Amazon has started email-bombing people in the UK with Windows 7 pre-order offers, a little while after a similar pre-order offer was available in the US. Windows 7 is the first version of Windows that I’ve found myself being upbeat about since 2001, so I cheerfully clicked the link. The result was an offer of Windows 7 Professional “E” (the European version with IE removed, congrats EU on fighting an originally well-intentioned battle that ceased to be practically relevant almost a decade ago) for a ‘discounted’ price of £180. Wait, what? £180 for basically Vista how it should have been? And that’s a pre-order discount?
I have several copies of XP and Vista on my bookshelf. The Vista ones currently grace only test machines (although post-SP1 it was somewhat more tolerable to use, if still blissfully flagrant with resources), but nevertheless I own several copies. In the US, there was talk of a $99 limited pre-order offer for an upgrade of Win7 Pro, which is still expensive alongside Snow Leopard’s $29 upgrade (which offers a similar level of refinement), but would still be doable – that pales in comparison to £180 (or $295).
This is actually for a ‘full’ copy, not an upgrade, because the fact is that there will be no upgrade version for Europe. The official excuse is that the “E” version requires a re-install, but anyone with a handful of brain cells to rub together knows that’s a crock; the nuances of the install procedure have little to do with the price that they can offer for the license itself – after all upgrade software has for years been able to be used as a fresh install too, provided you have an original CD from the previous version (I doubt anyone would buy an upgrade copy of Windows if they were unable to reinstall afresh at some point – a regular ritual for many users). No, the lack of an upgrade version, and the pricing policy in general, is blatantly a “screw you” to Europe because of the whole IE debacle.
The original word was that “European customers will be able to buy a full retail version of Windows 7 E at the same price as the usually cheaper upgrade version, at least for the rest of this year” (link). Ok, shame that that ‘upgrade’ price, that limited time ‘special deal’ price, is actually 3 times the price of the limited time upgrade offer that the US had. So in fact what you’re saying is that while the upgrade pre-order already looks extortionate, the price is going to be even higher in 2010.
I’m going to have to buy a copy or two anyway, but jeez, way to make me feel totally ripped off guys. I’m going to be upgrading OS X to Snow Leopard at pretty much the same time, and the price difference is going to be glaring. Microsoft made their name originally by bringing value to the masses. Where did that principle go?
July 18th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
I’m glad I don’t have to buy Windows 7. I burnt to much money on Vista to even bother thinking about buying this version. Vista has got me seriously rechecking Linux and I must say its Kubuntu + KDE 4.3RC2 is amazing. Its fun to use and has some great things that I really don’t want to miss anymore, like the virtual desktops and some of the compositing effects. And you probably can’t argue about the price.
Vista will stay around for gaming but not much else
July 19th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Looks like this is how they are going to recoup the original fine.
Not really surprising … just like with taxes , any fines will always end up being passed on to the public at large.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:26 am
@fusion44: if I was going to run anywhere, it would be to Apple – sure they have their own price premium too, but at least I get some damn sexy hardware in return, as well as an OS I really like to use. But, I still like my Visual Studio and games from Steam, so for now, Windows will still be on my shopping list, I’m just more grudging about it. Windows 7 actually made me feel quite keen on upgrading, but the price hurts.
@warmi: true, where competition doesn’t prevent it. It’s sad that despite all the brouhaha about this, the EU failed to achieve their fundamental objective of improving competiton, by getting stuck on an tiny specific argument (browsers) where commercial competiton became irrelevant. I still think the original US proposal to split MS up into separate businesses made far more sense, and actually would probably have helped MS themselves – I think they’d be in a better innovation position vs Google & Apple on the web/mobile front if the whole business wasn’t so wedded to pushing Windows as the solution to everything.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:05 am
I totally agree.
Last summer I bought a new machine and took the risk of keeping the included vista for development. I was not very happy about required Registry-Tweaks on Vista and XP-Patches to get it work in a network with a OSX and a XP machines. I also had to turn off tons of things. etc etc.
I like some additions but mostly it’s lacking to modernize the user-experience in a consistent, omnipresent way.
I have not looked a 7 yet but I am very unhappy that they want to charge for an upgrade so much! Makes me hesitant …
July 19th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Between a PC with Windows 7 or Mac with Leopard – I still pick PC. Why? Because Mac hardware is so much more expensive. Yeah.. probably more ergonomic but at much higher price which I can’t still justify till now.
Basically, my thought on Mac is Mac is sexy because we pay so much for it. Whatever changes OSX undergoes, it is still a sexy thing (not breaking backward compatibility etc etc).
July 19th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
@syedhs: well, but buying a mac you get a “pc”, too
July 19th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Lino,
To be honest – I was thinking of the same thing too. And recent Ogre’s IPhone OpenGL ES renderer further fuel the interest
July 19th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
@syedhs: for laptops in particular, Macs really aren’t that much more expensive, if you intended to buy a quality laptop anyway. I used to buy laptops that were specced highly but fairly cheap, and I was burned by build quality and battery life issues many times. I concluded in the end that it was worth paying extra for a good laptop, given that you have limited upgrade potential, and started buying the likes of the top-end Sony Vaios, which were really solid and I was much happier with. From there, the MacBooks really aren’t much difference in price, and in my experience the features are better anyway. I needed to be convinced on this front by friends, but was glad I made the switch in the end. It’s really worth paying a little extra for a laptop that you’ll keep for ~3 years and do very little to, compared to a desktop. And, as Lino says, you get to use Windows as well anyway, so arguably the value of the device is greater anyway, since you can develop for OS X & iPhone as well as Windows.
It’s less of an easy sell on the desktop, where build quality is less critical and components are far more easily switchable. I expect to have Mac laptops and PC desktops for the forseeable future, although I would definitely recommend Mac desktops to my non-technical friends/family, because I think they’re the easiest to use and less likely to result in callouts
But yeah, those who are looking to budget probably won’t go for that. But I was struck by recently meeting a freelance photographer friend-of-a-friend who had little experience of computers but had owned Mac laptops for years for his work, and got by just fine with no technical support (barring hardware issues). You couldn’t prise that Mac out of his cold dead hands!
July 21st, 2009 at 9:56 am
Don’t Apple Macs ship with Safari?