More on the Vista price cut
In looking at the reasons behind Thursday's price cut for Windows Vista, it's easy to blame the OS itself. After all, plenty of critics have panned it, users have grumbled and even Microsoft executives themselves were slinging arrows that the software wasn't ready for prime time when it launched last year.
But, it's important to note that this cut doesn't affect the bulk of the PC market, where folks get Vista as part of a new PC. Rather, the cut is limited to the comparatively small number of folks who buy a boxed copy of Vista to upgrade their machine.
NPD analyst Chris Swenson notes that the prices for boxed copies of Windows have remained fairly high while the cost of getting a new PC has fallen drastically since Windows XP made its debut in 2001. Prior to the price cut an upgrade to Vista Ultimate cost $299. Now, I've seen some ads where you get a whole Vista PC for that price or not much more.
One other interesting note, it appears that the price cuts are also designed to spur Vista-to-Vista upgrades. Has anyone out there paid to move to a higher priced version of Vista? If so, I'd be interested to hear when and why you made the move. Drop me a note below or e-mail me at Ina DOT Fried AT CNET DOT Com.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
If it had been selling to Microsoft's satisfaction at full price, there would have been no reason to cut the price
I went from "Vista Ultimate Home Edition Plus" (I think that was it??
?) to an iMac running OSX 10.5. Wow! The improvements was
worth every penny!
:-)
The only complaint I have about the upgrade is that Vista installs as a "clean" install. I don't know if I missed that during the install or in the documentation but I was nonplused when the system booted and all my documents (fortunately they were backed up) and settings were gone. Aside from that I have no complaints.
I wouldn't upgrade to Vista Ultimate until I upgrade my graphics to a PCI-E card in order to handle Aero.
desktop was able to handle Vista Home Premium, while the
laptop could only handle Vista Basic.
My Averatec upgrade story: http://danmosqueda.blogspot.com/2007/05/vista-upgrade-2-
averatec-4100.html
My HP upgrade: http://danmosqueda.blogspot.com/2007/05/windows-vista-
upgrade.html
I dumped the laptop (gave it to my brother) and replaced it, at
company expense, with a Dell D830. I have since discarded it
and purchased a MacBook Air at my own expense.
My desktop is going to my son. It will be replaced by an iMac.
Yes, I became very frustrated with Vista. Leopard has been a
much better experience.
and lots of software for Os 9 would tell you it was worse than the jump from Xp to vista because NOTHING AT ALL WORKED it was a night mare, and i suspect in the coming years that it will happen to you again you can only keep around compatibility for old apps for so long before they become a serious security threat to the user and that is already starting to happen to mac users. don't get me wrong as a mac owner i love it but having been with mac for a long time as well as pcs i am here to warn you that all os have an upgrade that reduces backward compatibility. i upgraded to vista on my pc and had no problems i upgraded my intel imac to 10.5 and could not run things the way i would like and have found many short comings an average user might not see but as a developer i see them. Now since vista worked on my pc a Very VERY High end costum pc built by me i figure that i have had better success due to the manufacturer of the part providers better drivers due to the fact they know the people using the parts paid alot and expect alot more than the people that buy a Dell so yes i admit and do not think that vista is very good it is for, me due to special circumstances, good (very nice parts picked by me to run vista) but all you pc owners if you are a heavy user than you may be very disappointed by leopard.
And buy the way, mac book air sucks for anyone that plans on being productive I am looking at getting a mac book pro for media editing I love mac for media editing. I run the following os s Ubuntu, Xp, Vista, mac 10.4.X and an old OS 9.
I am using Linux, Mac OS and XP. Could someone clearly explain what Vista can do that my current OS's cannot do that is worth hundreds of dollars and many hours of my time?
This is marketing 101 and it is called "value proposition". MS hasn't clearly explained what I would get for my money and my time. Until then, I have to assume that this is not worth it and I will keep XP for my Windows software.
I am also not upgrading my Mac to Mac OS 10.5 for the same reason. I don't see the value added by the new OS that justifies the money and the time to upgrade.
? Spaces for better organization
? Quickview (Makes creative work much easier)
? True 64bit support in Carbon and Cocoa apps
? Dictionary, calculator, advanced search capabilities from
Spotlight
? Vastly improved local network performance and browsing.
Those are a few of the reasons I upgraded and I have never
looked back.
I upgraded the XP partition in Bootcamp to Vista, and constantly
look back but don't want to take the time to reinstall XP and the
games.
This is analogous to Politicians micromanaging the Generals during a war, nothing good comes out of it and it it takes forever to get out and with sad results.
Wow...
Deja Vu
For about 95% of the people out there vista IS better than xp for various reasons. It is not a huge differance but saying that Vista was a downgrade is too extreme. The added security features are nice, And the interface is great if you have a good graphics card. The number one huge reason that I like Vista is the networking. No longer do I have to try and be an I.T. guy to set up network and file sharing. Sure some were lucky and on xp it was as easy as running network setup, but if that didnt work you enter the never ending world of network troubleshooting with xp. I remember a few years back trying to network 5 xp systems, talking to microsoft techs over the phone as well as various other people and not being able to figure it out. I actually stooped to the level where I PAYED geeksquad to come over to fix it even though i knew that anybody who has ever changed a hard drive knows more than them. Finally I gave up. Now back to vista, its as easy as clicking ON in filesharing. Even sharing between my mac and vista pc's was easyer than xp.
The one thing I do think needs to happen is that they SHOULD NOT put vista premium in any system with less than 2 gb of ram and a mid class graphics card. You will hate vista if you have a lower end computer because it will use up 800mb of ram just sitting there with you starring at the little speedometer on the side waiting for it to go down. You wont be able to watch a dvd with aero running either. Vista basic will run fine on those low end pc's but come on, who wants basic? Honestly!
Aside from a handful of forced reasons (DX10), there are no compelling reasons to bother, and far too many reasons to not buy it.
When folks bumped to XP, they were getting features that were actually compelling to the average user, and were not present on previous OS versions (USB support, CD/DVD burning, native zip file handling, etc).
XP's faults were present, but were minor compared to Vista. XP also didn't require a massive hardware investment (I recall one instance where it ran just fine on a Pentium 133 MHz box w/ 32MB of RAM, in spite of the average new machine at the time having a late P3/early P4).
So given all of that, again I ask... why bother with Vista? There is simply no attraction to it.
/P
It is total BS to say that XP EVER ran on 32M of RAM on a 133 MHz box.
Stick to Arkansas politics. You can be the expert there.
- XP to Vista to...XP?!
- by Librarymediaguy March 4, 2008 3:55 AM PST
- Well, I got a new Dell PC last year, prior to the roll-out of Vista (a good thing too!) I qualified to get XP on my machine, and a later upgrade to Vista.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- Viva La Vista!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- by kewlgem March 4, 2008 7:38 AM PST
- Last year my new computer came with Vista Home Premium. I find it the easiest MS OS yet. My machine never crashes and it only takes seconds for it to boot in the morning. My laptop has XP and it takes a good 10 minutes to boot. I am very happy with Vista.
- Like this
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(38 Comments)Well, I lived with Vista for 9 months. In that 9 months, Windows Mobile Device Center stopped working with my PDA, on my MFP, the scanner function stopped being able to "communicate" with my computer, and when I tried to pull up the system information, it couldn't find it! These problems were not evident immediately and developed over time. And I was far from the only person dealing with them - research showed all of these problems occurred a LOT. The MFP was manufactured by Canon and was supposed to work with Vista, the handheld was a shade older by a few years but was running OS mobile 2003 and should have worked (and did work initially). I am very tech savvy, and it was not a virus or anything like that, apparently some "update" killed the ability of my devices to communicate through Vista!
So I saved my data to DVDs, wiped my drive, and went back to XP where all of my machines play nicely. Vista looks a lot nicer, and the interface feels friendlier, but that's about where the improvements stop. It's also tougher on memory and has enough bugs to warrant an exterminator.