News - Microsoft’s Ballmer goes toe-to-toe with Chinese President over piracy

[TheAnimus]

Perhaps their revenue would drop, perhaps it will expand. Either way, Windows sales is the furthest thing from their cash cow (ya know, the way they give it away to big OEMs), and them having more legitimate users can only be a good thing as it's the scale of the Windows platform itself which makes them the big bucks, not the Windows OS.

In fairness its a simple optomisation task, and as piracy is only a 3rd, and plenty of people are vocal about their itent to not buy it at a third of the price.... Seems logical to me to conclude that they wouldn't see a major upshot in sales.

Whilst its not their only cash cow, I doubt they would want to sacrifice a signficant reneue stream for the hope of selling more copies of office.

By not wasting brain power on creating and maintaining futile DRM schemes which only works superficially.

And ultimately that is a big problem, because that cost is put on the end user too. (ok one could argue the saving is priced into the end user as well).

However some of the DRM is requested by partners / content providers, so their need to be some design patterns in place for this.

[miniyazz]

By not wasting brain power on creating and maintaining futile DRM schemes which only works superficially.

They already got rid of WGA

[aidanjt]

They already got rid of WGA

When? To the best of my knowledge, only OGA was abandoned, WGA is still in place.

[aidanjt]

In fairness its a simple optomisation task, and as piracy is only a 3rd

In China, it's 9 in 10 installations are pirated. For good reason.

[TheAnimus]

In China, it's 9 in 10 installations are pirated. For good reason.

Very true, but is that best solved by trying to create a massively differening regional pricing structure? It would be quite hard to simply stop the software crossing the economic borders.

Without any cost efficent solutions its best to look on it globally surely? I think we have seen that they can get away setting the price point that way quite easily.

What might be bigger concern is not getting that end of the netbook market, or low end PC market, I wouldn't be surprised if the windows 8 for ARM is a heck of a lot cheaper with some big restrictions in place. Creating a 'different' product is a good way of providing it legally for those who can't afford the other, and then its the job of the sales drone to upsell those who can. The car industry seems to be a master of this.

But on my point in post 51, specifically the moral hazard of support contracts, if I were to go and do a vanity economics degree (as in I already have a perfectly good degree and it won't help me earn any more money in all likelyhood, obviously the tax payer should foot the bill for this) I would like to do a proper study on technology frims offering this, from the big giants who sell you something very inelastic like a SAN, where the cost of changing even if its a crock of dung is too high, to a laptop provider that lasts a 6 months before been changed. My hunch would be that the SAN provider takes the piss, but it would be interesting to see by how much. Obviously the desktop OS provider has those same abilities to lock in.

[Astridax93]

Regarding retail vs oem, simple - manufacturers selling a computer to joe bloggs only need a licence that'll last the computer. He's not going to upgrade the computer and keep the OS. By the time he upgrades there'll probably be a new one out. So a discounted version for those who'll only use it once - or rather, a more expensive version for those who are willing to pay to use their copy of Windows on more than one motherboard when upgrade time comes. Makes business sense, although it is a bit on the cheeky side from any other point of view.

Sorry for the slight ramble.

Oem is only for people who don't upgrade their machines! I thought it was opposite. Ok fair enough when you buy a machine, it comes with an OEM copy. However, I built my machine and bought a student copy and I'm always upgrading my computer. Like hell is that retail, it's identical to OEM. I didn't even get a box, mine came in a paper CD holder in the post. The only people I have seen buy retail is people who shop in PC World.

OEM: Windows Ultimate: £149.99
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=SW-131-MS

Retail: Windows Ultimate £179.99
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=SW-123-MS

The price difference has reduced a lot since launch. There was a time in PC World when a copy of retail Ultimate was around £300!

So essentially I am paying £30 extra for a box and some telephone support from Microsoft that comes with the retail version.

Still it begs the question as to why the OEM version without support from Microsoft, is £149.99!

[MSIC]

Think of OEM as tied to a motherboard. You can upgrade and swap so far within an OEM licence, but once you change the motherboard you need a new OEM licence.
So a retail copy can actually make very good financial sense for most people who post on Hexus.

[miniyazz]

Think of OEM as tied to a motherboard. You can upgrade and swap so far within an OEM licence, but once you change the motherboard you need a new OEM licence.
So a retail copy can actually make very good financial sense for most people who post on Hexus.

This. Buying a retail version allows you to reuse the license key with a new motherboard.

[miniyazz]

When? To the best of my knowledge, only OGA was abandoned, WGA is still in place.

Oops, my bad

[crossy]

Think of OEM as tied to a motherboard. You can upgrade and swap so far within an OEM licence, but once you change the motherboard you need a new OEM licence.
So a retail copy can actually make very good financial sense for most people who post on Hexus.

That was my understanding too - there were a certain number of changes you were allowed before MS would refuse to activate automatically. And then you'd have to speak to support and "justify" why you should continue to be allowed to use the license. So you could reactivate on a mobo change, providing it was a swap due to failure, so moving from Asus to Gigabyte was okay; moving from 1156 to 1366 chips would not be.

Similarly, Astridax93, there's restrictions placed on the use of the 'student' license. So those of us who were admiring those fancy new i486 chips @ college wouldn't have this as a possibility, (where's me zimmer?). I've also heard that MS are - on occasion - blocking folks from using a student license ostensibly bought for/by a member of the family, e.g. no "student" license granted for a five year old.

By the way, do "upgrades" still need to see physical media, or is having a license key enough? I've got a 2nd-hand lappy here with the usual XP license key underneath and was wondering whether that qualifies me for a 7Ultimate upgrade (need Ultimate I think because it's the only one that's allowed on VM's)

[jim]

I've only ever had to "justify" it to a computer, so it hasn't been particularly challenging.

"How many computers do you have this copy of Windows installed on? Press 1 for 'one', press 2 for 'two'..."

From there on it's a battle of intelligence really.