“Microsoft announced its intention to slash the price of its latest OS, unveiled in January 2007,” Max Brenn reports for eFluxMedia.
“Citing as a reason, its desire to urge the adoption of Windows Vista, Microsoft said that the price of its Windows Vista Ultimate, the fully-featured version of the OS, will be $319 instead of $399,” Brenn reports. “Also, those who already own a copy of Windows XP or a version of Windows Vista will pay to upgrade to Ultimate only $219 and not $259.”
“Microsoft will also cut prices for upgrade versions of Vista Home Premium, its mainstream product, to $129 from $159. The price cuts will apply in 73 countries, but they could vary from one country to another,” Brenn reports. “Also, the software giant will stop selling ‘upgrade’ versions of Vista in emerging markets and it will instead sell Vista Home Premium and Home Basic, a stripped-down version, at the upgrade prices.”
Brenn reports, “PC World, the guys behind the ‘top 100 high-tech products of the year,’ has labeled the OS as one of the biggest disappointments of 2007.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “amex” and “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
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Ampar,
Apple already competes with several free operating systems, which don’t entirely suck. (Linux, the various BSDs, etc.) If Microsoft were to give away Vista, the impact on Apple would be minimal.
-jcr
Interesting: they didn’t move the OEM price down at all – the place from where the vast amount of Vista revenue comes (not counting corporate licensing). They cut the *retail* price — the place where slow sales rates have always been the norm.
Methinks there’s something else behind this than trying to move Vista boxes out of inventory. A conspiracy theorist I am not, but nevertheless, nefarious they are!
John C.,
Maybe you are referring to Harvey’s post? I was just commenting on possible monopoly abuse. Or did I miss something?
Windows is Barad-dûr.
Office is the ring.
Destroy the ring.
“Windows Vista is superior to Windows XP from all points of view and the users have access to several thousand new functions, Microsoft claims.” Oh really!
$319.00 USD is way to much to pay from unwanted or needed crap from M$$$…. when one has iWorks!
Now if M$$$ wants to pay me to use Vista for a day or so… well that’s a different thing!
Sorry just kidding… no deal!
Zune Tang, you need serious help, or are you commenting from your padded cell typing messages with your chin because they won’t let you take off the straight-jacket? Keep the words coming, I like a good laugh or two a day from you!
My goodness, Microsoft is still selling Vista for money after that long diatribe that Zune Thang gave us about how points were so much better than money and the new world standards that MS intends to inflict, uh bless upon the world.
And now he doesn’t even say a thing about it, just goes on to badmouth Apple users, talk about being a dag.
Well history tells us that MS has a lot of vapourware and fortunately that is one of the great innovations that Apple just hasn’t been able to copy yet.
However these discounted distributions are available on HD-DVD ONLY