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by Elliotte Rusty Harold.
Original Post: Microsoft is Leaving Money on the Table
Feed Title: Mokka mit Schlag
Feed URL: http://www.elharo.com/blog/feed/atom/?
Feed Description: Ranting and Raving
If Windows were priced similarly to Mac OS X, I would have by now bought at least one full copy each of XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Instead the last non-bundled Windows I bought was Windows 2000 right before XP came out. It’s too damned expensive, and the DRM is too annoying. In fact, I can buy a full computer with Windows for roughly the cost of one Windows 7 license; but I can’t reuse the software on my Mac in Parallels or Bootcamp so I won’t even do that.
If someone cracked Windows 7 activation so I could use it on multiple machines, maybe I could bring myself to pay the $250+ Microsoft wants for a copy; but as is I’ll just do without. Looks like someone’s selling old copies of Vista Home Basic for $99 and Ultimate for $135. Maybe I’ll grab one of those. XP costs $90-300 if you can even find a copy.
Checking prices on Amazon today, Windows 7 Professional retails for about $250 and Windows 7 Ultimate costs around $300. Even an upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate costs almost $200. By way of contrast, Mac OS X Snow Leopard costs about $25; there’s no annoying activation to fight with; and you can install it clean on as many machines as you like. If you want to pay a little more attention to the legalese, then you can buy a 5-license family pack for under $50. The current version of Windows is literally 10 times as expensive as the current version of Mac OS X, and that’s being generous to Windows. If we compare to Ultimate edition instead, Windows is twelve times as expensive. If we want to install it on 5 computers, it’s 20-24 times as expensive. Perhaps I’m being a little unfair since Apple’s tight control of hardware means pretty much all Mac OS X sales are upgrades, but even then the cheapest Windows 7 Upgrade is more than 3 times as expensive as Snow Leopard. How’d that happen? Weren’t PCs supposed to be cheaper?
I’ll tell you what happened: Microsoft still has an effective monopoly on PC operating systems, and they’re protecting it. While the price of most software is going down, the price of Windows is going up. Office is below $100, but there’s real competition for word processors and spreadsheets. There’s no competition for Windows Mac OS X won’t run on most PC hardware, and desktop Linux is a failed project. Microsoft figure sit can make more money squeezing people who ar elocked into their platform than by selling a few extra copies to folks like me who have a choice.
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