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Yes, I have just purchased a 64 bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium. (£69.48)

Also a SANDISK CRUZER MICRO 8Gb U3 READYBOOST Drive for £20.99 to add to my 4gb of r.a.m.

O.E.M. I guess is a saving and if you built your own a better idea than retail.

I am sure if my m.o.b.o. dies a week after installing the o.e.m. disk m$ don't mind.

I may or may not use Vista for myself, maybe a machine for my fiance.

Will install when sp1 comes around.

$200 for Vista Ultimate. No other version or price is needed. Period.

The OEM version is usually just a book sealed in plastic with the cd in a sort of cardboard envelope, whereas the retail version is those nice plastic dvd packaging we saw when it first came out.

If you plan to change your PC often, you don't want an OEM version.

I bought 3 OEM copies pretty much at launch time last year. Only 2 are actually installed so far, but on each of those machines I have upgraded as little as a HDD or memory with no problems. I completely rebuilt the machines from scratch with new MB, Mem and processors. One machine will not activate over the internet no matter how little I upgrade. The other activates over the internet no matter how much I upgrade. It's strange. But the otehr one activates over the phone no problem every time. The OEM can't be swapped out deal is a little overblown.

Sometimes not even on the same PC/laptop even if you just install a driver update.

I can't believe no one said this yet...

The MAIN difference between retail and OEM is that with a retail copy of Vista (or XP) you get Microsoft support. If you buy the OEM copy, you have to support it yourself or have the "OEM" support it. Like Dell or HP etc.

I don't ever recall a dramatic price drop like this after less than 2 years on the market, its been on shelves for just over a year hasn't it? Jan 2007 I believe after it RTM'd in Nov 2006.

Apple did it with the iPhone after barely a month! And it was very dramatic!

Yeah now you see the original post replied to? Note the Microsoft, I'm not sure... but I suspect the iPhone isn't a MS product.

Sorry - I didn't see the specific mention of Microsoft OS products. I was just trying to cite an example of another tech product that had a dramatic price drop!

My mistake

While not as large, a similar price adjustment occurred with the introduction of Windows XP's Service Pack 2 (which was followed shortly thereafter with the introduction of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to the System Builder channel); an even earlier example is with *Windows NT 4.0*, which saw price adjustments after the release of Service Pack 6. However, while there have been *numerically* more Windows Vista licenses (both retail and upgrade) sold than Windows XP licenses in the same period of time, percentages of the overall PC market are down (while not significantly down, they are down). The fact that some of those non-Vista sales are of Windows XP is being spun by some as a sign that Vista is a failure. Then what would they have called the continuing sales of Windows 2000 Professional (and even Windows Me) one year after Windows XP went RTM? What would they have called the incredibly poor reception with which XP Home Edition was greeted throughout its lifetime?

Further, while Vista's price drop is unusually large, it's not even the largest price drop in terms of PC-related *anything* this year. That honor, ladies and gents, goes to *Intel*, with their current round of price cuts on Core2 and Pentium Dual-Core processors (which has led to some particularly wacky pricing, such as sub-$200 retail-boxed Core2Quads and even sub-$100 Core2Duos). So, in other words, it looks like Microsoft and Intel want to get their piece of those stimulus checks being mailed out in a few months.