Windows Vista retail doomed unless Microsoft cuts prices?

[Bob Crabtree]

It's starting to look as thought Microsoft has finally twigged that the retail launch of Windows Vista at the end of the month is likely to be an almighty flop, at least in the USA and Canada, but the company seems to be ignoring the consequence of inflated prices in the rest of the world.

We like Vista a lot but think it's going to bomb at its launch unless prices are massively cut in the next 11 days.

Check out this HEXUS.lifestyle.opinion and feel free here to agree, disagree or just sit on the fence casting verbals.


See this news story for an update - 'Retail' OEM versions ease Vista-upgrade pricing pain - which is also reference lower down this thread.

[arthurleung]

Retailers are just adding salt to injury to rack up price even more.

The retailers will be even happier if M$ do indeed reduce the price as market wish, because there will be at least some person who pre-ordered not knowing the price drop and pay at the previous (double inflated) price.

I think microsoft is trying to do the same thing as hardware manufacturers. i.e. Massively inflated Core2Duo, 8800GTS/GTX launch price.

Price will come down once everyone in the higher end of the spectrum bought their "premium" copy at "premium" price.

[Syn]

I have personally purchased the OEM Ultimate from overclockers.co.uk. In the end it cost me £141 with overnight shipping (i got an email tonight saying its been shipped it should arrive by monday at latest). Now to think that NA is getting the RETAIL copy for £100 less is bit wrong. To be honest i dont care about the fancy packaging but i do care about the licence. Due to me having to upgrade my PC for the DX10 era i am going to have purchase a new copy at the end of this year as i will have to get AM2+ based motherboard. Now the way i saw it at first was i am getting OEM which is less then half price of RETAIL currently. At the end of the year the price of OEM should have gone down even further and i could purchase another copy and still not pay as much as i would pay for a RETAIL today.

The prices of this OS are higher in EU but i have to admit that i think the EU it self is to blame. EU last year has done nothing but made MS give them millions of pounds in fines so that they would make a version of XP that none ever bought. I say this is MS telling us that they didnt like that very much and now WE the consumers are going to have to pay back all those millions MS had to pay to EU.

Also i looked at the prices for the OSX Tiger and they are cheaper. But if you compare Tiger without any extras added on which makes Tiger not matching to the Ultimate but to more Home Premium and the prices are pretty much even.

(Tiger UK £139.00 , Tiger US $199.00 , Converted Price US>UK amounts to £100.93)

The price variation between two continents is pretty big, but i bet you that MS can justify it, which is probably the reason for such prices.

Plus i dont believe that Mac Platform can justify its self to Windows Platform at the moment, sure the OSX it self might be better but the platform as a whole is 2nd best.

[Bob Crabtree]

Retailers are just adding salt to injury to rack up price even more.

The retailers will be even happier if M$ do indeed reduce the price as market wish, because there will be at least some person who pre-ordered not knowing the price drop and pay at the previous (double inflated) price.

I think microsoft is trying to do the same thing as hardware manufacturers. i.e. Massively inflated Core2Duo, 8800GTS/GTX launch price.

Price will come down once everyone in the higher end of the spectrum bought their "premium" copy at "premium" price.

Really, honestly, I think these premium buyers are not going to buy - but we'll know soon enough whether I'm right.

[charleski]

EU last year has done nothing but made MS give them millions of pounds in fines so that they would make a version of XP that none ever bought. I say this is MS telling us that they didnt like that very much and now WE the consumers are going to have to pay back all those millions MS had to pay to EU.

I think Australian pricing for Vista is even worse.

[Bob Crabtree]

I have personally purchased the OEM Ultimate from overclockers.co.uk. In the end it cost me £141 with overnight shipping (i got an email tonight saying its been shipped it should arrive by monday at latest). Now to think that NA is getting the RETAIL copy for £100 less is bit wrong.

To be honest i dont care about the fancy packaging but i do care about the licence. Due to me having to upgrade my PC for the DX10 era i am going to have purchase a new copy at the end of this year as i will have to get AM2+ based motherboard.

Now the way i saw it at first was i am getting OEM which is less then half price of RETAIL currently. At the end of the year the price of OEM should have gone down even further and i could purchase another copy and still not pay as much as i would pay for a RETAIL today.

The problem with buy an OEM version of Vista - as I understand it (and this is why I made no mention of OEM prices in the piece) - is that unlike the retail version, you will not be able to migrate the OS from one PC to another; it will be locked to one PC, or so the story goes.

And that is a serious restriction for a good number of the people who might want to buy Vista retail - the more so if, as you say, you are still paying £141 for the pleasure.

The prices of this OS are higher in EU but i have to admit that i think the EU it self is to blame. EU last year has done nothing but made MS give them millions of pounds in fines so that they would make a version of XP that none ever bought. I say this is MS telling us that they didnt like that very much and now WE the consumers are going to have to pay back all those millions MS had to pay to EU.

Ah, right, so MS falls foul of the law and so dumps on us.

Three rousing cheers for Microsoft, then?

No, I don't think so.

I'm not saying that what the EU did made a great deal of sense to me but I think that Microsoft's own behaviour did bring upon the company the massive fines and other sanctions that were applied.

Also i looked at the prices for the OSX Tiger and they are cheaper. But if you compare Tiger without any extras added on which makes Tiger not matching to the Ultimate but to more Home Premium and the prices are pretty much even.

(Tiger UK £139.00 , Tiger US $199.00 , Converted Price US>UK amounts to £100.93)

Er, I'm trying to think what's missing from Tiger that is found in Ultimate and not found in XP MCE and I'm coming up short.

I'm not saying you're wrong just that I don't know, specifically, what you think is missing.

As for the pricing - and remember what set me off on one today was the get-two-more-for-$50-each deal offered only to US & Canadian buyers - did you realise that UK price you quote for OS X (£139) is for the Family Pack, which lets you install the OS on up to FIVE Macs!

By my reckoning, that's £27.80 a copy - and the £139 price from the Apple Store does include free delivery!

If you just bought the one-Mac license, the cost is £89 but if you later decided that you wanted, say, to use that OS on two further Macs, you could still buy the Family Pack any time for £139 and you'd still be paying only £69.95 per upgraded Mac.

The price variation between two continents is pretty big, but i bet you that MS can justify it, which is probably the reason for such prices.

You tell me, if you can, what the difference is between the version you'd buy in the UK and version you'd buy in the USA.

If it's like XP - and I'm sure it will be - there will be no difference.

So what are we paying for?

The higher cost of distributing around the UK, rather than the USA?

The higher cost of the Indian-continent call centres that Microsoft UK uses relative to the Indian-continent call centres that Microsoft USA uses?

Really, I don't see that Microsoft could justify the price differentials even if it tried very hard - and it's never done that in my experience.

Plus i dont believe that Mac Platform can justify its self to Windows Platform at the moment, sure the OSX it self might be better but the platform as a whole is 2nd best.

Sorry but I simply don't agree.

Some members of the Mac hardware family are more expensive to buy into than Windows equivalents but the hardware platform itself absolutely is not second-best, quite the opposite.

Every single new Mac computer you can buy is based on a new-generation Intel CPU and every one of them can run OS X and Windows XP natively (from different partitions).

That's a really, seriously tempting proposition.

And, you just need to look inside and around a top-end Mac desktop machine to realise that it's a whole lot nicer and better than any Windows desktop PC you can buy.

Okay, there are some Windows machine that will be using CPUs not available yet on Macs but if money were no object I'd go for the Mac every time - though reckon I'd use XP on it for the majority of the time

Now start to look down the Mac range.

There's the iMac family of one-piece machines which are better than any comparable Windows PC (not that there is anything that's really comparable) and, remember, each of them can run Windows XP if you want it to.

Then there's the mini - cute as a barrelful of kittens but smaller (and able to run XP better than the barrel can).

Of course, it could be argued that the reason why Apple can sell Mac OS X far more cheaply than Microsoft plans to sell Vista is because Apple makes all that lovely lolly from overpriced Mac hardware.

But that doesn't stack up all the way across the line.

Take Apple's range of laptops.

This, as I recall, includes a number of models that offer equivalent feature-sets to Dell models costing considerably more.

Believe me, I'm not a Mac apologist - Apple's felt the hard side of my word-processor more times than I like to recall - but the pricing of OS X was a relevant factor for me to throw into the argument about Vista's inflated pricing.

[excalibur2]

I have personally purchased the OEM Ultimate from overclockers.co.uk. In the end it cost me £141 with overnight shipping (i got an email tonight saying its been shipped it should arrive by monday at latest). Now to think that NA is getting the RETAIL copy for £100 less is bit wrong. To be honest i dont care about the fancy packaging but i do care about the licence. Due to me having to upgrade my PC for the DX10 era i am going to have purchase a new copy at the end of this year as i will have to get AM2+ based motherboard. Now the way i saw it at first was i am getting OEM which is less then half price of RETAIL currently. At the end of the year the price of OEM should have gone down even further and i could purchase another copy and still not pay as much as i would pay for a RETAIL today.

No one has forced you to buy Vista, so why complain. You weren't exactly stuck without an OS, or do you think winxp was useless for your needs ATM.

[Bob Crabtree]

I think Australian pricing for Vista is even worse.

From the various comments I've read from our Aussie cousins, EVERYTHING PC-related costs more than here.

I always say to them, though, that it's the price they have to pay for living in such a nice place.

They usually end up having to agree.

And, working on that theory, you'd imagine that the good folk who think that the USA is God's Own Country would fully expect to pay more for things than we do in the UK but they never seem to accept that line of reasoning.

[Syn]

No one has forced you to buy Vista, so why complain. You weren't exactly stuck without an OS, or do you think winxp was useless for your needs ATM.

i did NOT complain, quite contrary i cant wait to install it

The problem with buy an OEM version of Vista - as I understand it (and this is why I made no mention of OEM prices in the piece) - is that unlike the retail version, you will not be able to migrate the OS from one PC to another; it will be locked to one PC, or so the story goes.

And that is a serious restriction for a good number of the people who might want to buy Vista retail - the more so if, as you say, you are still paying £141 for the pleasure.

For general PC user they wont care about Retail, hell most of them wont even get any kind of Vista DVD when they buy their PC. The people that will care about the licence are those build PC's them selfs, as i do. Even thou i do build my self and understand that once you activate Vista OEM on one motherboard that's it, i still prefer the OEM version due to its price. As i said i will upgrade again soon as AMD's X4 CPU's come out. Now there are some that do it more often and they will need to get Retail, now that type of person is a minority when it comes to PC users.

This licensing we can thank ourselves. The reason being because previous version of Windows where constantly pirated and many of us didnt mind running a pirated version so MS took it a step further or as some would say too far.

Ah, right, so MS falls foul of the law and so dumps on us.

Three rousing cheers for Microsoft, then?

No, I don't think so.

I'm not saying that what the EU did made a great deal of sense to me but I think that Microsoft's own behaviour did bring upon the company the massive fines and other sanctions that were applied.

Care to point out what MS behaviour in perticilur was that made EU fine them?

Er, I'm trying to think what's missing from Tiger that is found in Ultimate and not found in XP MCE and I'm coming up short.

I'm not saying you're wrong just that I don't know, specifically, what you think is missing.

As for the pricing - and remember what set me off on one today was the get-two-more-for-$50-each deal offered only to US & Canadian buyers - did you realise that UK price you quote for OS X (£139) is for the Family Pack, which lets you install the OS on up to FIVE Macs!

By my reckoning, that's £27.80 a copy - and the £139 price from the Apple Store does include free delivery!

If you just bought the one-Mac license, the cost is £89 but if you later decided that you wanted, say, to use that OS on two further Macs, you could still buy the Family Pack any time for £139 and you'd still be paying only £69.95 per upgraded Mac.

I checked the "Family Pack" deal after i posted, i agree that the licence for Mac OSX is much better to Windows, but then you dont see that many pirated OSX copies around, that might change now that they moved off PowerPC arch.

Oh and many people refer the iLife pack when they talk about Vista features, its an add-on that costs more money, which is why i said that.

You tell me, if you can, what the difference is between the version you'd buy in the UK and version you'd buy in the USA.

If it's like XP - and I'm sure it will be - there will be no difference.

So what are we paying for?

The higher cost of distributing around the UK, rather than the USA?

The higher cost of the Indian-continent call centres that Microsoft UK uses relative to the Indian-continent call centres that Microsoft USA uses?

Really, I don't see that Microsoft could justify the price differentials even if it tried very hard - and it's never done that in my experience.

Same reason why people in US pay £100 for OSX and we pay £139.

Sorry but I simply don't agree.

Some members of the Mac hardware family are more expensive to buy into than Windows equivalents but the hardware platform itself absolutely is not second-best, quite the opposite.

When i said platform i mean everything to do with Windows, so anything that touches on Windows is much better overall then what we can get with Mac.

You talk about higher build quality that Mac's have. Dont you think that's bit obvious? Can you build a Mac your self?

Windows hardware is like Open Source and Mac Hardware is completely closed off. If you want to upgrade your Mac what do you do?

The way you describe Mac computer to me sounds more like its a High-End PC with Apple logo and it comes with OS X preinstalled. The Mac is now the PC equivalent of consuel its specifications are preset by the manufacturer and its offered in different models. That my friend is no way a positive reason, if it was then most popular PC's sold would be those made by Vodoo and Alienware.

As I meantiend before i build my own PC's as i know that because of the open windows hardware many PC makers take too many liberty's. As you say Dell charges more for same hardware and yet they install bloatware.

If you want i can write to you a whole essay on why Windows is the dominant OS in the world, but the summery of it would something like this:

Windows is number 1 OS because MS invests back in YOU.

[Bob Crabtree]

The problem with buy an OEM version of Vista - as I understand it (and this is why I made no mention of OEM prices in the piece) - is that unlike the retail version, you will not be able to migrate the OS from one PC to another; it will be locked to one PC, or so the story goes.

And that is a serious restriction for a good number of the people who might want to buy Vista retail - the more so if, as you say, you are still paying £141 for the pleasure.

For general PC user they wont care about Retail, hell most of them wont even get any kind of Vista DVD when they buy their PC.

My view is that they won't even know what OEM is, so will go along to PC World (or similar) and buy the inflated-price retail stuff - or, rather, see the price and not buy.

The people that will care about the licence are those build PC's them selfs, as i do. Even thou i do build my self and understand that once you activate Vista OEM on one motherboard that's it, i still prefer the OEM version due to its price. As i said i will upgrade again soon as AMD's X4 CPU's come out. Now there are some that do it more often and they will need to get Retail, now that type of person is a minority when it comes to PC users.

Not arguing but would point out, again, that you've paid £141 for an OS than can only be installed on one machine, and the fact that you opted for OEM knowing this just highlights the rip-off nature of the retail pricing

This licensing we can thank ourselves. The reason being because previous version of Windows where constantly pirated and many of us didnt mind running a pirated version so MS took it a step further or as some would say too far.

You have a charmingly rose-tinted view of Microsoft.

Microsoft was perfectly happy for earlier versions of its OSs and applications to be pirated because it believed - correctly - that that piracy would help make them the most widely used. And, at a time when it saw fit, the company then put in place online registration of XP and versions of Office later than 2000 that started to take serious advantage of the ubiquity.

Microsoft, of course, wasn't the only company to do this but it wrote the book that so many others now follow.

How many programs do you know of that started off with copy protection and managed to establish themselves in the No.1 slot in a mass-market area in desktop X86 PCs?

Ah, right, so MS falls foul of the law and so dumps on us.

Three rousing cheers for Microsoft, then?

No, I don't think so.

I'm not saying that what the EU did made a great deal of sense to me but I think that Microsoft's own behaviour did bring upon the company the massive fines and other sanctions that were applied.

Care to point out what MS behaviour in perticilur was that made EU fine them?

It's a matter of record - go look at the record.

Er, I'm trying to think what's missing from Tiger that is found in Ultimate and not found in XP MCE and I'm coming up short.

I'm not saying you're wrong just that I don't know, specifically, what you think is missing.

As for the pricing - and remember what set me off on one today was the get-two-more-for-$50-each deal offered only to US & Canadian buyers - did you realise that UK price you quote for OS X (£139) is for the Family Pack, which lets you install the OS on up to FIVE Macs!

By my reckoning, that's £27.80 a copy - and the £139 price from the Apple Store does include free delivery!

If you just bought the one-Mac license, the cost is £89 but if you later decided that you wanted, say, to use that OS on two further Macs, you could still buy the Family Pack any time for £139 and you'd still be paying only £69.95 per upgraded Mac.

I checked the "Family Pack" deal after i posted, i agree that the licence for Mac OSX is much better to Windows, but then you dont see that many pirated OSX copies around, that might change now that they moved off PowerPC arch.

But my point was that the pricing for Mac OS X is massively cheaper than for XP and, therefore, it was appropriate for me to mention this.

Oh and many people refer the iLife pack when they talk about Vista features, its an add-on that costs more money, which is why i said that.

No, iLife isn't really an add-in to OS X, it's a suite of optional apps - image editor, movie editor, DVD author, music editor, web authoring.

You tell me, if you can, what the difference is between the version you'd buy in the UK and version you'd buy in the USA.

If it's like XP - and I'm sure it will be - there will be no difference.

So what are we paying for?

The higher cost of distributing around the UK, rather than the USA?

The higher cost of the Indian-continent call centres that Microsoft UK uses relative to the Indian-continent call centres that Microsoft USA uses?

Really, I don't see that Microsoft could justify the price differentials even if it tried very hard - and it's never done that in my experience.

Same reason why people in US pay £100 for OSX and we pay £139.

I'm afraid you are failing totally to answer the question.

The fact is that in the instance you've chosen to quote, the differential between Apple USA and Apple UK is, in percentage terms, far lower than between Microsoft in the USA and Microsoft in the UK (assuming we know roughly the cost of Vista versions in the UK).

What you've also forgotten is to take account of VAT - which needs to be added to the US price if we are to compare Apples with Apples, as it were.

Do that and the US price is now equivalent to £118.50 - and so we'd be paying £20.50 more.

That's 14.8 per cent extra - and 14.8 per cent more than I like - but that 14.8 per cent/£20.50 isn't in the same ball park as the differentials between the price of Vista here and in the USA, assuming the figures for UK pricing of Vista are about right.

Sorry but I simply don't agree.

Some members of the Mac hardware family are more expensive to buy into than Windows equivalents but the hardware platform itself absolutely is not second-best, quite the opposite.

When i said platform i mean everything to do with Windows, so anything that touches on Windows is much better overall then what we can get with Mac.

That's demonstrably untrue.

You talk about higher build quality that Mac's have. Dont you think that's bit obvious? Can you build a Mac your self?

Nope - but there's far less reason to want to when what's available ready-built is so much better. And, realise, please, that the sort of people who do build their own PCs are a small minority of the community of Windows users, albeit one that HEXUS.net addresses full on.

Windows hardware is like Open Source and Mac Hardware is completely closed off. If you want to upgrade your Mac what do you do?

Well, those who like to do this sort of thing for fun could argue there are fewer upgrade possibilities with a Mac and in one sense, that's true, but the counterpoint is that there is a lot less in a Mac that you might need or want to upgrade -though rather more now that Apple has switch to Intel.

But, if we list out what you can readily upgrade, the main ones are the RAM, the graphics card, the optical drive and the hard drives - though you can really only upgrade the last three easily with the tower-format desktop Macs.

The way you describe Mac computer to me sounds more like its a High-End PC with Apple logo and it comes with OS X preinstalled. The Mac is now the PC equivalent of consuel its specifications are preset by the manufacturer and its offered in different models. That my friend is no way a positive reason, if it was then most popular PC's sold would be those made by Vodoo and Alienware.

If you had ever had hands on with top-end desktop Mac hardware, I know you would not mention Macs in the same breath as Alienware (I know nothing about Voodoo PCs, so can't comment).

But, remember, although HEXUS.net addresses the PC hardware enthusiast, HEXUS.lifestyle has a more general reader in mind and that reader is more like the typical home computer user who will, in the main, upgrade only those things on a PC that do not involve opening the case.

That includes upgrading the OS and software and adding a whole bunch of external goodies (mainly USB) - hard drives or burners, web cams, stick TV tuners, stick video-capture devices, USB memory-card readers and so on.

As I meantiend before i build my own PC's as i know that because of the open windows hardware many PC makers take too many liberty's. As you say Dell charges more for same hardware and yet they install bloatware.

But, you need to know that your view is NOT the view of the majority of home computer users who are likely to have to make a decision about what operating system they upgrade to.

If you want i can write to you a whole essay on why Windows is the dominant OS in the world, but the summery of it would something like this:

Windows is number 1 OS because MS invests back in YOU.

I don't think you have studied the history of the personal computer industry very closely.

Windows is number one for a number of reasons but yours is not one that would figure highly on my list or the list of anyone else who is familiar with the history of the industry.

Top of the pile is the fact that the IBM PC compatible architecture allowed the development by a whole bunch of competing PC builders of low-cost machines built from low-cost components - and Microsoft rather piggybacked on that whole thing.

Microsoft did do some clever things to get itself to the top spot in operating systems (and some downright nasty things, too) but Microsoft investments were largely aimed at benefiting Microsoft not YOU.

That said, I love XP to pieces and, for preference do use MS Word and Excel rather than any competing packages (though my email program of choice is Thunderbird, not Outlook or Outlook Express, and my browser of choice is Firefox, not Internet Explorer.

As an historical aside, Apple did at one time start down a sort of open hardware route (way after the validity of such a strategy was established by the IBM PC compatible architecture) but Steve Jobs killed that move on his return to Apple and it's only now with the move to Intel CPUs (that is, in a way, a move towards a more open architecture) that we are seeing Apple starting to actually grow the volume of its Mac computer sales - though the speed of performance of Intel CPUs relative to their IBM and Motorola forerunners is more important in this sales growth than any additional openness.

[Hawat]

I see that overclockers.co.uk has a release date for vista ultimate as 23-01-2007, isn't it supposed to be released the 30-01-2007 ?

[Syn]

I see that overclockers.co.uk has a release date for vista ultimate as 23-01-2007, isn't it supposed to be released the 30-01-2007 ?

I asked them and they said that official launch date is 31/01/07 and that if i get it any sooner than that i should think of it as a bonus.


Bob Crabtree,

OEM part we agree on

My POV for Microsoft is not rosy at all i just dont agree with your argument against.

Online Activation, just think about it. If you create any kind of protection but you keep outside of an area that you can monitor it will get hacked. However by keeping part of the protection on your hardware that you can control then hackers will have very hard time of cracking your protection.

Now while i may have different POV about MS then you but you my friend are down right biased. Conspiracy theories are just that, theories. MS was never happy with only 40% of people using their software to have obtained it legally and with each version of software they levelled up deferences. Now when most people are online everyone will start using this form of protection and not because MS done it first, they will use it because its the best form of copy protection people have at the moment.

On the EU point you say its a matter of record, what record can you just it was because they included Media Player, Messenger and Internet Explorer with every copy of windows? Come on! What kind of monopoly is that? Every OS out there comes with Media and Online applications as standard none of them are getting sued. I personally dont use Media Player i prefer WinAMP, when it comes to DVD's i always used PowerDVD. For online used IE when it was the best option now i use Firefox+IE+Opera and i used to use ICQ instead of Messenger. I was kid that just got a PC for the first time i managed to find my self other software to use instead of the default ones, now tell me if MS did such a bad monopoly on all of us why didnt everyone get a copy of the cut down version of XP?

Mac OS X was developed in stages, and over it years they kept releasing updates. MS made Vista as one big update and instead of paying for new update little bit each year you pay it all at once. MS has said they wont do that again and will now have small updates like OS X.

When people reffered to features of Vista they said that iLife pack, what ever it is, brings those features to OS X. I am just pointing out that if are going to compare prices you should make sure that the features match.

I made a simple point, without any VAT or what not people in US pay the equivalent of £100 to start with, without VAT or anything else, pure and simple comparison. In UK that same starting price is £39.99 more. Which is why i said that same reason why Vista is higher priced in UK is the same reason why Apple priced OS X more.

Hardware wise i just checked the Mac Pro, it comes with C2Q but hey they stick in a 7300GS as STANDARD? And you say there isnt much you would want to upgrade in Mac OS X?

That is in a way true, because its apples and oranges. The Mac platform is mostly used by professionals while the PC platform is also used by professionals but it has a major addition home users! As they said on CES PC platform is THE gaming platform in world and that means that even Mac Pro, the most powerful PC they offer will not meat the demand of 200 million strong PC users.

The build quality of Mac is totally worthless point to use against a PC because there are so many people making PC's in world that there will be offcourse those made cheaply but then those made with precision. You say you dont know Voodo?

http://www.voodoopc.com/default.aspx

You only believe that MS does nothing for you because from the start you have a biased view of MS which tints your POV about the things they do. Windows aint the only OS that can be used on IBM's PC arch so why arent those dominant as well?

Me and you are trying to compare Win and OSX as if they are the same, the truth of the matter is one is an apple the other an orange. Windows has come to place it is now throu a lot different path then OSX and because of that it will be different. Pricing and Licensing are due to the different ways of development and usage. I bet you this if OS X became the dominant OS from now Apple would employ the same tactics as MS is doing now, knowing Apple they might even go even further.

As you say my POV of MS might be tinted but your view of Apple is unsubstantiated.

[Gordy]

I highly doubt MS will do anything, the retail sales of windows are a sideline to the real deal which is oem.

They aren't going to be bothered about the retail sales unless they are zero, and some people are going to be buying vista.

When you compare it to OS X pricing, MS are getting very close to being suicidal in pushing people over to the other OS's out there.

I have to buy a copy of vista and run that and windows as otherwise I couldn't support my clients properly. Other than that the only thing keeping me on windows is gaming.

As for OcUK releasing it early, I'd imagine MS are not happy about it, but the volumes that OcUK will ship mean that they will do sweet fa about it. That said they managed to make Amazon remove their preorders so who knows.

[Gordy]

Hardware wise i just checked the Mac Pro, it comes with C2Q but hey they stick in a 7300GS as STANDARD? And you say there isnt much you would want to upgrade in Mac OS X?

Seeing as most mac pro's are not bought for gamers the 7300gs is fine for most of the buyers, and there are other cards to upgrade to if needs be.

The mac pro is a small portion of the mac sales, most of it is mac laptops/mini's and iMacs.

[Aurhinius]

Normally I would buy but to be honest if you look at the current lay of the land -

Driver support is none existant, nvidia are just getting their finger out and to be honest nvidia are a major player in hardware.

DX10 games are a long way off once slippage occurs.

Pricing is shocking, just down right shocking. I cannot find the justification. We would have to pay VAT on any direct exchange rate conversion anyway but to inflate it quite as much as they have is crazy.

I will be sticking with XP as long as I possibly can and I think a lot of other people would do the same. £200 on an Os you don't need or a high end graphics card/CPU. I know which one I would buy.

[Tomahawk]

I too couldn't believe the price of Vista and was wondering why such a high price at launch.
I'm not really worried though as I don't feel the need for it, as in my mind it doesn't do anything more than what my current XP system does. So would be a pointless investment.

As said I'd rather spend the couple hundred on a hardware upgrade.

We shall see, it will be interesting to watch.