Comments on: “Vista Fixed Edition” 50 percent off the first day

By: Varun

Varun — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:04:45 +0000

nice post .. with such high prices for an OS piracy will increase .

Win7 seems a lot stable IMHO . Has M$ got it right atlast ?

By: B. Jefferson Le Blanc

B. Jefferson Le Blanc — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:08:13 +0000

I doubt anyone seriously expects it to bomb – most of the early reviews have been positive. Like Snow Leopard, Windows 7 is dropping a lot of legacy code to run leaner. On the other hand, it still lacks substantial incentive to upgrade from XP – at least until the lack of XP support from Microsoft begins to bite. Regardless of how good 7 is, though, the upgrade cost will deter a lot of people – for a while at least. But, just as with Vista, new computer purchases can be expected to insinuate 7 into the marketplace eventually, unless MS gets major blowback from their OEMs. What will be interesting is to see if the cost of 7 to Microsoft’s partners is higher than normal, reflecting the retail cost; if so, all those low cost computer makers will be pinched where it hurts.

The half-price upgrade pre-order sale is bound to appeal to techies; I suppose MS hopes these early adopters will seed their user base and create some upbeat buzz. Still, I suspect Vista has created some serious inertia and considerable resistance to Microsoft’s marketing claims. Most people don’t read the tech media and are unlikely to be aware of, let alone impressed by, 7′s new features. BitLocker? Domain Join? XP Mode 2? Fast language switching? Yawn.

And, of course, a lot depends on how Snow Leopard is received. Microsoft won’t match the price (they have never been deterred by Apple’s OS pricing). But a lot of positive press for Snow Leopard will hurt Microsoft’s pride, if nothing else. It could, at long last, hurt their market share as well. Now that would be news.

By: John Storm

John Storm — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:12:17 +0000

The publicly available release candidate of Windows 7 is pretty solid. It eliminates some of the most frustrating user-experience issues that exist in Vista, and runs faster/leaner on the same hardware. Overall, it is a step in the right direction for Microsoft. However, I still strongly prefer Mac OS X.

What really rubs me the wrong way is the notion that the pre-order discount is only available until July 11th, or “while supplies last”. Guess what, M$, the product doesn’t exist yet, so there’s nothing that can possibly become sold-out! They may indeed have a specific number of upgrades in mind that they are willing to sell at the discounted price, but from a sales/marketing perspective, it’s a completely bogus call to action. I don’t know if many people have picked up on that – What a lame and transparent scare tactic to get people to place their pre-order ASAP.

Finally, I don’t think it’s a moral imperative that Microsoft needs to charge as little for the upgrades to Windows 7 as Apple will for Snow Leopard. If they can’t or won’t compete with Apple’s $29 upgrade price, that is their prerogative. Some people have speculated that MS cannot afford to sell them that inexpensively, and that may very well be true. But despite having a nice product on the brink of release, MS chooses to continue playing games with their customers.

By: Jim Dalrymple

Jim Dalrymple — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:55:12 +0000

I wonder if that would happen if Windows 7 bombs like Vista?

By: Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:16:07 +0000

They priced it so high because Microsoft really wants people to buy new computers with Windows 7 installed. The possibility of PC manufacturers dropping out of the mass licensing program is the only risk to their business.