Microsoft Discloses Windows 7 Pricing 821
It's the tripnaut! writes "Information Week has posted prices for Windows 7. From the article: 'The full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is priced at $199, with an upgrade from Vista or XP costing $119. The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, with upgrades going for $199. Windows 7 Ultimate is priced at $319, with the upgrade version at $219.' In a nod to the global economic downturn, it is interesting to note that prices are 10% lower than Vista."
Ultimate Rip-Off (Score:5, Interesting)
I ended up getting Vista Ultimate.
Never saw ANY of the benefits/Ultimate Content that was promised.
The upgrade from Vista Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate should be free.
That will teach me for buying a boxed, non-OEM version of Windows I guess.
Time will tell. (Score:3, Interesting)
More importantly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:How.... (Score:5, Interesting)
MS should give the crippled version away free. The one that runs only 3 apps. Then there would be no getting your money back when you purchase a computer. It would also compete with the price of Linux and BSD. Then drop your tiered pricing by a lot. Home basic at $30, Home premium $50, Professional $150 and Ultimate at $175.
I bet a lot more people would "purchase" their OS if they structured it like that. I also think it would help in the level of illegal copies.
How did MS win in the web browser market? They made it free and included it in their OS.
Why not give away the lowest level of your OS for free to retain your market share?
That makes better sense to me at least.
Regards, Ben
Re:Time will tell. (Score:4, Interesting)
When Win 7RC came out I decided to give it a shot and quite frankly, I'm hooked.....
It's a damn fine OS for a average to power user. If you're still running XP this is a upgrade to consider. If you're running Vista.. hmm, might aswell wait until pricing dropped a bit.
But.. this is the first time I'm actually considering to buy Windows.
It runs smooth, behaves as one would expect from a OS.. In the end Win7 might end up as their best OS till now.
IMO... (Score:2, Interesting)
System Utilities should never cost more than $40.
Games should never cost more than $50.
Productivity apps can cost whatever, based on the size of their target market.
Re:Does anyone actually buy windows? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a legit copy.
I store my business details and do internet banking from my PC. Why would I be dense enough to trust a copy downloaded from thepiratebay?
Theres no need to write trojans that bypass windows security and firewalls when there are people happy to actually get hold of a malware-infested O/S from day one.
Re:The answer is... (Score:4, Interesting)
What exactly do I get? (Score:2, Interesting)
What exactly do I get for my hard-earned $199 or $119?
-A glorified file manager?
-Shiny new icons?
-a DRM crippled media player, that can only play "approved" formats
-Buggy drivers
-A "free" web browser, full of security holes
-Wordpad, Solitaire, Reversi?
-"Promised" compatibility with old software
-A crippled email application
-A crippled media recorder/editor
So lets see, I basically get a glorified file manager, and at worst case, need to repurchase new versions of most of the critical applications, unless I do so, my system is mostly useless, unless I'm satisfied with web broswing and typing in wordpad.
Sorry, not worth it. I'd rather pay/donate to slackware/ubuntu and get a DVD that contains USEFUL software.
Re:Ultimate Rip-Off (Score:2, Interesting)
Thats the exact point I was making - I knew about the Encryption, the DVD Codecs and the Domain features, it was the Extras that were promised and never delivered - and I knew where to get them.
The final Ultimate Extra should be an upgrade to Win7
What I really want to know ... (Score:3, Interesting)
is how much will it be as an "OEM" version from the likes of Newegg when I purchase it with a HD? Because anyone paying Brick and Mortor retail pricing is just paying an ignorance-tax.
Re:Does anyone actually buy windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that everyone I know has a pirated copy of windows: the few people people that have legal copies have them because they were bundled with the computer they bought. When was the last time someone actually went out specifically to bought a copy?
Your average "Joe Sixpack" home user will probably be running a pirated copy of Windows. Their computer may have come with a legal OEM license once upon a time... But they probably lost the discs somewhere along the way, and their OEM key probably didn't work with the discs their buddy found when they had to reload their computer to get rid of the viruses, so they wound up with a cracked copy of Windows. And then they heard about the shiny new Vista thing and their buddy hooked them up with a cracked copy of that, too.
Mot IT-ish folks I know have legal copies - frequently acquired using some kind of student discount or corporate volume licensing program. They aren't paying retail, but frequently don't trust the cracked copies available.
Most of the gamer folks I know have legal copies, but they're usually buying the OS with a pile of new hardware and get some kind of OEM version, so they aren't paying retail.
The big businesses will be on some kind of software maintenance plan with Microsoft. They'll be able to download and install whatever flavor of Windows they feel like. So they won't be paying retail.
The folks who typically wind up paying retail prices, from what I've seen, are the small/medium sized businesses. They don't want to run a cracked copy of Windows for fear of being audited... But they don't need enough licenses to make volume licensing or maintenance plans affordable... So they wind up buying a pile of retail boxes. And it can be expensive. Sometimes it is actually cheaper just to replace their computers entirely, and get the new version of Windows pre-installed on the machine.
Do not hate me. (Score:5, Interesting)
Stability is at least on par with XP (have not had to restart since I finished driver installs). Annoying messages have been minimal - they only appear when I am doing something that should require administrator credentials, such as installing a new application or driver.
Performance... I have no concrete figures but this also seems on par with XP.
The only down-side has been the installation time (hours, even on my beast) and the size of the OS(how DO you fit 20GB of data on a 3GB DVD anyways????).
So, the reason I want Windows 7 is so I can use all of my system's memory without a ramdisk/virtual memory hack and 64-bit support. There is really no other reason to upgrade because everything else seems on par with XP.
buy Naked (Score:4, Interesting)
So how much does it cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have purchased only one copy of Windows(tm) in the last years; XP Professional(tm), and I paid almost $300 for it (all in, after taxes). Yes, I know I was taken for a fool, more on this later.
Now, I know that OEMs can't possibly be paying anything CLOSE to that, because I can buy a computer now WITH Windows and pay just a bit more than that.
So, I was led to believe that as a single consumer, I was being ripped off, and the only way to get a reasonable price for Windows was with a new computer. Simple, right?
Wrong. My wife works as a middle-school teach in the TDSB (Toronto District School Board). They have, what, 40,000 (more?) employees. My wife just got an offer - buy Windows Vista(tm) (Business?) for $21, and Office(tm) for $21. As far as I can tell (from the literature), there don't seem to any resale restrictions. And no "OEM" restrictions. The literature also mentions that the retail price for Office is north of $600.
How much DO Windows and Office cost? Since only idiots would buy retail Windows or Office (yes, I used to be in that category), the only reason to have ANY "suggested retail price" is to attempt to establish some sort of valuation.
"It's expensive, it MUST be good",
but no-one actually pays that price
"but I got a GREAT deal on the software!".
And now the suggested retail pricing pops up here, just to help spread the meme.
Of course, it is possible that the purchase was subsidized by the TDSB, in which case I will be very upset. The TDSB just ok'd the use of OpenOffice, and thus should have no need to spend the money.
Re:The answer is... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't trust an OS from a torrent aggregator unless I have some way to check its veracity (i.e.: Ubuntu posts md5's of its ISOs, but you won't find one for an iffy torrent.
This doesn't matter much anyways, since most corporate environments are on a volume license, and most home users will get Win7 preinstalled. It really only matters to geeks like us.
Re:XP = Vista for upgrade pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
64-bit execution that works. XP-x64 has poor application compatibility compared with Vista-x64 and Win7-x64.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
But in reality, I buy an OEM copy of Windows Ultimate Whatever from Newegg for $129. I don't have to deal with the utterly retarded upgrade process every time I have to nuke & pave, and I've got an ugly little sticker to refer to when nuke & pave time rolls around.
You're assuming I give two shits about honoring the finer points of Microsoft's licensing, which I don't. Is MS going to come after me? Are they going to deactivate my Windows randomly? They deactivate retail copies randomly.
To be honest, It's more convenient for me to get a legit serial number that doesn't self-destruct than to deal with suspect WGA patches & cracks that work like an arms race and require constant vigilance.
As long as you don't reinstall more often than quarterly, activation goes through without the need for a dreaded phone call. In the case that it fails, I make the phone call and say (and I quote): "I had to replace the motherboard" and get an activation key in about five minutes. If you do this once a week, the phone drones sound vaguely annoyed with you, but you still end up with the number.
So, really, what's the downside here (apart from paying for it at all)? I'm curious.
Re:The answer is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Dropping the price may well increase the number of copies sold, but Microsoft doesn't directly care about that metric. It's all about the bottom line.
If you sell 100 copies at $300, you have $30,000 total, and 100 users to support.
If you sell 1000 copies at $30, you still have $30,000, but now you must support 1000 users.
The lower volume at a higher price is thus more profitable due to reduced support/maintenance costs. There is also the argument to be said that people who pirate Windows are likely to pirate it regardless of price, because there is little if any incentive to go legit.
Re:The answer is... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think Snow Leopard really has all that much over Leopard either. I think 2009 will be the year of almost meaningless OS updates.
(I boggle why I was marked as troll. I'm serious, people were pretty dissatisfied with Vista)
Re:The answer is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Or did you want the MD5 for checking that the torrent downloaded properly? Bittorrent does that itself.
No mention of a family pack license (Score:4, Interesting)
Why Pay So Much For Language Support? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Competitive pricing? Doesn't matter... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is why someone needs to start one of those anti-trust lawsuits Microsoft loves so much. How can any marketplace be competitive when an expensive product is sold cheaper than a free product. Really, the only way to stop Windows marketshare is to ensure that when you buy a Dell, you have to pay the retail price (ok, or a discounted price - but you have to pay extra) for the OS too.
If Dell had to be more transparent in its pricing, you might have the situation where you bought the hardware for X, the software for Y and a Dell-engineer installation (ie the disk duplication step) fee of Z. For Windows Y might be $100 and the installation $10, and Linux Y might be $0 but Z $200, but you'd see those prices and could decide to buy just the hardware and install your own OS. With the current situation, you just see that Windows is the cheapest option, which would be impossible in any other non-monopoly-based industry.
Re:Do not hate me. (Score:1, Interesting)
have you noticed winsxs lately? I can't say that I agree with why it is there, but space is cheap these days anyways, so I don't care how much windows uses.
Re:The answer is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. I've always said that Vista was the Windows ME of XP. In other words Vista is to XP that Me was to 98: a poor stop-gap solution until the actual successor came out (XP for 98, and 7 for XP).
Re:The answer is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well at least the OS X 'service packs' always seem to add stuff that makes using your hardware faster and easier, as in: desirable upgrades to the system. Windows service packs (even SP2) normally only plug holes, add all kinds of new security layers to plug other holes and basic updates to the driver database and library API's. I really appreciated XP SP2 for example, but you can hardly say it added anything to actually improve my experience working with it. Vista actually degraded it in many ways, and 7 doesn't appear to be particularly impressive in terms of advancing the platform.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
If I was in your shoes I wouldn't be pushing Linux either, but whenever I see the MSI FUD I feel I have to comment.
I am not one bit surprised that MSI got much higher returns on the Linux version of the netbook as they sourced hardware that wasn't 100% Linux compatible and then shoehorned a SuSE install where several of the devices that were compatible weren't configured correctly. In short, they actually tried to sell a completely broken Linux install, and then had the audacity to blame the returns on Linux.
I'm sure their goal was to meet a certain price point and they simply assumed that people would install their own copy of Windows. If that was the case they should have shipped the box with FreeDOS and left Linux out of it.
Dell, who has done a much better job bundling Linux on its netbooks, has a very different story to tell about returns [laptopmag.com].
Re:The answer is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea. Microsoft doesn't sell pricey computers, so they have to find other ways to gouge us.