Dell Indicates Windows 7 Pricing Will Be Higher 485
ausekilis sends us word that a Dell spokesman said, without giving numbers, that Windows 7 pricing will be higher than Vista's or XP's. "Windows 7 pricing is potentially an obstacle to Windows 7 adoption for some users, though in just about every other aspect the operating system is beating Vista, according to a Dell marketing executive. ... [Darrell] Ward continued, 'In tough economic times, I think it's naive to believe that you can increase your prices on average and then still see a stronger swell than if you held prices flat or even lowered them. I can tell you that the licensing tiers at retail are more expensive than they were for Vista. ... Schools and government agencies may not be able to afford (the additional cost). Some of the smaller businesses may not be able to enjoy the software as soon as they'd like,' Ward said.'"
Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we might be talking about "2009: The Year of the Recession and Linux on the Desktop."
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Perhaps Linux PCs should also come with preinstalled advertising to help reduce the price? Let's see: FREE OS minus $200 == a really cheap computer. (Maybe even a free computer)
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe 10 years ago or so there was a project that was called FreePC that would basically give you a fairly decent machine, in exchange for you letting them monitor your surfing habits and always display ads to you.
It didn't work.
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To turn it into a productive tool, you need to spend several hundred more dollars
Really? You got robbed, then. I paid nothing for Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Paint.net, VLC, Pidgin, DVDStyler, etc.
Be careful of what you wish for (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the Linux community doesn't really want the hoi polloi using Linux.
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Nonsense. One of the advantages of buying pre-installed OSes is that the OEM has done customizations and additional system testing with all the hardware configurations they are selling. Dell also sets up DVD playback and covers the license, which is one more thing that will "just work" when you buy from them. They do the same for Windows, but as a percentage of sales, it will cost more to offer a second OS, regardless of what it is.
That said, I do look forward to more people getting their distributions this
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Informative)
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The difference is you can attach a large volume behind the windows purchase, while you can't attach that volume to the linux purchase. The question they ask themselves is will it pay out?
If they want to sell lucrative support contracts with every purchase, they want to make sure they can make money on them ;)
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, as far as imaging goes, it's very different. Linux is notoriously finicky when it comes to hardware, windows has always been more forgiving, and even Vista at release had fewer hardware issues than Linux has always been stuck with.
MS also has a number of free tools - the most basic and essential being sysprep which finds and installs all drivers on boot and resets SIDs among other things - to make mass imaging deployments really worthwhile starting around windows 2000, and starting with Vista it is so easy to create images that work on a huge variety of hardware it's almost rediculous. I know of no Linux equivalent, and that's a bigger issue than you may realize.
MS even got rid of the standard windows setup procedure in Vista and moved even non-oem OS installs (i.e. from disc) to the imaging model. If you look on a Vista install DVD you'll see a number of .wim files and a .iso or two. Properly configured, WinPE (comes with Vista) + ImageX (free download, comes with Vista) + Sysprep (not sure if it actually comes with Vista officially, but with ImageX you can dig around in the Vista wim file and copy it out of there, or you can download it from MS for free) all add up to an image that works on virtually any hardware.
My company uses just one image for at least 50,000 pc's, maybe more, about 10 different manufacturers and about 20 models apiece. So, yeah. It's harder to set up in Vista, but it is doable. I can't wait till Windows7 gets cleared for my environment so I can start playing with the server side tools, since Vista will never be approved and the server tools don't work for making XP images (they work for deployment though).
This also may be a reason for the reluctance to push Linux. If there aren't effective tools for mass-imaging both OEM and enterprise level deployments for Linux it could easilly add significant costs to the sale of Linux PCs. Theoretically you could use MS imaging tools (which, gotta say again, are awesome, Ghost aint shit no more), but you can't use sysprep, which is the bread and butter of OEM windows installs. I don't know what a linux equivalent would be, and without it you are limited to one image per each individual hardware configuration. You may be able to script some of it, but eventually you are just installing a straight up Linux install. The cost savings in time and manpower of the image deployment model vs the scripted install model is really, very significant. We are talking a machine is ready to package and ship in 5-10 minutes verses 30 minutes or an hour or even more depending on what had to be done to the install. That's huge.
If you try to go with imagine for Linux without a mass deployment tool to save time (and therefore money), you are talking hundreds of images to deploy Linux vs just one for Windows. I guess you'd have to be rolling your own mass produced images (like I do, heh) to understand how much manpower that is going to add to the sale of a Linux PC. Just trust me that it is significant. That $200 gap really starts to dwindle if you have image deployment inefficiencies. Coupled with crapware savings, and it could easilly be a wash or worse for Linux.
This is actually the first time I've thought about the whole problem like that, and I think I finally get why you don't see massive savings for linux PCs except in situations where the hardware pool is small and constant (i.e. OLPC, initial EEEPC, etc).
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? That's not been my experience. Nor, might I add, has it been the experience of most of the people who've experimented with Linux by booting from Live CDs. They Just Work, well over 90% of the time. They may not have the fancy drivers needed to get the optimal performance out of some of the video cards, but they work well enough to get you going until (and unless) you decide to install it.
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I remember that my cousin used to say that linux was finicky when it came to hardware. The problem was that the hard drive had a bunch of bad sectors, which showed up on the console, and in syslog. Since Windows never reported any problems, the problem turned from a bad hard drive, to a "finicky OS" in my cousin's mind.
It wasn't until months later when random problems would keep appearing, even after
fresh reinstalls, that the hardware was suspected as being the problem.
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If your experience is that an unattended install takes longer than 30 minutes, then you're doing something wrong. I do this as a part of my job, and a higly specialized unattended install based on Mandriva 2008.0 takes between 15-20 minutes, and that includes a whole bunch of in-house configuration and applications.
Getting down to ~10 minutes would be no problem if I just got rid of all that extra stuff - depending on
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Informative)
Huh? I've rarely if ever had a Linux install not boot, even on the most alien hardware from the initial install. In the old days, you could be sure that some devices might not work, but at least the thing would boot. Windows is horrible, and while by Server 2003, it had improved, disaster recovery to new hardware (including VMs) is still no mean feat. In the old days, when I was compiling my own kernels, I usually had two bootable ones; one with all the drivers and optimized settings I needed for any given install, and a basic kernel with IDE/ATA and common SCSI drivers, completely vanilla, that could boot pretty much flawlessly on anything from an Intel to a Via board. I never hard a hardware crash that caused me more than a few hours work with my Linux boxes, but I had some Windows 2000 Server installs that were absolute nightmares.
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:5, Informative)
The whole premise of your post seems off to me. Linux loads just about everything at runtime. You don't need a sysprep equivalent because it doesn't store the driver it's going to use. For example consider Window's weird USB support; I think this might be fixed in Vista, but I'm not 100% sure. Certainly with XP if you plug a USB storage device into a USB port, it'll load drivers and then present it to you. Remove it and plug the exact same thing into a different USB port... it'll load drivers and then present it to you. Plug it in to the same port and it's instantly available.
This goes to the core of driver support, even well into the "Plug and Play" era: Windows always associates drivers with particular hardware device addresses and has to store configuration information whenever that changes. No such issues on Linux. The closest you'd get is having to clean up the udev files which ensure particularly hardware gets assigned the same device name each boot (i.e. the various _persistent_ rulefiles).
The only other issue you might have is if the kernel is unable to boot on the hardware, though pretty much all distributions use large initrds which include drivers for virtually everything.
Once upon a time I rebuilt my PC, and decided to see if I could get away with not having to re-install Windows as the build was very similar. It did in fact work quite well. I had a dual boot system. Linux booted up as normal, just a bit faster because of the faster processor etc. Windows booted up okay, then futzed around saying it was installing drivers for my new hardware and needed a reboot or two before it was happy. It wasn't quite right though, as from thereafter it never shut down properly. It would shut down Windows, but wouldn't turn the power off or reboot. I guess the power management was slightly different with the new motherboard, and Windows had at some point installed something specific for the previous chipset. The Linux kernel just works out what needs to be done each time it's booted, and so it all worked perfectly fine.
At work I've upgraded a Linux server installed on an HP DL360 to a DL380 just by moving the drives to the new system. The only complication I would ever imagine facing is if the hardware RAID controller doesn't recognise the drives, but I didn't have that issue as they were similar-generation. I wouldn't even try that with a Windows install, because even if the hardware seems to be 100% identical Windows will still notice different device IDs and have a hissy fit. The only problem I encountered with the Linux install was that the network interfaces were assigned silly names because it was reserving eth0 and eth1 for the previous IDs; again, just nuking those persistent config files and rebooted sorted it out.
You do make a good point about kickbacks from pre-installing all the garbage you get with a big manufacturer PC. While they could do the same thing with Linux, I'd imagine most people opting for Linux at this stage would find that to be a complete deal-breaker. In addition, the fact that Windows and Linux are in many ways very different platforms does add complications -- they've had many many years to organise their deployment strategies and toolchains around Windows' peculiarities, and adapting to the peculiarities of any other system will obviously involve some cost.
I would also imagine that they make some amount of profit by including commercial software, in the same way a retail shop selling boxes of software makes a bit of profit. If everything you're including is free software, then it's harder to profit off of that -- the natural end-game would seem to be vendors competing purely on the basis of hardware costs, which I don't think any of them particularly want to do.
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My point was not about base windows installs, which OEMs haven't used in probably 10 years or more, it's about disk imaging, which OEMs do use. The two are worlds apart.
I know because building and installing images was my job for the last two years. Windows OS installs never have a problem if the drivers are available and accessable. If the drivers aren't available for Linux, well good luck. It's probably not going to be as simple as finding and downloading the drivers to fix the problem. However, that
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Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly you've never dealt with Windows on Dell systems. They have to customize that install and reinstalling results in pain most of the time.
For one, those Broadcom wired NICs and Intel wireless NICs so popular on the Optiplex and XPS M#### lines? Not plug 'n play. I used to have to keep a USB flash key with those drivers before I slipstreamed an OEM disc with those drivers.
And support? Well, I don't know about windows persay, but 99% of the hardware calls I make result in "load the diagnostic partition and read me back the error code." Anyway, they could just say 'No operating system support' if they really wanted to.
Now...what Dell would REALLY lose is the bundling. McAfee or Norton (whichever is their default) and whatever flavor of the month toolbar and Roxio and Sonic would be left in the dust and that would end up bringing up the price of the system.
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I have purely anecdotal evidence to the contrary (BTW your evidence is anecdotal as well :) )
I've seen people buy 50 computers at a time. Something works well with 9/10 out of a big box, but on 1 of them it is just completely screwed up. Using the restore disk fixes all the issues. I think it might be that QC has slipped at Dell, and for some reason, 1 out of
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Funny)
In Canada it's a purse, eh?
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Duh.
They're the same OS. 7 is just a minor update to Vista, of course it'll work.
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then we might be talking about "2009: The Year of the Recession and Linux on the Desktop."
Based on the last decade of Linux adoption, I think it's pretty clear that most desktop users are willing to pay a hundred bucks or two for Windows. I know that certainly am.
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:5, Funny)
Based on the last decade of Linux adoption, I think it's pretty clear that most desktop users are willing to run a search on The Pirate Bay for Windows.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Most desktop users?
I would guess that MOST desktop users haven't knowingly made the choice or are even aware that there is choice other than Windows. Some portion of computer buyers are aware of Apple computers and that they come with a different operating system.
Sure, some of the major manufacturers have occasionally offered a couple of models of computers with some variant of Linux available pre-installed, some even targeted for home and/or business end-users. But nobody (even today) has targeted a widespread ad compaign to even make people aware that there is such a thing as a 'Linux' choice (or Ubuntu or whatever).
Of all the computers destined for end-user use (either for business or home use), for non-techies (as in, the vast majority of people who use computers to do things, not do things to use computers), how many do you think can a) name an operating system at all (ie, Windows or MacOS), or b) name an OS other those two.
Simply put, I don't think you can say people have 'chosen' Windows over Linux, simply because they don't even know Linux exists.
And this is largely because of (IMHO) Microsoft's tactics in the 80's and 90's, that required computer manufacturers to either sell only computers with Microsoft operating systems or computers with non-Microsoft operating systems [or that you sell other operating systems, but the computer the customer got could only have the MS-operating system loaded (and paid for) and the customer had to erase it and install the other OS, etc].
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...assuming the particular OS doesn't matter - it often doesn't between these two
Discarding the OS difference is quite an assumption and not easily done. As someone who had to maintain mixed Mac/PC/SGI/Linux environments, including every random thing clients walked in with, it's pretty clear which machines work and which don't. A Windows laptop walks in and you're standing there trying to get them connected to Wi-Fi, figure out why their email doesn't work, why they can't print etc. You never hear about a Mac laptop walking in because they just set up and start working. All of these pe
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Re:Now If We Could Just Get ... (Score:5, Informative)
> Oh PLEASE! You want to know why the OEMs ain't selling Linux boxes now? It is because the
> hardware you pick up to go with your new PC at Walmart, or Best Buy, or Staples don't work in
> Linux, that's why. Linux is a fricking support nightmare when it comes to home users!
1998 Called. It want's it's FUD back.
I've bought hardware for Linux at all of those places without being terribly
concerned about Linux compatability. Occassionally I wil forget to consider
it entirely and still come out of it unscathed.
Normal consumers have very meagre demands all around and device support
on Linux is hardly the nightmare you make it out to be.
There's certainly a lot of fear mongering that goes on about it.
Thanks for participating.
I always get a chuckle out of rants like yours whenever I see one of
those warnings on a USB device warning you to not plug it in until
you've installed the drivers first...
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Who modded this up?
Let me give you a hint, paperweight status means it doesn't work at all [openprinting.org]... and that's just one manufacturer. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you aren't a laptop user either. Suspend still doesn't work a significant portion of the time and support for Atheros wireless chipsets has only recently gotten usable, Ralink is average, and Broadcom is still a pile of shit (even with the STA driver.)
Then you've got stuff like Marvell controllers where the Linux driver can either do SATA or
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Keep on "praying" or "holding on to making it happen"...
Are you writing printer drivers for linux for these walmart "all in one" printers?
Are you paying developers or donating gear? How about buying a few of these printers yourself and helping out.
And before you call me a hypocrite, I did what I preached. Back in '98-99, I worked in IBM's Storage Subsystems Group, and with a stack of Brocade 2800s and handful of Emulex LP7000s and Qlogic HBAs, I troubleshooted HBA issues with IBM and LSI logic disk subsys
No, probably not (Score:5, Insightful)
See that won't happen for two reasons. One is that MS gives you better licensing when you bundle Windows with all systems from a line. However the major reason is that Dell doesn't want to put up with the shit it would generate. It would be a tech support nightmare if they did that on main stream, consumer systems. You'd get a great many people doing it because it saves money. However they'd give no thought to if their apps would work or if they were willing to spend the time learning a new OS and so on. They'd get flooded with calls about it and have all sorts of angry people.
That's why when companies do offer things like Linux or no OS options, they do so on business type machines. When they are selling to an organization with their own support, they hope you can figure out what will and will not work for you. For home users? Ya not so much. They'd buy it, try to install a game, then complain because it didn't work.
Also, based on the prices Dell pays, it'd be $100 or less per computer.
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FUD whether it comes from M$ or from us is still FUD and a disgusting way to attack anyone or anything.
MS has not used those licensing conditions for the better part of a decade (due mostly to the anti trust case), the top 10 vendors have fixed licensing prices from M$ which are not affected in any way by how much linux they sell or whether they put windows on 5% or 99% of computers.
FUD and lies from us is in my opinion even worse than M$, we are supposed to be better than them.
Re:No, probably not (Score:5, Informative)
There is one VERY important factor you are not taking into consideration--the fact that Ubuntu(Canonical Ltd.) makes THEIR money from service, not sales.
If you think about it, this could be a home-run for both Dell and Ubuntu, not to mention the rest of the open-source realm.
Dell and Canonical Ltd. could come to some sort of agreement where the customer service is done by Canonical Ltd. and is pre-paid with the purchase of the of the computer(the service fees charged by Canonical). If Canonical Ltd. determines that the problem is hardware related, the customer is referred to Dell for further service.
Dell could even reimburse Canonical a small sum to offset the inevitable calls that are hardware based, but solved in a few moments without further need of Dell being involved.
Canonical Ltd. comes out smelling like roses, probably with a huge increase in market-share, and Dell washes their hands of most of the CS headaches that they deal with, ones that are mostly the result of problems associated with WINDOWS.
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One is that MS gives you better licensing when you bundle Windows with all systems from a line.
Yes, restraint of trade by a monopoly and should be illegal.
It would be a tech support nightmare if they did that on main stream, consumer systems.
No it wouldn't. They could easily do it, it just requires slightly more work than "here's an option".
Maybe:
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Nah, remember that Microsoft gets paid for the number of computers sold, not for the number of Windows licenses sold.
Therefore, even if you want an Ubuntu install, Dell would not give you a discount
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Now if we could just get Dell to put a little drop down option in its OS & Productivity Suite selection to have an option for "Ubuntu & Open Office (subtract $200)" on all of their computers. And then to have it actually be $200 cheaper with the exact hardware.
Even if MS got $200/computer (which I doubt); a downgrade would be the cost of MS software - support costs for Linux. While the OS may be free; supporting it is not and will require Dell to factor those costs in as part of the option. Depending on the cost of the number of units they would expect to sell the cost for Linux per unit may actually be higher than for MS software.
Every time they change hardware they'd have to test to see if Linux supported the new configuration properly and fix any issues befo
It is called signaling (Score:5, Insightful)
Dell is obviously unhappy with the price and they are signalling (Cards. a play that reveals to one's partner a wish that he or she continue or discontinue the suit led.) to Microsoft their discontent.
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No doubt. He's blaming tough economic times, but that's today. By the time that schools and governmental agencies are trying to buy this in serious numbers, we should be out of recession (not in six months at product release, but 12-18 after SP1 has been released).
Ratios (Score:2)
But if you dont count them as alternatives, then you have only one choice, and should pay whatever Microsoft think will be enough for them to survive the recession.
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Probably the value/price ratio will be better for Windows 7 than for Vista (or at least, the perception of it). Of course, if you take that into account Mac OS X could have a better ratio, and Linux, well, give math headaches.
Error: Floating point division by zero
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Probably the value/price ratio will be better for Windows 7 than for Vista (or at least, the perception of it). Of course, if you take that into account Mac OS X could have a better ratio, and Linux, well, give math headaches.
Error: Floating point division by zero
Obtaining a Linux distribution costs money (cheapbytes) or money (3G data overages) or time (weeks-long shipping times from Ubuntu Shipit). That might make your calculation more numerically stable.
something doesn't add up here... (Score:5, Insightful)
microsoft is a company sitting on 25 billion dollars. they apparently sold $3-4 billion in bonds? they are *raising* prices during some of the worst economic times that a lot of people of have seen.
it's like they have a pressing need for more than $30 billion?
for a company that needs to sell operating systems to maintain their future, it doesn't make sense.
e
I don't know that they are really raising prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that Dell doesn't actually come out and say that. They aren't saying "MS is charging us $20 more per copy." They are hinting at it, but hedging their terms. What it smells like to me is Dell wants a better rate than they've been getting in the past, and this is one of the tactics they are using to get it.
Companies posture over pricing all the time, and sometimes publicly. If Dell can get people mad at MS for their high prices, even if the prices are no higher than they normally are, then maybe they get more leverage.
So while I have no inside knowledge of the situation, that's my bet. MS is keeping 7 prices the same, and Dell thinks they should be cut.
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Yes, Dell is not saying it will cost X more per copy, because it will not.
Dell has more of a problem with restrictions on their bundles/spyware they load systems with and the kick backs they will lose with Windows7. Companies like Dell that bloatware their computers are more of a bane to the computing industry than anything MS has even done to harm the industry. PERIOD.
After Vista was released and we deployed a bunch of 'business' class Dell Notebooks, it was freaking insane the amount of Dell support, and
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Exactly! Let them screw themselves! After all, they'll have to do it 100 times to mean anything...
Windows 7 price higher than Vista's (Score:4, Funny)
Windows 7 pricing will be higher than Vista's
Oh I'm so glad I bought Vista and qualify for a free Windows 7 upgrade.
Right?
it's not cash they need (Score:4, Interesting)
they need to demonstrate to investors that they are indeed a money making business that will continue to make a lot of money in the future. Regardless of their cash position, if the investors leave, who already got shaky feelings from vista, then the market cap of the whole company goes down and ballmer will go looking for a job.
Now whether higher prices will help them make their sales goals, that's yet to be seen. In the short term, perhaps yes, with all the built in sales to the OEMs. In the long term, I bet the retail sales trail the oem sales for a while, so this might have been a pretty good plan overall anyways.
So... (Score:2, Interesting)
How much will it cost to get a copy of XP from Dell when 7 is released?
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How much will it cost to get a copy of XP from Dell when 7 is released?
I don't know what it will cost but that will be called a "Downgrade downgrade".
Perceived Value (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes if you make it more expensive, people will buy it for that reason alone. They see the higher price, and think that there must be a good reason for it to be a little bit more expensive than the alternatives.
higher pricing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:higher pricing? (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't make much sense does it? The old XP and the new 7 costs more than Vista. It's almost as if Vista is being subsidized.
And this will help adoption rates and piracy how? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder what it's like inside Microsoft's little bubble world? It's as if they're oblivious to everyone and everything outside of it. A recession is on but hey!, lets go ahead and raise the price! I mean, after all everyone hates Vista so they should be kicking Microsoft's door in to have to opportunity to pay more for the next version, right?
Meanwhile I just upgraded my laptop to Jaunty and had it completely setup and configured to my needs in under a half hour. For free. It really makes me rethink the whole idea of upgrading my Vista machine.
Solution: Pre-install linux and windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Most people get computers to do things: send email, read webpages, do banking, rip cds. That is why they buy the computer. They do not care that there is some other way to do these things that will save them $X amount. They care that they do not have to spend Y hours relearning how to do those basic tasks.
No one is going to spend their time comparing two operating systems when the one they know already satisfies all
Small business (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the smaller businesses may not be able to enjoy the software as soon as they'd like
Translation: They'll buy it anyway, because MS could shit in a box and small Businesses with little to no technical support or knowledge would still feel forced to buy it because they don't know they don't have to.
Inflation (Score:3, Interesting)
MS's latest move might bear out my theory about why they sold those bonds:
MS sold bonds at a rock bottom price because they know those bonds are going to get massively devalued when inflation goes bonkers over the next couple years.
MS is raising its prices ahead of this (hyper?)inflation scenario so that they can continue to turn a reasonable profit. Once they set the cost there isn't really any going back. Inflate the costs now for the OS that has to sell for at least a few years.
That's my theory.
Yeah, right (Score:5, Interesting)
In reading these comments, its amazing how many of you actually believe that Dell (or any other top-tier PC maker) pays anything even near retail for any Microsoft OS.
I know for a fact that back in the days before Vista when XP was still king that HP was typically paying Microsoft $35 a copy. I'm sure Dell gets a similar discount, and I'm sure they aren't paying any more than $60 or so a copy now.
In addition, the makers of all that shitware that comes preinstalled on your new PC pays Dell a fee for putting it there. That's another reason that getting Linux on a PC from Dell would not necessarily reduce your price.
This sounds to me like Dell wants to raise prices and increase their margins (which are currently very thin in the PC industry), and this is a cool way to blame it on Microsoft. They simply don't have the balls to say "Dell needs to make more profit".
Wishfuil thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
No one has to get the latest Windows7? Oh, yes, because we hate Vista we need to buy Windows7. Nonsense. Hardware prices are going down, and so will software. And here also Linux comes into play. Desktop Linux does not need to become a reality it is just necessary to strategically invest in alternatives. Asus is a perfect example.
Better than Vista WOW!!! (Score:3, Funny)
...though in just about every other aspect the operating system is beating Vista...
Definitely the marketing slogan they should come out with "Better than Vista, almost better than the Swine Flu!"
Enjoy the software? (Score:4, Funny)
Enjoy the software? Enjoy the Software! I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL BALMER, as soon as i finish toking on this EULA
#turns back to keyboard. types r-u-n-o-n-c-e in breathless anticipation.
#fade to next scene, a forlorn penguin wandering aimlessly somewhere in antarctica, mutters under his breath... What do I have to do? Give this shit away? I'm never gonna get off this island. Looks towards the heavens... STEEEEEEEEEEEEVE!!!
They presume much. (Score:3, Interesting)
That assumes they'll ever enjoy Windows 7 doesn't it? If they didn't buy into Vista what does this Ward fellow think Windows 7 will have that'll make folks like it? Less expensive hardware requirements? Dream on. Better security? (If it hasn't already been said by someone from Microsoft, I can almost guarantee that you'll soon be hearing that "Windows 7 is the most secure version of Windows to date".) Don't count on that. (I give it less than a month before a major virus/worm makes the rounds of the new Windows 7 systems.) Lower support costs? You're kidding, right?
Seems like some of these analysts already know that Windows 7 is going to be a turkey.
it will just help the price (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just Dells message to Microsoft telling them they will not eat a higher wholesale cost. They are swinging the bat they have to make MS lower the licensing costs.
Good for them.
Re:Microsoft decides to price-gouge (Score:5, Funny)
News at 11.
Tom Tucker: We now go live to Asian correspondent Tricia Takanawa. ... and that concludes our newscast, from Quahog 5 goodnight everyone.
Tricia Takanawa: *nasally* Tom, I'm standing here in a hotel room with Steve Ballmer and I'm about to purchase Windows 7.
*Steve grunts and starts to rip off her pants*
Tricia Takanawa: Tom, you'll notice that Steve is not even bothering to kiss me first or even lube up. He is going straight for my black cherry. Back to you, Tom & Diane.
Diane Simmons: Gripping story, Tricia. We now go live to Ollie Williams with a fiscal forecast about Windows 7. Ollie?
Ollie Williams: SHITS EXPENSIVE!
Tom Tucker: Thank you Ollie.
Diane Simmons:
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Haha, you got exactly what I had in mind.
Re:Cash Cow (Score:4, Funny)
Mmmm....hamburger (Score:3, Funny)
Squeeze it too hard, and what you have is not so much a cow as a pile of hamburger...
That's OK, I'd trade my piece of shit Vista install for a good hamburger. In-N-Out would be great, or maybe Five Guys.
Re:Cash Cow (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't hold a true monopoly. You see, Microsoft competes with itself.
Windows 7 has to compete with Vista and XP and even 2000. That's tough competition. When I need to run PC apps, XP does everything I need with the least overhead.
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Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't hold a true monopoly. You see, Microsoft competes with itself.
I'm pretty sure that's still a monopoly. All they're doing is selling different models.
Re:Cash Cow (Score:4, Insightful)
When I need to run PC apps, XP does everything I need with the least overhead.
As long as you don't need more than 4GB of addressing space...
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Re:Cash Cow (Score:4, Insightful)
It's only tough competition because Microsoft hasn't brought anything new to the table with their OSs in the past decade.
The trap Microsoft got themselves into was behaving if they were approaching the classic monopoly endgame. Capitalism requires constant improvement, otherwise customers will buy competitors' products, but once you own the market, there's no point continuing to improve your product. For software, improving your product is almost the ONLY significant cost, so when you want to maximise profit, you stop development.
Microsoft did that. They took their foot off the pedal and relaxed. Now that freeze on innovation is coming back to bite them.
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Oh, so that's your little plan: get us addicted [free RC], then jack up the price!
Well, you win.
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Damn that's some mighty smelly bait. I hope no one is foolish enough to actually take it and respond seriously to it... it will just make the entire thread sick.
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Er... no. Those words... they do not mean what you think they mean.
Responding seriously to it would be refuting his points. Pointing out that it's stinky bait is just that... a warning to other readers to beware.
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If you don't like what you hear, discredit the author's opinion by using the words "bait" or "troll". Don't even consider the fact that the author might ACTUALLY hate the Macintosh he's typing upon. No that couldn't possibly be.
Anyway I stand by what I said about OS 10.2 refusing to display youtube.com, or install Flash Player, or run Firefox 3. That's pathetic. Even my ancient Windows 98 laptop will let me watch youtube or other website videos. Why can't OS 10.2? Makes no sense.
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Commodore, There are just too many variables to consider. That Mac OS dates back from 2002. Its hardware specs could even be older than 2002. Your friend (or his family) could have accidentally damaged it, poured coffee into it, or whatever...
Personally, I still have a Windows laptop that runs Windows Me. It can play youtube videos, yes (sort of), but it can't update itself -- it can't update its Internet Explorer (It hasn't been able to for a couple of years). And it can't do a number of things that most
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A box running 10.2 is fairly useless for what you are trying. IE stopped being supported years ago. Safari and FF won't run the latest versions, you have to try and find earlier ones (so, yes your best bet is what you have... FF2).
10.2 came out in 2002, so I would compare it more to running into problems with XP SP1, you're gonna find a lot of software that doesn't run on that OS version too.
Oh and good luck running XP SP3, anti-virus and current versions of software satisfactorily on a Windows box tha
Re:Windows 7 still better than OS X 10.2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Being forced to run 10.2 is much like being stuck with any machine old enough to have come with 10.2 pre-installed.
You got it free because it is OLD, not because it's inherently bad.
This guy probably has a current Mac these days.
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You know, if you're going to criticize me for falling "hook, line and sinker" you might want to refrain from actually doing so yourself.
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Maybe this is the "Mac tax" everyone talks about? I never understood what that meant, but if Mac users have to keep spending ~$150 every other year to upgrade from 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 (plus the necessary RAM upgrades), then that could get damn expensive.
Except that... you didn't spend ANY of that money upgrading THAT machine. Not even your friend spent the money.
So now you can spend ~$150 for the first time ever in that machine's life and get 10.4 on it. That should be enough for the life of that old Mac. Or maybe it can handle 10.5, that's even better.
I've had the same XP installation since 2002. I've never had to spend a dime to upgrade from XP to SP1 to SP2 to SP3.
That's because MS delayed the release of Longhorn (Vista) for so many years: there was no new OS to upgrade XP to. (Originally Longhorn was expected to ship in late 2003, and yes, you would have had to pay f
Re:Windows 7 still better than OS X 10.2 (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't have $150 for an OS X licence, how about $5 to burn a Debian CD-R? Better than leaving it as an electronic paperweight.
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BTW OSX 10.5.6 only costs $129 http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC094 [apple.com] saved you $20!
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Why don't you drop the $60 bucks on 10.3 disks? You can generally skip a few versions of Mac OS X, but you have gone over board. The Mac OS market isn't big enough for most companies to support that antiqued OS regardless. Bitch if you want, but that is how it is. A lot of core APIs were still forming then which exasperate things.
When open source projects start only supporting back to Mac OS 10.4, you know you have a problem. It means there aren't enough people out there. If you're brave, you can try
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But, as you said, we don't have the information. We do know that the cost of shipping Linux is $0 and the cost of shipping Windows is $X. For some value of X > 0. We also suspect that shipping a version of Linux costs them Y for Y > 0 because they have to pay protection [wikipedia.org] to Microsoft. We don't know how much the crapware people [wikipedia.org] are paying Dell (et al) for their junk to be included.
But for an OS - without crapware, without coerced payments to microsoft for protection money, without advertising
Re:Win7 = OS costs more than reasonable hardware (Score:4, Funny)
Fsck that. Seriously. Fsck. That.
Why this mad obsession with checking a filesystem? What is so exciting about sitting there and having your computer make sure that you disks are consistent and not broken and stuff?
Re:Win7 = OS costs more than reasonable hardware (Score:5, Funny)
Quite possibly a Windows PowerUser(TM) who discovered that Linux file systems don't require the daily defragmentation that Windows' NFTS does, and is now having trouble finding something to do.
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Yes, it's FAR better leaving the machine switched on for 9 months, then on reboot, having to wait 7 hours for the filesystem to repair itself.
Go fsck yourself
Re:Microsoft charges more and more, yet... (Score:4, Funny)
*sees (Score:3, Informative)*
Equally informative: sky remains blue, water remains wet, Pope remains Catholic.
*expects a +5 with some adjective*
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Linux remains free of value to noob consumers that are already confused when the colors of their Word icons change.
There, fixed that for you.
Wish them luck with that (Score:4, Funny)
The spent millions just on a four-note "startup sound" that apparently most of us will never hear. Seven years in development down the tubes.