I’m really hoping that Steven Sinofsky will kick off a discussion about Windows 7 pricing over on the Engineering Windows 7 blog sometime soon. I’m not holding my breath because the chances of seeing an open debate on pricing is highly unlikely, but I can dream, can’t I?
My take on the issue of Windows pricing is that as things stand, Vista (OEM, upgrade and new license) is too expensive compared to the price of hardware. When a decent PC cost $1,000+ it wasn’t unreasonable that an OEM copy of the OS system builder would set you back some $100+, but now that you can put together a good quality PC for $260, it really doesn’t make sense that buying Windows Vista should add a third again to the price.
Another thing that Microsoft could do to help home users who have more than one PC is introduce a family pack such as the one that Apple has (5 licenses for $199). I think that something like this from Redmond would encourage upgrades and help to make piracy a less attractive option.
Given the reception that Vista has had, along with the price drop we saw in February, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Windows 7 coming entering the market at a cheaper price point.
Aside …
Just for laughs I decided to pay Dell (a company gaining market share at the expense of the bottom line at present) a visit and see what the price difference was between an Ubuntu-powered system and one running Windows. I configured two XPS M1330 notebooks (Ubuntu|Windows) to have a similar spec (I couldn’t get them exactly the same because the wireless network card differed between the two … not that it matters that much).
source: blogs.zdnet.com
www.vista123.net, easily tweak and customize your Windows Vista.
