China Prefers Sticking With Dying Windows XP To Upgrading 333
tdog17 writes "China says it wants Microsoft to extend support for Windows XP because that will help in its fight to stop proliferation of pirated Microsoft software. A state copyright official says the release of Windows 8 means a substantial increase in the selling price of a Windows operating system, especially in light of the upcoming end-of-life of Windows XP, which is still used by a large percentage of Chinese. That could drive users to buy pirated copies of a new operating system because they are cheaper, he says."
Re:Errr ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Indirectly. It's the one with the lowest additional value to its user.
Re:Here in China... (Score:5, Insightful)
I gather RFL is largely a bargining ploy with which to negotiate better prices from Microsoft. MS would ideally like people to pay for windows, but failing that they would still rather see pirate windows than linux dominate.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
New model mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
Code Audits And Custom Patches. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If you can read Chinese you pay twice in China (Score:5, Insightful)
I found I could not change the language from Chinese. Some research showed I was expected to pay for an upgrade to get Windows, that I paid for, to actual be usable. Microsoft really don't promote legal use of their products with such attitudes!
I don't quite understand, you were surprised by this? You were in China and bought a netbook locally, of course it's going to be the Chinese version of Windows. I understand the interfaces used on many Linux distros come with support for a large number of languages out of the box, but Windows comes in different versions for different languages and the ability to change the entire operating system to a different language is a feature you have to buy. It's always been that way and I'm not sure if that even changed in Windows 8. I'm sure part of this is to recoup the development costs with translating and localizing the OS.
The reason is not the recoup the development costs - the reason is Price Discrimination [wikipedia.org]: The ability to charge a different price in different markets. The optimal price for Windows in the US is much different than the optimal price for Windows in China - and if you can charge different prices here, Microsoft will make more money. Restricting language change is one mechanism to avoid Americans paying Chinese prices.
Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)
For someone that already has XP, the cost has already been paid and there is no future cost. If you try to force such a user to upgrade they will quite understandably object. Very few people who are being coerced feel a loyalty to the person (or company) that is coercing them and would rather go down the market and get a copy...
production and development cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Ferrari cars cost just as much to develop as your average ford. However, the number of cars being sold, will make the development cost per car much higher. Add much higher production cost because of materials used, fabrication methods used, number of actions to produce a certain part and yield to the equation. Even if Ferrari would make a bold move and decide to sell their cars at the same price as Ford, they would still have to buy more expensive materials and do more to those materials before they are a car.
MicroSoft may have put more money in developing Win7 initially than they did in XP, I wouldn't know if that's the case. The real thing is that the production cost per copy is negligible; they just turn a knob and come up with a sales price based on a marketing model.
The home PC market is crashing since most people don't need a PC anymore to watch movies, communicate with their family or play games. The introduction of the computer in the home has moved from the single device to smart phones, tablets, media players and game consoles. People hardly need a "real" computer anymore and the budget for one has moved on to other devices. School going kids and students may need one to do school work on and learn, but the requirements for that sort of machine aren't that exciting usually and an older model or really cheap new hardware will do just fine.
Offices don't really need PCs to do more than office work. To be honest, typing a letter or stuffing things in a spreadsheet hasn't changed much over the past ten years or so. Offices tend to move towards VDI where the machine the user has is only an input/output device and the "desktop" is actually running on a server, often not using a desktop OS in a VM, but simply a session on a server OS.
MicroSoft is losing their monopoly in office suit software, server software, e-mail platforms and such. Several attempts to get new markets like search engines, media and music players, have failed to yield any profit and are costing them money. Depending on how you look at it, their game console business is a success, but the net profit they got from it is either not fantastic, or they are still in the red and it's not a commercial success at all. They have a large part of the market, but it's still not clear how much they have spent to get that and if they actually have recovered that money. The desktop PC market is shrinking rapidly and they need some way to keep all those developers paid and shareholders happy.
With the current stock price and results they had in the past, shareholders have very high demands. This makes that they are turning the knob for the Windows7 and 8 desktop OS prices way up. This makes people either pirate it, or buy a PC that comes loaded with crapware to sponsor the price of the OS, or they move to another OS because they are tired of the whole windows clutter and viruses.
In China, crapware sponsorship is worth next to nothing because piracy is much more prevalent there and sponsors expect very little return on the installations. That makes the OS very expensive to put on legally for vendors or end users, resulting in even more piracy.
China has the power to convince MicroSoft to extend XP life and even sell it for a lower fee. If the Chinese government would decide to move to Linux as the OS for all official government desktops, home users will follow that sooner or later, especially if it was free and there would be less malware. It wouldn't be easy or cheap to do so for China, but this XP retirement is an event where they have a clear cost/benefit model that has a pivot point that is an actual threat to MicroSoft. If China would migrate to Linux, it'd give a much bigger threat to MicroSoft than a few German cities doing it. Even the cities migrations have already resulted in quite a few enhancements that make Linux a more viable desktop alternative. Once China puts their weight in, the reasons that keep linux away from the corporate desktop will disappear rapidly. Given the recent revelations
Re:New model mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait until you see Windows server 2012. Every single sysadmin said "What the Fuck??!!!" the first time he logged onto the server.
Seriously, how hard can it be to keep the Windos NT interface alongside the new one? Why keep pushing for the new GUI when most of the veterans hates to learn a new GUI?
Re:Why (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a common mistake to assume that an old machine has already been paid: the cost of maintenance tends to grow with time, while the value of the machine drops. There's usually a very definite point after which it is not worth maintaining an old machine, but usually by that time you have spent more money in unnecessary maintenance than you would have spent in upgrading the system when it was the right time.
The same cost exists for software, although because of it's virtual nature, the cost of maintenance grows more because of obsolescence or lack of support, rather than repairs or replacement parts.
Re:ReactOS (Score:4, Insightful)
Ancient Chinese Secret (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is running out of milk cows (Score:3, Insightful)
In contrast, my Logitech G500 wired mouse worked so well, when it started acting up I bought another one.
So...you're comparing a wired mouse to a wireless one that only failed when the batteries ran out?
How was the wireless one when the batteries were OK? Maybe the lesson should have been "avoid wireless", not "avoid Microsoft".
Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you can't use your pirated copy of Office / Visio / Autodesk whatever.
That's the real issue.
Re:production and development cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually people who just write MicroSoft instead of Micro$oft (or M$) are just showing their age. For the first few years of the company's existence it was Micro-Soft, and most people dropped the dash for MicroSoft. Everyone-hates-dashes...
It's not CHILDish, it's OLDish.
Save your rage for the "M$" people...
Re:New model mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
I did the same, installed Server 2012 on a new server, said WTF? Tried to run with it, had no luck with Hyper-V on 2012. Reformatted with Server 2008 R2, never looked back.
They have really got to dump that shitty Windows 8 interface on professional hardware. Ain't nobody got time for that...
Now Windows 8.1 on my laptop, it makes sense and I'm happy with it. But on a server? Give me a frikken break...
Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)
In many organizations, once you've paid for the device it's free. You have a few guys running around doing a reinstall when the hard drive dies or whatever, but they'll be doing that sort of thing anyway, and they're paid anyway. I don't agree that they magically get more expensive as time goes on. It's not like they are cars which require expensive repairs all the time. At some point a PC will cost more than it's worth to repair, but that's the point you chuck it and get a new one, and even then you can harvest parts as spares. That's why so many companies (and individuals) have XP machines (and why they'll be on Windows 7 in ten years time). It's a crazy waste of money to upgrade when for most people there is no advantage whatsoever.
Am I understanding this correctly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is running out of milk cows (Score:4, Insightful)