Thursday, September 21, 2006

How much will Vista cost you?

Microsoft have commissioned a research company to produce a report claiming the release of Vista will create 100,000 new jobs in Europe. Story. The bit I found interesting was:
This says for every €1 (70p) spent on Vista, another €13.31 will be spent on other things. That includes €7.35 on hardware, €3.43 on software and €2.53 on services.
I usually take the reports they have commissioned (e.g. total cost of ownerships for windows works out less than for linux) with the same level of interest as those the tobacco companies come out with saying that smoking doesn't cause lung disease, "scientific" bodies funded by oil companies claiming there's no such thing as global warming or brewers claiming British drinkers prefer weak, foul-tasting lagers.

In this case I found the numbers interesting. If the business edition of Vista will be priced at USD299, I calculate your expenditure to upgrade works out to a total of USD4278.69. I couldn't find any announcement of British prices for Vista. The U.S. Dollar on the exchanges currently equates to 52p, however tech companies usually work on parity when pricing products for the British market (i.e. they replace the $ mark with a £). Let's split the difference and call it 79p, which works out at a staggering price tag of GBP3380!

For an operating system with really nice graphics and "enhanced security" (e.g. DRM on your .mp3 files).

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home