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Microsoft boxes up Vista
February 26, 2006
The posting indicates that the Home Basic edition of Windows Vista will be priced the same as Windows XP Home, at $233 ($259 Canadian). The Home Premium version, which includes support for Media Center and tablet PC abilities will sell for 13 percent higher rate, a price that translates to about $269 in American dollars.
Microsoft quickly removed the price information, but blogger Ed Bott, who spotted the price list earlier Monday, included the price list in a ZDNet posting. Bott cautioned that those trying to figure out U.S. pricing would be better off comparing the Canadian Vista prices to their XP counterparts than to try and just convert to U.S. dollars.
A Microsoft representative said the company "inadvertently posted Windows Vista Canadian retail prices" on its Web site but said it has removed the posting and is not ready to share U.S. pricing information. The company said it would announce those prices when it ships the "Release Candidate 1" test version, due out by September.
On the business side, Microsoft listed Windows Vista Business at a price that equates to $341 in U.S. currency, 7 percent less than what Microsoft charges in Canada for Windows XP Professional.
The company is still wrapping up development work on the oft-delayed Windows update, which will come more than five years after its predecessor, Windows XP. After issuing the near-final release candidate next month, the company hopes to finalize the code in November in time for a mainstream launch in January.
Microsoft has yet to announce publicly its pricing plans but has said they will be generally similar to Windows XP prices, with a higher tag planned for Windows Vista Ultimate, a new high-end version that combines advanced media features with business-oriented features.
"We don't expect significant changes in our pricing strategy," Windows unit head Kevin Johnson said at a July meeting with financial analysts. "However, Vista Ultimate is a new (product), and we will sell that at a modest premium to today's offerings."
The information that was posted on Microsoft's Canadian Web site suggests that the premium will be hefty indeed, with that version priced at $449, again translated into U.S. dollars.
"The thing about list prices for full versions is that no one pays them, anyway," Gartner analyst Michael Silver said. "Most people will get Vista as part of a new PC, and the price will be buried in with the cost of the hardware."
And those that are upgrading their existing PCs pay the lower upgrade prices, Silver said.
On the upgrade front, a Vista Ultimate upgrade is priced somewhat above today's cost for upgrading to XP Professional. Windows Vista Business, meanwhile, is priced slightly below the XP Pro upgrade price. The upgrade to Windows Vista Basic is priced at the same rate as that for XP Home Edition, while Vista Home Premium is priced 54 percent higher than the basic edition.
The software maker announced in February that it plans to sell six versions of Windows Vista, including Vista Starter, which will be sold only on new PCs in emerging markets.
See more CNET content tagged:
pricing, Microsoft Windows Vista, software company, U.S., Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Linux, free...
No reason to buy Windows or OS X for that matter.
That's what scares MS, and is working. If I had 30 employees, and each with a copy of Windows XP that cost $200, and all they did was email and browse the web, bet your life I would discontinue using Windows.
Because PC makers have agreements with MS that doesn't allow installing another OS. For that, they get deep discounts on Windows.
Take Dell. They nowadays offer PCs with Linux installed, but it is quite hidden on their website.
I have a server from Dell, which is apparently not covered by their agreement with MS. They were able to offer it with Windows or without an OS, with the latter being cheaper. I am running Linux on that machine, and didn't have to pay the "Microsoft tax" for an OS I wouldn't use.
If people don't go for this version, I think the next one will do it for them.
As for boxed versions of the operating system, "suggested retail prices" are often inflated, so retailers can look good by discounting them.
about $150 for Vista. Now i really really hope Apple is going to sell
OEM's at $80 just to kill off M$.
osX only for new hardware that is, no retail version for older PC's.
expect everybody to buy a Mac like they did with the iPod.
What Apple wants to sell is its new Intel hardware with Mac OS X, even if many users load and install Windows.
Apple wants to make the best PC, whether or not its users run Mac OS X or Windows on them. Many PC magazines now say Apple makes the best PC hardware in several categories.
This time, Apple has made a shot across the bow of PC manufacturers, not across Redmond.
It doesn't care if people buy Macs to run Windows at this time and it's offering people a very attractive hedge to a failed Vista launch.
It makes you wonder what sort of OEM discount Dell will be given by Microsoft to "recommend" Vista (by annoyingly bundling it with all their desktops and not even giving the end-user a "no OS" option that would be much cheaper when Vista comes along). Especially when their business Dimension desktop is now $299 (yep, $42 less than retail Vista Business!). Wake up, Dell, and give your customers a *choice* on desktops - why can't we buy OS-less desktop PCs (and forego any OS/software support of course, which many of us would be willing to do to save $50+)?
Why bother to release a "no OS" computer? It makes buying Windows much more expensive, needs some technical skill on the part of the buyer, and isn't wanted by almost all buyers.
Funny that nobody tells Apple to release a "no OS X" computer for $129 less.
e.g. the average Linux distribution has roughly 3 times the number of security patches to deal with compared to Windows. And on average it takes twice as long for a patch to be released for a Linux security vulnerability compared to a Windows one. Not to mention the much higer integration costs and management effort required to setup and run Linux in an enterprise.
Same for the time it takes to patch things. Patches to Open Source software are usually out within days, while Microsoft needs months, or in some cases years to patch security issues.
Management efforts for setting up Linux are actually lower since Linux uses standard tools and formats that lots of people know vs. the proprietary stuff in Windows. Next time you talk about management efforts, try to fix a corrupt Exchange Server database...
this whils, Micro$oft overpriced bloatware has accrued thousands of problems, that you needed to wait 3-8 weeks to get even half of them fixed.
now there are more unpatched problems in M$ than total problems in linux
what about the ones that won't be fixed?
Firefox only has a handful and if I remember correctly, they all have to do with WWW standards... to fix them you would have to dissallow preset WWW standards
Microsoft, which doesn't adhere to the WWW standards in all cases, has refused to fix some problems claiming they are "features" of the operating system
YEA! My system has the feature that someone can take over my computer without my permission!
yeah, RIGHT!
Find me someone who's Linux box has been turned into a spam bot. Find me a Linux box that has been compromised and data stolen or corrupted. Find me a Linux box that has been destroyed because of a virus.
Now do the same for a Windows box and see how different the results are.
Here's another way of putting it. Recently there was a news article on some news channel that was about, shock horror, an ERROR in a certain Linux distribution's newest version! The error was that instead of booting into the graphical interface it "broke" and only the terminal was shown. It was fixed shortly afterward. At the bottom of the article, there was a short bit about how another exploitable flaw had been found in Internet Explorer. You see, we're so used to having problems in Microsoft programs that we don't even consider it news anymore.
Personally I find Windows much more constrictive than Linux. It is slow and frustrating. I wonder if Microsoft's so-called "TCO analyses" included lost productivity from the fact that MS stuff is crap, and it makes workers stressed?
The biggest problem is that usually at least 50% of all patches for "Linux" have nothing to do with the Linux kernel, but rather they are application patches. Microsoft does not release application patches except for it's own products, and some of those (eg. patches to Office) are distributed separately.
For an example, take a look at the security advisories for SuSE Linux:
http://www.novell.com/linux/security/advisories.html
Just looking at the security advisories logged between the start of July and the end of August, there are some that affect the Linux kernel, others that affect OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. Certainly the kernel vulnerabilities can directly compared to similar components from Windows, while Firefox definitely would not. Obviously simply counting bugs and patches is completely wrong and any report doing that can and should be immediately ignored as being totally invalid.
However there is also a note logged about security issues in KDM, where would that fit in? It fills a similar role to 'Winlogon.exe' in Windows, as well as some functionality that is probably roled into Explorer, so should it be counted? But if you count KDM, do you then ignore bugs in GDM and XDM? In Linux you have these three options, while in Windows you've only got Winlogon.exe. If all 4 applications have bugs, do you count that as 3 security holes for Linux vs. 1 for Windows? Or how about if a bug is only in XDM which hardly anyone uses anymore? Is that still counted as a security hole?
As for time to patch, that's probably even harder to estimate because it depends on WHICH patch you're looking at. Due to the open-source nature of Linux you will often have more than one patch created for any given security flaw. A security hole might get patched in SuSE one day, Redhat and Debian the next, but it might not make it into another distribution for 2 months. With Windows there is only one "distribution" to check.
As with pretty much everything else, a lot of it comes down to trade-offs being made. In running Windows you make one set of trade-offs, while running Linux makes a different set of trade-offs. Trying to compare two things that are not a direct 1-for-1 match is always going to be hard, and when billions of dollars are at stake, it only gets harder.
OS 10.4 ("Tiger") is retailing at $149 Cdn, for a single-user
package, and C$248 for a five-license "family pack". Why pay
more, and still have to spend a fortune (and hours of work) on
antivirus, etc? An Apple a day keeps the malware away?
The people who upgrade, who'll pay considerably less than one version of OS X.
And then they'll look at how many bought OS X upgrades at $129 U.S. during the time when XP had no paid upgrades.
And then they'll say, "Wow! OS X costs a lot more than Windows!"
And they'll be right.
They dont because it isnt.
Linux is more expensive than Windows to own and use, even though you pay a license fee for Windows.
Every heard of Lock-in? Because that's what MS has more or less successfully done.
But more and more businesses realize that and get out of the lock-in. Linux and other operating systems are steadily gaining market share in the business world.
These are mainly in the clerical and data entry positions, where the OS main role is to run the computer as a host for their enterprise system.
Those desktops that still need to run on Windows usually get along just fine with older versions all the way back to Windows 98.
By scrunching so many features into XP, then Vista, these operating systems have become jacks of all trades which are suitable only for niche markets instead of mass deployment desktops.
The pricing is also off the wall. What got you a fully functional operating system with Windows 98 gave you less with Windows XP home and will give you even less with Windows Vista Home Basic.
Where is the fully funcitional enterprise OS with complete networking features for mass deployment to beige desktops? At the $500 level?
I don't think this will fly with the enterprise.
The scandals will completely devastate the release of Vista and most businesses will refuse to deploy Vista when their IT staffs tell them the new OS will only attract even more attacks than patched XP systems. MS will be reduced to issuing press releases about victorious deployments in "a bakery in Ottawa" and "a car wash in Sierra Leone" which the press will reveals were bought by MS a week before the software was installed.
Ballmer, always regarded as completely insane and emotionally immature, will disappear without a trace. Psychics will lead police to his final resting place, his station wagon, parked behind the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Spokane where police will determine he had shot himself 9 times in the face, a story that will briefly provoke skeptical reactions from the press.
Microsoft has spent a massive amount of dosh and R&D on security. I expect that security will be significantly improved compared to previous OS versions.
Linux and Mac people annoy me, who gives a crap if its free Windows could be considered free too if you buy a new PC its already there and it still a 500 dollar PC! Am I going to buy the full version of Vista? No. Will I keep my XP until I buy a new Laptop/PC? Of Course!! And lastly, Mac is just like WIndows now cause you get what you pay for; key words PAY FOR, its not free but you think it is cause its in the laptop already.
In no way it's free.You have to pay 500$ for a 400$ hardware - there is no wizardry.So, you have to pay $600 for 500 dollar PC, etc.In fact it is annoying that MS is put kind of "tax" on PCs.What if I do not need their stupid XP Home at all?(usually, PCs are shipped with a dumb, lame and restricted XP Home and probably, will be with equivalent Vista).As for me, it was enough WGA to see real nature of MS.Thank you, I'm preferring to decide myself what to run on my PC.And I'm tired of stupid marketing restrictions in Win XP.If you need REAL OS you have to at least buy Win2003 (and still face with some few licensing limits).Win2003 costs slightly more than lame XP crap.
Then why compare that to OS X, which does all processors, like in
todays Quad dual core machines?
Say come to think of it, if Homeland Wonder Boys? are still using the even older Windows 95, why bother to upgrade if the old systems are still fully functional!
Choices, it would seem, need to have very deep pockets indeed!
Perhaps, I will stick with the venerable old model T, she's still got quite a few terabytes under the bonnet to go before she's ready for the recycle yard!
And you are simpy wrong about the patching. Its a verifiable fact - acknowledged as correct by the Linux companies involved in the study in question - 3 times as many patches on Linux and on average twice as long for a fix than Windows.
Try it on your desktop an see, and it is FREE, no FUD. http://www.pclinuxos.com/page.php?7
This was right after the ALTAIR 880, which had ZERO software came out.
Microsoft (in new mexico then) had a vision of a computer on every desktop back when the state of the art was a TTY ASR33, and storage was rolls of punched paper tape.
Computer Dialup time cost $10 per hour. (at 110 baud (10 bytes per second)
Bill was damn near the only guy thet really got it. He delayed the joys of marriage and fatherhood for many years in order to pursue his vision.
Now, as Mr. Gates moves away from day-to-day operations at microsoft, let us hope he can keep the bean counters from spoiling the soup.
DLZ
Your post implies that all the items listed were
contemporaneous, which even a quick, cursory internet search
would show was not the case. Very soon after the Altair came
out, there was a flurry of development. There were a number of
titles for the Altair, albeit that had to be entered via toggle
switches, before the first kits came out allowing dumb terminals,
keyboards, and mainframe floppy drives to be connected. In fact
MS wrote one of the first.
When the Altair came out, there was no such thing as dial up
services, at any price.
As for Gates being "damn near the only guy thet [sic] really got
it" that is just a bunch of BS. Besides the obvious answer of Jobs
and Wozniac (two people who actually DID something about it,
as opposed to Gates, who did squat) there were hundreds if not
thousands of people in homebrew clubs, basement labs, and
corporate industrial parks who "got it."
As for delaying the "joys of marriage and fatherhood," I suspect
there might have been other, more pedestrian, reasons.
And claiming that windowing software for PCs would have cost
$7000 is both absurd and farsically arbitrary. From whence
comes this ridiculous figure? Certainly not from any historical
precedent: GEM and DRDOS (superior in EVERY way to Windows
1.0) cost under $100, an entire mac 128 cost less than $3000. If
anything, THAT price point had more effect on Windows than
decisions by Gates, fronting a company that has never came out
with s SINGLE innovative product in its HISTORY (with one
debatable exception, but I have already alluded to that.)
Gates didn't have any "vision" back then.
He didn't even get windowing until he saw the first Mac. Windows 1 was a clear rip-off of the Mac (I know, I had it... and it was a piece of crap.)
And the "delaying the joy of marriage and fatherhood"... LOL He was a geek. Did you ever see old pictures of him? No sane woman would have dated him...
Lay off the crack.
- Dell + Linux = Easy
- by billt-IthinkIam August 29, 2006 8:37 AM PDT
- "Find Linux machines on Dell"
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (145 Comments)That was easy...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Adell.com+linux