Vista Retail or OEM

[peterb]

Why don't MS make one Vista, for £50 that serves all purposes and can be re-installed as many times as possible? Reason = they are greedy gits!!

Because if they only sold one version (which would be Vista Ultimate) you might be a tad miffed at paying around £350 for a load of facilities you neither need nor want.

But if you don't like MS's licensing terms and prices - don't buy them - it isn't mandatory!

[directhex]

Why dont Nero and umpteen other software developers produce 8 different versions of their software? No need as one does it all. And they aren't greedy gits!!

nero comes in both boxed and oem versions, so i don't really see your point

[Koolpc]

nero comes in both boxed and oem versions, so i don't really see your point

They don't charge the earth for their top product!

Also, why don't Microsoft just make one OS for everyone that has that anyone would ever want for £50 instead of £300+

One product where people can choose what they want for one price! Easy except MS are greedy, simple. They have lots of people working on their software but no need to charge so much. Look at most of MS software, all comes in zillions of different versions!! This is how Bill gates is rich!!

I don't mind paying for an MS product. Don't expect me to pay again just because i have changed my mobo etc! It is a rip off to have to pay again and again.

[directhex]

They don't charge the earth for their top product!

Also, why don't Microsoft just make one OS for everyone that has that anyone would ever want for £50 instead of £300+

One product where people can choose what they want for one price! Easy except MS are greedy, simple. They have lots of people working on their software but no need to charge so much. Look at most of MS software, all comes in zillions of different versions!! This is how Bill gates is rich!!

I don't mind paying for an MS product. Don't expect me to pay again just because i have changed my mobo etc! It is a rip off to have to pay again and again.

as stated, why don't nvidia just make one graphics card for £50?

estimates of the cost of development of vista put it at $10,000,000,000. assuming profit margin on a box of windows is about cost-of-sale minus 40 quid, give or take, then with your pricing they need to sell 500 million copies of vista to break even. that assumes they fire their entire staff today, and never want to develop a new version, given they need to fund that new version from somewhere

and then there's the minor issue of the rebellion from stockholders if they intentionally sabotaged profits when the market would happily accept higher prices

[Koolpc]

as stated, why don't nvidia just make one graphics card for £50?

estimates of the cost of development of vista put it at $10,000,000,000. assuming profit margin on a box of windows is about cost-of-sale minus 40 quid, give or take, then with your pricing they need to sell 500 million copies of vista to break even. that assumes they fire their entire staff today, and never want to develop a new version, given they need to fund that new version from somewhere

and then there's the minor issue of the rebellion from stockholders if they intentionally sabotaged profits when the market would happily accept higher prices

Just an excuse to up the price to a rediculous amount.

As for Nvidia, that is hardware. Different ball game.

[directhex]

Just an excuse to up the price to a rediculous amount.

As for Nvidia, that is hardware. Different ball game.

why? an 8800 ultra costs more because it has more silicon. vista ultimate costs more because it has more features - and those programmers need to have been paid somehow. ultimate was more expensive to develop than home basic

and whilst there's an issue of initial vs ongoing costs between the two examples above, it really doesn't change matters significantly

how much experience do you have in managing multi-billion dollar product developments, since you feel so qualified to comment on vista's "rediculous" pricing and lack of singular version?

[Salazaar]

Just an excuse to up the price to a rediculous amount.

As for Nvidia, that is hardware. Different ball game.

That's called capitalism, don't like it? Get Linux or move to China.

[kalniel]

I build systems and Microsoft’s licensing has changed quite a lot on the introduction of Vista.
Firstly the "just buy any internal pc part to use an OEM" has gone.
Microsoft now requires an OEM to require a whole machine.
your not even really suposed to be able to buy it without being a licenced reseller.

My understanding (which is probably out of date) was different to the above.

I know they originally wanted to require a whole machine for OEM, but I thought they had since backtracked on this. As for the licensed reseller are you sure you mean that and are not going into the system builder thing? To legally buy the System Builder OEM you are meant to be a system builder, for which there is a microsoft partner registration you can go through - I don't think this is an absolute requirement though or you would have to provide your partnership details before purchasing the OEM from the approved retailer (like SCAN). If you build a system with a system builder OEM then you can only sell that windows license on as part of a fully assembled computer - this doesn't AFAIK mean that you have to have bought any of those components at the same time as the license for the purposes of your system building. Hence you can purchase a System Builders OEM license and 1dvd pack, build a computer with it out of whatever components you like, and sell it to yourself or anyone else you were building it for.

[Phillikon]

My understanding (which is probably out of date) was different to the above.

I know they originally wanted to require a whole machine for OEM, but I thought they had since backtracked on this. As for the licensed reseller are you sure you mean that and are not going into the system builder thing? To legally buy the System Builder OEM you are meant to be a system builder, for which there is a microsoft partner registration you can go through - I don't think this is an absolute requirement though or you would have to provide your partnership details before purchasing the OEM from the approved retailer (like SCAN). If you build a system with a system builder OEM then you can only sell that windows license on as part of a fully assembled computer - this doesn't AFAIK mean that you have to have bought any of those components at the same time as the license for the purposes of your system building. Hence you can purchase a System Builders OEM license and 1dvd pack, build a computer with it out of whatever components you like, and sell it to yourself or anyone else you were building it for.

You may be right, you need to a MS partner/reseller to be able to sell it on (as in scans case) it has been a while since I have read the licence through (surprise surprise) .
But I believe the rest of what I said still stands true.

[Splash]

Just an excuse to up the price to a rediculous amount.

As for Nvidia, that is hardware. Different ball game.

Why is it? You compare an application to an OS, I compare an OS to a piece of hardware.

Let's take a look at the functionality - to be honest I'd like to be able to just buy Nero Burning Rom out of this list (taken straight from the Nero website)

Applications Included
The following applications are included in Nero 8:
Nero Mobile – Media Center for Mobile Devices*
Nero Home 3 – Media Management System
Nero Scout – Database Technology
Nero StartSmart 8 – One-Click Project Launcher
Nero Burning ROM 8 – Expert CD and DVD Burning
Nero Express 8 – Easy Interface CD and DVD Burning
Nero WaveEditor 4 – Audio Editing and Recording
Nero SoundTrax 3 – Professional Audio Mixing
Nero Vision 5 – Video Editing and Authoring
Nero Recode 3 – The World’s Fastest Video Converter
Nero ShowTime 4 – DVD and Multimedia Player
Nero MediaHome 3 – UPnP™ Streaming Solution
Nero ControlCenter – Simplified Customization and Configuration
Nero PhotoSnap – Photo Editing
Nero PhotoSnap Viewer – Photo Viewing
Nero CoverDesigner 3 – CD and DVD Label Design
Nero BackItUp 3 – Complete Backup Solution
Nero ImageDrive 3 – Virtual Drive Setup
Nero DiscSpeed 4 – Improve Optical Drive Performance
Nero DriveSpeed 3 – Complete Optical Drive Control
Nero RescueAgent – Improved File Recovery
Nero BurnRights – Easily Deployable Burning Rights
Nero InfoTool 5 – Drive and Disc Analysis
InCD 5 – Packet Writing Solution
SecurDisc Viewer – View SecurDisc protected files

Why should I have to pay for all that junk that I'll never use? Microsoft are giving the end user the choice which you seem to think is a bad thing.

[dangel]

Nero - once a great (little) app, now a victim of it's own success and effectively bloatware. You know things have gone south when you see Nero "lite" online.

[Splash]

To be honest I now use the far cleaner CDBurnerXP (free, from CDBurnerXP: Introduction and News).

But I digress - who in their right mind wants to pay for stuff that they'll neither need or use?

[Koolpc]

Still, MS do over-charge for Vista. Whichever way you look at it.

[directhex]

Still, MS do over-charge for Vista. Whichever way you look at it.

as compared to what?

[Splash]

Still, MS do over-charge for Vista. Whichever way you look at it.

Do you think they overcharged for XP? How about Windows 2000? Server 2003? Office?

[dangel]

as compared to what?

Tricky one that - OSX? Can't really as Apple make money on the hardware whereas MS don't. Linux is free. Not a lot to choose from as a yardstick. Obviously comparing it to a cd burning app isn't though.

I do think Vista could be priced more agressively, and I do think there's too many versions (and a lot of confusion on what's really needed as a result. Also, licencing and production activation is hard work for your average punter obviously - all we see is questons over OEM licencing and PA has just proved to be a PR nightmare for MS (hence the SP1 changes).