like M$, where they basically have you by the short ones. Example, Windows Defender software recently claimed they no longer support Win2k. They said, if you want to use it you MUST upgrade to XP. A closer examination shows that they only reason this is the case is because they added a rule in the installer that says if OS is less than XP, do not install. Without the rule the software works great on Win2K but MS does not want you to use Win2k. Meanwhile the latest automatic upgrade to Defender definition causes all existing Win2K Defender clients to crash - forcing you to have to download latest version, which is XP only. So suddenly you are FORCED (there's that word) to upgrade to XP if you want Defender (no, whether you actually want it is a whole other story).

Now, I do believe MS has full *right* to do this, but just because you CAN be an asshole, does not mean you SHOULD be an asshole and does not mean people have to like it. It just goes to demonstrate the value of open source over closed.

-Em

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Anonymous Coward]

>>So many that Occam's Razor basically says that it's more likely that Vista is very hard to develop drivers for, which ultimately is the fault of the OS.

So it is Linux's fault for the shortage of Linux drivers. It's just too damn hard over these 10 years or so to come up with good drivers.

Microsoft has blundered badly

[fyngyrz]

With Microsoft, they're about sales. So they're going to do whatever they can to get sales.

Well then, they shouldn't have DRM'd their operating system with "activation"; they shouldn't have broken all those applications; they shouldn't have bought into consumer-unfriendly technologies, particularly in the area of media but also in hardware; they shouldn't have forbidden any of Vista's versions to run under virtualization; they shouldn't have made using Vista a nightmare of clicking away security popups; they shouldn't have insisted on proprietary, insecure solutions like ActiveX; they definitely shouldn't charge for development tools; and of course, the predatory business practices don't make them any friends, either.

Me, I jumped ship and I'm not looking back. XP's activation DRM was the last straw.

Re:Nuts pricing

[Phisbut]

Gates is right. Sooner or later HW consolidation will be that the CPU will run everything and have everything. Just see the world of microcontrollers. You've got your entire bus, memory, peripherals right on the chip. It is just a matter if time before Intel or AMD start to ship a CPU with
* CPU
* RAM
* all of south bridge.
[...]
I'll give this 10-20 years, but it will be the reality.

Yeah, so? You expect Intel or AMD to give you such a chip for (almost) free? That's what Gates is saying.

Re:What's the benefit?

[imemyself]

To an extent that might possibly be true, however, unlike Vista, Office '07 actually has some useful features that companies would benefit from. As far as the OS itself goes - XP is more than enough for most companies. And most of the problems that Vista addresses can already be solved with Windows XP, just by using some 3rd party software or chaning some configuration things. Meeting Space is interesting, but most companies aren't going to be switching to IPv6 anytime soon, and if you're close enough in location to be on the same subnet, then why not just actually meet in person? Office 2007's features aren't necessarily "must-have" but there are some things that are pretty cool, and do make it easier to create sharp-looking documents and presentations. (For example, Powerpoint 2007 has themes that actually look professional and well designed, graphically speaking, unlike previous versions. Charts in Excel look a lot better, and many of the themes can be used throughout the core Office applications.) Vista on the other hand is useless for businesses, and doesn't offer much for consumers either. Aero Glass is slick, but it isn't going to help business at all, and it'll get old after a few days.