…to spite your face. An English saying that means "this will hurt you more than it hurts me". The "you" in this case would appear to be Microsoft. And why? Well, the pricing details on their upcoming Vista operating system are showing on Amazon.Com as:
|
Edition |
Regular Price |
Additional License |
Upgrade Price |
Additional License |
| Ultimate |
$399.00 |
$359.00 |
$259.00 |
$233.00 |
| Business |
$299.00 |
$269.00 |
$199.95 |
$179.00 |
| Home Premium |
$239.00 |
$215.00 |
$159.00 |
$143.00 |
| Home Basic |
$199.00 |
$179.00 |
$99.95 |
$89.95 |
Robert McClaws, over at the Longhorn Blog is not impressed ("pure and total crap" are his words). His rationale is that the price reduction on additional licenses is not sufficient to act as an incentive for people to buy them rather than pirate the software. He goes into more detail in a follow-up post here. I have to say that I have some sympathy for his argument. We have three computers here, all running legitinate copies of Windows XP Professional. If I were to upgrade them all to Vista Ulimate edition, then I’m looking at paying out $725 for the privilege (one upgrade of $259 plus two additional licenses at $233 each). Frankly, that doesn’t seem worth it. I suppose I could just upgrade one computer to Ultimate edition and leave the other two at Home Premium. Even so, I’m still looking at an outlay of $561. Hmm, I might just as well stick with Windows XP for two of the three computers for a few years more.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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