Analyst: Windows 7 is Still Too Expensive

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I see no reason whatsoever to upgrade windows until I have no other choice. It always has been too pricey for my taste to begin with so I spend as little as I can on it and the main reason is exactly that I have 4 computers at home.

The fact is, the only reason we use Windows at all is because we need it to run our other stuff: non-windows software. And those are all a LOT more useful to me than windows is. Will the new Windows run my software differently? Ok it will boot a bit faster: so what? Ok it will be prettier: so what? My browser won't suddenly become start navigating the web on its own nor gain any super-powers 😛

Upgrading Windows is a luxury and the cost is too high at more than $500 for all my computers IF i took the cheap $119 one (counting taxes). Just so I can save 10 secs on boot time and have prettier UI. No thanks. When the software I need doesn't run in my current XP will I upgrade.

Now if the price was the same per Windows 7 box, but with 5 activation keys I would upgrade. Will that ever happen? Not a chance. When am I gonna upgrade Windows? Not this year :)
 
I use Windows only for gaming, for everything else I prefer Linux (Also nearly all pc's at my university and associated institutes are Linux based). I'm not willing to pay more than 50€ for retail version of Win7 when I spend 90% of my time using Linux that costs nothing.
 
Having worked at Best Buy (ya ya laugh it up), nobody ever bought retail copies of Vista. They either bought a whole new computer with Vista pre-installed for a couple hundred dollars more, or they pirated a copy of Vista, or if they are tech savy, they bought OEM copies from other sources.

Even if a customer wanted Vista on their computer, they looked at the price tag of $240 and then just didn't even consider it any further. Today's consumer's simply don't value an operating system at anything in that price range. And Microsoft will never be able to sell any version of Windows no matter how great it is at a price point like that.
 
Microsoft should lower its prices and not only for windows.
Its a known fact that over 40% of the windows installations are either pirated or in some kind of grey area.
Knowing this and keeping in mind that most of those people cant afford to buy a retail copy (or simply prioritize and go else where) Microsoft needs the pirates to be able to boast there number one position in the operating system market.
However i think cutting prices to lets say a maximum of 149 USD for retail Ultimate and dropping all other versions (except for server editions) might lead to more sales and let them penetrate markets formally held by pirated software.
Imagine what would happen if they priced it 100 USD or even less, it would be affordable for nearly any one! thus expending their market share even more.

P.S,
You can compare prices between apple operating systems and those from Microsoft.
Microsoft indeed sells no overpriced systems but they do have a way bigger home market (even mac's are often seen running windows using bootcamp or vm's).
The price of the development and such wont rise by the volume of sales its more likely it would come down and dont start me on having to give ore support if more units ship since thats their choice they could just offer windows cheap and charge for support like enterprise linux based distributions do now.
 
Although I can't say too much about how the 7 sales will go, but if Microsoft places the home version at around $50, I can bet my life on that developing nations, specially India will see the highest number of sales for any Microsoft OS till date.
 
It's WAY too expensive. You can get a new laptop for 90% then MS can do the same. Problem is they got a stranglehold on the market. With no real competition (I don't count Apple as they are a niche market) they will always be greedy.
 
Win7 Home Premium should be at $49.99 for retail version if M$ wants faster adoption of Win7. No upgrade version, no stand alone OEM version. Just retail Home Premium version for $49.99. Charge whatever amount they want for Ultimate or Professional, but Home must stay cheap in order to attract people to upgrade. People who buy Ultimate must have too much money, and business will upgrade to Win7 Pro based on their business decision.
 
IMO the family pack deals sounds great. But because of variableness of how many PC's may be in a house that need the upgrade, the price should be based off a number the customer wants. Don't just sell "3-Pack' etc like most antivirus does.
 
I'd much prefer to run Linux, but due to my games, I'm still running Windows. If they truly want to dominate in an economical tough time, I'd say no Home/Professional, just Windows 7, and make it $50 for one license or, alternatively, $75 for a family license (3 or 4 pack) and some other honor system plan for Small Business and Corporations.
 
[citation][nom]zingam[/nom]Yeah! Easy to say but when you leave the university and you'll find that 95% of the commercial/professional software that you might need to use for living is Windows only, you'll quickly forget about using Linux 90% of the time and you might even end up removing it from your system. That's the life! It sux![/citation]
What software are you talking about? The most professional softwares I need are Mathematica and Maple, some Latex distribution, a good c++ IDE (I use QtCreator) and a compiler (g++ in my case). All work well under Linux. Firefox is an excellent browser, Totem can play every audio/video file I have. And tvtime works much better than all Windows alternatives I have tried. For those people who need office there is open office. And if that is not enough you can run many windows applications via Wine under Linux.
 
microsoft needs to get away as fast as possible from the nightmare that is vista as fast as possible

they need to keep the eye on the ball, and not use this as a money making opportunity. they are only giving apple an opportunity to keep increasing market share.

they didn't discount the ultimitate edition.

$50,$100,$220 for upgrade is a bit high. I should be like free, $25, $50 or even $25, $50, $100

they should also sincerely apologize for releasing vista.
 
Windows is the only way to go in most cases. Everyting is compatable with Windows and you will have far less problems. You don't have to adapt an entire staff of thousands and thousands of people with Windows. And people already have access database and linked excel spreadsheets under Office. WHO KNOWS how that will translate when using Linux and open office. Nobody want's that kind of headache. For a home user, Windows Linux and Apple are just fine and great OS's. In the business, Windows is the only way to go. The ONLY reason Windows has so many problems is because people don't like it when a company becomes big, powerfull and successful(which is the goal). They like the underdog (Still don't know why). So Widnows is a target. Plain and simple. Windows is a great OS and don't let anyone tell you different. I've been using it since 3.1 and I've grown up with Computers. First one was an Apple II. JUNK IN, JUNK OUT on any OS.
 
Need DirectX to be opened up for open source so we can get DirectX support into Linux. Once games run native in Linux, then there be no need to being milked by Microsoft anymore.
 
Also, Microsoft and Windows gave Society and businesses what they asked for. Linix has been dragging their ass with no real home for it to take off.
 
Get real people. Big Bad Microsoft dares to make money. Come on... Its called a business model for a reason. Your object in business is to make money. There is nothing wrong with the pricing in my opinion. If you think it is to high, then don't buy it, plan and simple. Thats why its called a free market ( or used to be). To many people think you deserve stuff cheap or free. This is the real world, nothing is free. Its cost to develope money to develope software and OS's. Most of you are willing to pay $50 for a game but want to be able to pay the same for the OS? You can be serious.
 
I absolutely hate when all of these people say "well, an OS X upgrade is only $29! Why should a Windows one be $119?". Why? Because Apple doesn't make money off of their software.

Does anyone realize how little development it actually took Apple in comparison to get OS X off the ground than Windows? They had BSD to build off of, and they need to support a much smaller userbase and that means much fewer drivers and such to work out in the OS.

Apple makes it's profit off of the sale of it's overpriced, "premium" hardware garbage, and that's the only reason they can pretend they have fair pricing. Besides the fact that they keep releasing new versions much more frequently than Microsoft, and therefore the consumer buys more and actually pays more, a hundred bucks or so for previous versions.

Also, their software suites. iLife '07, '08', '09, it's every year with this. You think you're paying so much less and Microsoft is somehow scamming you, but they're not. They're just shoving less garbage down your throat less frequently and supporting you longer.

Grab a Windows 7 Home Premium OEM license for around $100 where it will be, install it, and be quiet for the next 5 years. Then all of you Apple fans buy the next 4 revisions of OS X before Windows 8 releases. Or, if you really want to save money on your OS, go open source and stop complaining.
 
[citation][nom]s4fun[/nom]Need DirectX to be opened up for open source so we can get DirectX support into Linux. Once games run native in Linux, then there be no need to being milked by Microsoft anymore.[/citation]
I think this is why OpenGL is supposed to be so big. (think its supported in the next AMD hardware?) but if game developers write in OpenGL then it can be used on every platform, Apple, Linux and Windows. Won't it be great when you can buy a copy of a game and play it on anything?
 
[citation][nom]sublifer[/nom]I think this is why OpenGL is supposed to be so big. (think its supported in the next AMD hardware?) but if game developers write in OpenGL then it can be used on every platform, Apple, Linux and Windows. Won't it be great when you can buy a copy of a game and play it on anything?[/citation]
What?? Both nVidia and AMD hardware/driver have always supported OpenGL. OpenGL is not new, but with exception of id software most of the other game developers simply don't use it. On the other hand more serious application like CAD and scientific applications are OpenGL based.
 
Im not sure why MS will take $50 from Dell, but not from me. I don't want Dell's crap. And Dell makes MS look bad... so... sell me Windows 7 for $50 and I will help sell it to others. At $120 I will more likely tell people to wait for their current PC to break.
 
EA gets $60 bucks from me every damn year so I can play the marginal upgrade to Madden. I use windows everyday. There is no way you can tell me that Windows is not the better bargain.

MS should charge what it thinks it can get in the market period. I personally think the total cost of ownership of an iPhone is crazy but if Apple and AT&T are making a killing because of it then great!

 
[citation][nom]mcbowler[/nom]Im not sure why MS will take $50 from Dell, but not from me. I don't want Dell's crap. And Dell makes MS look bad... so... sell me Windows 7 for $50 and I will help sell it to others. At $120 I will more likely tell people to wait for their current PC to break.[/citation]

Hmmm I recommend Dell all the time. I've supported their C, D, GX series here at Honda for over five years and I have very little hardware issues. Over 500 PC's. Now the D430's, are CRAP. Well, the hard drives are crap, not the PC. They are made by Samsung I believe. In eight months, I've had over seven D430 hard drives fail and alot of them make the clicking sound more than a hard drive should..
 
$50 is a fair price for an OS that should have about a 5 years life cycle with patches and new features added through free updates. That's only $10 per year if you think about it that way. I pre-ordered one copy of home premium at the discount, and I'll get another copy when I buy my wife a new laptop. Buy I'll stick with Ubuntu Linux on my HTPC and my server. I just don't need Windows on those machines, at any price.
 
A multi-pack would be nice, but than should every computer in the house run the same version? Maybe..., MS could make a pack with a Pro license and 2 or 3 Home Premium licenses. I don't think all the licenses need to be the same.
 
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