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Yeh right!. Suse 10.1 cost me $69.95. SLED cost $59.99. Mac OSX $149.00. Vista Ultimate $399.00 or $259.00, for an OS that took years to get out, and is still buggy. I don't see to many large businesses moving over to Vista for several years. Look how much it will cost to upgrade your hardware just to get it to run at it's optimum. Now how much are we talking.

Now, why the fkk are you comparing with Ultimate exactly ?

Because Ultimate is essentially the full most feature packed product. Essentially the most the operating system has to offer. With Suse 10.1, no need for stripped down versions, it's already feature complete. Also with Mac OSX Leopard their is one edition sold as well. No need to make multiple editions, because a company is afraid of offfering their full product, in this case Ultimate, at a lower price. Same thing will happen as it did with XP. Alot got Home edition only to upgrade to Pro edition. More money in MS pockets. Their just needs to be one edition, and that is called Windows Vista, at one affordable price!!.

And one more thing. Suse 10.1/SLED, doesn't require me to have a 200 GB harddrive for full install, with over 500 apps, or all new hardware to get the most out of XGL, new graphics engine, which is far more responsive and impressive, then Aero.

My point is this. Don't get su..d into buying this "over priced" os until it has proven itself. Like after 1st or 2nd service pack, unless new pc has it installed. Also if you buy a new computer at a computer store. Tell the sales rep that with purchase of new pc, you want the Vista DVD, and not some backup disc, with your purchase. If they say "no". Then ask them why. And you will see what business practices MS and hardware manufacturers, really have. And thank MS for it's high price scheme which is at the root of not getting your full Vista DVD, with purchase of new pc. Just a thought!.

Actually when I said it's "reasonable", it's all relative to their previous versions (XP, 2000, etc). I've always thought that most of MS's consumer products are overpriced (Windows, Office, etc). You would think if just Windows and Office together didn't cost more than the actual hardware of a computer, more people would actually buy it instead of resorting to piracy.

Dude, you can get MS DOS 6.22 for like $5 on eBay or something, why don't you compare MS DOS against Windows Vista Ultimate? They are both "the full most feature packed product", surely it's a fair comparing don't you think?

Do you get where I'm going with this?

Exactly.
They seem to think they deserve to charge so much while they actually don't have much innovation.
All they do is keep an eye on any innovative products from small companies and then integrate them into Windows.
This is what usually happened: after they oversaw the potential of some applications they picked it up from other companies, and they use their the monopoly power to kill the small companies eventually.
This is an excellent example of the marketing strategy that a company doesn't have to be a leader in order to succeed.
With a company this big, it is really ironical to see how bad their products compared to others.
Just look at Vista, 6 years after XP, hundreds of engineers, no big new features, and it still no ready.
In addition to no innovation, they rarely get things right the first time.
Before releasing new products, they take advantage of curious people and use them as beta testers.
After releasing the products, they depend on other sources to discover problems of its products.
Virus, security holes, etc. You rarely hear they discover the problems themselves.
Usually users and security companies find the holes and they fix it in a month or two and they never need to pay for any damages due to the holes.
Not to mention when you have problem using Windows you get better support and find workaround from other people or web sites besides Microsoft.
I'm not a Linux or OSX fanboy; I hope I didn't sound like one, but I just can't have any respect to them.

Suse 10.1 is so much more than MS-DOS. :-p It comes with more features than Vista (yes, Ultimate) in some aspects, less in others.

So no, it's not even close to being a fair comparison.

My point being that you can't take the most feature packad product of each and compare them, that wont give you a fair result. Instead you must match products with equivalent features against eachother.

yes indeed. like buying freakin' photoshop or something.

They don't need to fix the graph at all. It is fairly easy to understand if you had any experience with graphs. The columns are cumulative. The top of each bar is the total cost for both the upgrade and the full version. The coloured split gives a graphical representation of the price difference between full and upgrade.

First of all, they should put "Full Edition" bar beside the "Upgrade" one so we can actually SEE the graphical representation and the price difference without having to measure the lines.

I don't think we need to know that the upgrade + the full version of Ultimate adds up to $650.

Then again, we don't all have your graph experience...

The graph is not there to show you how much the products are, thats what the figures are for. The graph is to give you a visual indication of the cost difference between upgrade and full.

Who actually pays for photoshop nowadays?

Non-thieves.

See above. The graph is NOT wrong. You just don't know how to read it correctly.

the graph is wrong

it should be showing 3 divisions in each column if its including the price for both of them aswell, but it only shows 2 divisions which is why its wrong

No. The graph is a cumulative graph to give you a visual indication of the price difference between full and upgrade. If you don't know how to read cumulative bar charts, thats what the figures below are for.

The graph is done wrong. I understand what they are trying to show with the graph, but it would have 200% more effective if they would have put Full and Upgrade side by side for each set instead of stacking them on-top of each other. You can call it a cumulative chart, but that doesn't make it a good chart to draw a comparisons w/. Just because you can label something doesn't mean it is automatically easy for people to read and actually get something from.

XP or 2000

It will have.

Of course it will have. Why wouldn't it?

If Ultimate came without activation, that would like Microsoft saying "Hey guys, Ultimate is the best and we don't mind if you copy this version to give to your friends!".

I thought it was not supposed to have it in there, same as the buisness/enterprise edition?

Ultimate is a consumer version, not a business version, therefore it will have activation. Besides, it is not the version that determines whether it has activation or not. It is the way the business obtains it. If you get the product through a volume license agreement, then you get a version without activation. Buy any version at retail and it will come with activation.

Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate = Activation
Business - Retail = Activation
Business - Volume License = No Activation
Enterprise (only available through volume license) = No Activation

The graph is fairly easy to understand if you had any experience with graphs. The columns are cumulative. The top of each bar is the total cost for both the upgrade and the full version. The coloured split gives a graphical reprensation of the price difference between full and upgrade.

the graph is to show comparison between the different versions. In case you can't estimate the price using the bar graph it gives you the actual values at the bottom in a table.

Why would you put them together? Most people are going to buy one or the other, not both, that's just stupid. (Or an example of someone trying to be smart).

You're assuming they'll stick to the actual exchange rate. I wouldn't be surprised to see them simply changing the dollar sign to a pound sign and keeping the numbers as they are.

Yeah but you have to provide the CD of an earlier version of Winblowz

So I have a Windows XP SP2 CD. If I buy a Windows Vista Ultimate 'Upgrade Edition', I make a clean install of Windows Vista, yes?

Winblowz... WOW, you are sooooo cool.

King Mustard, yes.

Pretty much yeh

No it isnt. It is accually very simple and easy to understand.

No it's not, if it was, the graph wouldn't state that Ultimate Editon costs $659.

edit: looks like they changed the graph. Much better.

Last edited by virtorio on 06 Sep 2006 - 02:33

It is easy to understand. I get it, subtract the upgrade price from the full edition price on the graph and you get the full edition price. Thanks for the extra work, author. Next time put the graphs side by side so we can make a better visual comparison

Why are so many people defending such a craptastic graph? Is it just to be difficult to the sane people out there that actually see it as next to useless?

It is not incorrect at all. The graph is merely a representation of the costs. It is called a cumulative bar chart and they are very easy to read if you spent more than 5 seconds thinking about it. These types of charts are not designed to give you exact values (thats what the figures below are for). It is designed to give you an "at a glance" indication of the difference in two values. In this case, the difference between the cost of upgrade vs the cost of full.

To get the price of full, you ONLY look at the blue section. You dont start from the bottom of the chart. The blue section of Ultimate for instance starts at $259 and ends at $658. $658 minus $259 is $399.... get it?

If I look ONLY at the blue section, I see 650 bucks. Maybe the bar is right and the price is wrong-- who knows?

No, the graph may make sense and may be a "cumulative" bar chart, but that doesn't mean it is in an easy to read or compare format. Yes we all get it..that math works out great (good work btw.). But I would see a much better comparison w/ the bars side by side rather then stacked on top of each other.

I agree. If just Windows and Office together didn't cost more than the actual hardware of a computer, more people may actually buy it rather than resort to downloading or copying it.

If you want "at a glance" accurate information, thats what the figures below are for. The graph is to give you a quick indication of the cost difference between the two versions.

? Free?

That's called Windows Anytime Upgrade, you can buy Home Premium and upgrade to Ultimate at any time if you so wish, w/o buying a new box and disc, it's all done over the Internet.

People have been saying that for years. And it's never come close to actually scratching MS market share.

I don't agree on your market share statement, but I know what you mean. If people have been saying it for years, then someone somewhere will listen...

However, I think this may be the turning point. I think many businesses, organizations and individuals will look at alternatives considering the costs of a Vista transition. In most cases such a transition will require not only the Vista upgrade, but also hardware upgrade and upgrade of various applications. Haven't even mentioned the time this transition will take, and in many cases time is money. Considering existing alternatives, I think many will transition to another OS. Given the [relative] lack of viruses/threats on some of the alternative OSes I don't bet against many MS defectors. It remains to see how successful Vista will be, but to me it looks rather obvious that many will switch to another OS. That was my point, not how Microsoft have done in the past.

You know where the most money is spent? User training and support. And that is a cost which will always be there. By using Windows you are 99% sure you will place the user in an environment he/she knows.

Th