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Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

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Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#101

Post by polshaw »

dhughes wrote: post #84
spicyj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac OS X price is essentially also an "upgrade" price because you can only install it on Macs (which already have OS X installed).

It's like Xbox versus PS3, you pay for XboxLive! but the Xbox is cheaper or (when new) you paid nearly $1000 for a PS3 but got PS3 Network free, either way you're paying. The old options was buy a lower priced computer with Windows but pay more for the OS/upgrades or buy a very expensive Apple computer but $40.00 for an OS upgrade.

There is also the fact that a point upgrade in OSX is almost never as significant as a new Microsoft OS, that MS provides free service packs, and that (IIRC) apple allows upgrades to multiple macs with one purchase. So, really, they need to be assessed on their own merit.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#102

Post by forgotAgain »

You have to figure that people who are running XP and Vista weren't going to spend much to upgrade so this part of it doesn't cost MS much in lost revenue.

For users running Windows 7 I don't see the rush to upgrade even at the low price. You have a good OS in W7. Most will figure if it's not broke, don't fix it.

It's a nice gesture from MS that won't cost it much. For myself, I have an old dual-core Vista notebook that may now get an SSD and Windows 8 just so I can have the latest OS available. That's one more developer that stays current with the latest Microsoft OS which is where I think they see the payoff.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#103

Post by WiseWeasel »

cooldeal wrote: post #92
WiseWeasel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pole is to keep that cluttered ribbon interface away from my relatively clean Explorer windows, the touch-centric gestures away from my mouse-driven desktop, and to ward off the mental expense of context changes as my environment switches between the classic desktop with classic apps, the start screen and various metro apps.

>The pole is to keep that cluttered ribbon interface away from my relatively clean Explorer windows The ribbon is minimized by default. What's cluttered about this more than Windows 7? http://techdows.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/expand-the-ri...

The most glaring offense is the poor organization and positioning of the elements. Notice the many different areas the groups of widgets are scattered.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#104

Post by lifeguard »

joeybaker wrote: post #97
lifeguard wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are overlooking the fact that MS is introducing yet another browser variant that web devs have to accommodate. And also the QA dept. And also customer service. And also internal IT. On second though; Yes, this will be exciting! ;)

True, it's another IE version, but an auto-updating, mostly-standards compliant version. IE 10 brings IE into the "modern browser" realm.

It doesn't matter how wonderful IE 10 is until over 70% of IE users are upgraded to it. For a period of a few years there will be a flood of IE 10 users because this is what their computer came with. There will still be too many other IE users for commercial websites to ignore. So there will have to be a lot of web code bloat and complexity to accommodate them. I was a professional web developer before IE 1.0 and am speaking from experience.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#105

Post by gouranga »

greedo wrote: post #85
gouranga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's related to Apple at all. I can't believe people are trying to give Apple some credit for it. Two real things: 1) No one ever buys Windows upgrades, so this is a motivator to shift to Win8. Consumers and businesses just buy a new PC and large businesses get licenses automatically. 2) They now have the opportunity of upselling inside the operating system (which they've been playing with for a long ti…

If #1 is true in terms of past behavior, then expecting this price point to change that is doubtful. In my experience, the reason no on upgrades is because they then inherit all the cruft from their old install. I'm not sure that upgrading will ever be popular with the Windows crows. #2 is also doubtful for the same reason. If users are faced with 900 versions of Windows to choose from while upgrading, they'll choose…

Correlation does not imply causality. The burden of proof is on the inclusive case.

Windows upgrades allow fresh installs so that's rubbish.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#106

Post by malkia »

polshaw wrote: post #99
greenyoda wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it will take a long, long time for enterprises to move to Windows 8, with most sticking with Windows 7 for as long as Microsoft continues to provide security patches for it. If you're an enterprise with 10000 or 50000 non-technical users running Windows 7, the cost of moving to Windows 8 will be primarily IT staff hours, including all the support questions from users puzzled by the new user interface…

I don't disagree with you, but this is the exact argument I've heard with every Microsoft OS since windows 2000 (and no doubt it was made before then, too).

This time around though 7 is unbeatable. It just works. Okay it does (and never was) working as I wanted to be - much like linux, osx, etc. but aside from mine developer's perspective it just works for the rest of the stuff.

7 in terms of stability perception is like XP - I still have XP on my Mac Book dual-camped partition.

And we had real problems with Vista - rendering, certain apps not working, slowness overall.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#107

Post by brudgers »

forgotAgain wrote: post #102

You have to figure that people who are running XP and Vista weren't going to spend much to upgrade so this part of it doesn't cost MS much in lost revenue. For users running Windows 7 I don't see the rush to upgrade even at the low price. You have a good OS in W7. Most will figure if it's not broke, don't fix it. It's a nice gesture from MS that won't cost it much. For myself, I have an old dual-core Vista notebook t…

Outside of enterprise, I suspect that a lot of people still running XP may be short of the hardware to run Windows 7/8. So it's largely a feel good gesture in those cases - and perhaps an indirect marketing boost for Microsoft's hardware partners.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#108

Post by starpilot »

3JPLW wrote: post #3

Competition is great! I'm very glad that Apple has managed to exert some pressure on Microsoft here. I really don't think that this would have occurred otherwise.

Windows users consider the paid OS X upgrades blatant cash grabs for updates that should be free. They see it as charging for service packs.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#109

Post by Useful_Idiot »

dhughes wrote: post #84
spicyj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac OS X price is essentially also an "upgrade" price because you can only install it on Macs (which already have OS X installed).

It's like Xbox versus PS3, you pay for XboxLive! but the Xbox is cheaper or (when new) you paid nearly $1000 for a PS3 but got PS3 Network free, either way you're paying. The old options was buy a lower priced computer with Windows but pay more for the OS/upgrades or buy a very expensive Apple computer but $40.00 for an OS upgrade.

I assumed it was common knowledge that Sony offered the PS3 at a huge discount retail production costs to make Blu-Ray the industry standard (which did indeed succeed). e.g. Samsung Blu-Ray retailed @ $1000, PS3 retailed at $599.

e.g. http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2006/11/isupply_ps3_com/ ~ costs the PS3 components at $850 vrs the $599 retail price.

As for this topic: I don't think it's aimed at consumers, at all. Many companies still use XP as their back-bone, let alone 7. It's aimed at the software producers, akin to why some games companies are developing purely in DX11 now to reduce costs having to support DX9 ~ MS are making a switch to producing content for W8 as 'attractive' as possible.

Re: Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

#110

Post by brudgers »

tzs wrote: post #57
polshaw wrote: post #23

Lets be clear; this has little/nothing to do with apple. You can't spend $40 to switch to the latest OSX on your regular PC, so it is just not direct competition. I can only assume they think this way is how they will get most money from selling to end users, and I wouldn't be surprised at that being the case. No doubt they make most of window's licence money from OEMs.

> Lets be clear; this has little/nothing to do with apple. You can't spend $40 to switch to the latest OSX on your regular PC, so it is just not direct competition. I can't use Chevy parts in my Honda, but if Chevy started charging 1/10th of what Honda is charging for similar parts, Honda would need to lower prices if they wanted me to stick with them for my next car, or to use genuine Honda parts instead of third pa…

If you've ever owned a Mercedes, Volvo, or Porsche,* I don't think that you would find the logic underpinning the auto parts analogy particularly plausible.

*912, 914, 924, and first generation 944 parts sourced from VW excepted.

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