Microsoft drops Vista price

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Commercial

Microsoft drops Vista price

by Brad Linder Feb 29th 2008

Microsoft is cutting prices for various versions of Windows Vista. But good luck figuring out exactly what that means for you. In the US, CNet reports that customers purchasing a full boxed version of Vista Ultimate will pay the same high $399 price as always. But the price of an upgrade disc has dropped from $299 to $219. The base price of Home Premium stays the same at $240, but the upgrade price has dropped from $159 to $129. And of course, you can find everything for cheaper if you shop around.

Confused yet? Well, one thing is certainly clear. Microsoft is trying to push more copies of Windows Vista. And while the company claims that adoption rates have been high so far, the truth of the matter is that most new Vista users got their copies when they bought a new computer preloaded with the operating system. The high price may be one discouraging feature, but wide reports of software incompatibilities and other bugs have also scared away a lot of consumers.

And don't forget the fact that Windows XP still offers most of the features many computer users are looking for, so why upgrade? Look, we're not trying to bash Microsoft here. In fact, quite the opposite. The company put out an operating system more than 5 years ago that was solid enough that it's still in use today. Maybe when Microsoft stops offering security and feature updates for Windows XP people will switch to Windows Vista en masse. But charging hundreds of dollars for software that may not run on existing computers and doesn't offer many advantages over your existing software doesn't make much sense to us, price cut or no price cut.

Update: Some sources are reporting that the full versions of Vista are getting a price cut, not just the upgrade versions. The BBC reports that the price of Windows Vista Ultimate, for example drops from $399 to $319.

Tags: price-cut, vista, windows-vista

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

James said 10:02AM on 2-29-2008

Let's see. Windows XP:
* Tried-and-tested
* Stable
* Fast (ish)
* Cheap (ish)
* Does everything you care about

Vista:
* (Now slightly less!) expensive
* Slightly slower than XP
* Pretty?
* ???

Yeah, good luck with that one, MS.

JayMonster said 10:10AM on 2-29-2008

Truth, be told the price cuts on the "full versions" really means nothing, because as you point out, most people that would want to run Vista on an existing machine, would be doing an upgrade, and everybody else would wait to get it "pre-loaded" on a new device. Who is it that buys the FULL VERSION off the shelf any longer?

The funny thing about Vista, is that with all the bashing of Vista, everybody seems to have forgotten that XP was not exactly "warmly embraced" when it first came out. As a matter of fact, it really wasn't all that favorably looked upon until SP2.

Perhaps, Microsoft should revert back to their old game plan (and the one Apple now uses), of charging less for the OS, but also charging for Service Packs (or point revisions in Apples case), have more frequent releases to avoid the big "let down" of expecting something "Super" out of a new OS becuase it was "5 years in the making."

neuromancer said 10:43AM on 2-29-2008

When I do finally build a new machine, I plan to have a dual boot XP/Vista OS. Right now my machine is perfectly fine for running XP, my apps, and the few PC games I have for it, so I don't have a reason to upgrade my hardware.

Though by the time I finally do, Vista will probably have had at least one more price cut.

rossruns said 9:34AM on 3-03-2008

JayMonster - from what I understand, you can even use the upgrade version even if you don't have an OS preinstalled. All you do is install the upgrade version without entering your code, which installs a trial copy - then you "re-install" and the upgrade disc recognizes your previous installation, and you can "upgrade" from your trial copy to a full version of windows.

So yes, full versions of windows mean even less than what you were saying, because nobody in their right mind should be buying a full version, whether or not they have an existing OS.

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