Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Tuesday 4 December 2007, 5:28 PM
Vista - so bad, they pay you to take it?
Look at Lenovo laptops on Dabs.com (but don't buy there - see below). An R61i with Vista Home Premium costs £400. R61is with XP Pro cost £567 or £575.
Over at eBuyer, an R61 costs with Vista Home Premium costs £401.61, while R61is with XP Pro start at £586.87 (prices include VAT).
I'm not sure if the detailed specifications are exactly comparable, but it looks like the Vista machines are about £170 to £180 cheaper. In other words, online stores are effectively paying you money to take Vista.
Obviously, the reason is that this is Vista Home Premium, the cut- down version of the new OS, compared with XP Professional, the business grade version of XP. But it's an eye-opener to realise that any version of the new operating system is considered to be £170 worse than the standard version of XP.
I found myself speaking to someone at Dabs' customer service (a difficult achievement in itself, part of the process of cancelling an order they failed to deliver - and very much, as they say, another story).
"Why not buy a Vista laptop and an XP professional disk?" she asked. Possibly because the £86 XP disk is an OEM version without long-term support, and a full consumer version of XP seems to cost £235.
But wait a minute. That price is almost the same as the £239 Dabs charges for Vista Business.
So, the actual value of all Microsoft's work to deliver Vista? A fiver.
Unless we should be comparing XP Pro with the pinnacle of Vista Ultimate, retailing at £324, or £178 for the upgrade. If we are, then that really is an admission of failure....
PreviousComments on this post
I don't understand why Microsoft plays these tricks anyway; there are more than four versions of Vista. why can't they realise that ordinary people don't actually buy the OS, unless they're upgrading. realistically there should only be 2 versions:
Home version; forcusing more on media and Proffessional; for businesses.
Apple put out one version of their latest OS, is that a disadvantage?
Check the facts!
Compare the specifications. The prices relate more to the specification than the opreating system.
I think you'll find the reason that xp machines are more expensive than vista machines is unrelated to the operating system. As with anything if the supply is less the price is higher. It isn't dabs who install the OS to the machines its the manufacturers and its the manufacturers who are producing more vista machines which is directly displayed through the reduced cost through bulk buying of components.Obviously there producing less xp machines using different components and are unable to pass the same savings on.
I came across a somewhat similar situation last spring. By chance, several friends and neighbors wanted to buy new laptops. This was in April or May, so Vista had been out long enough to be in general distribution, but not long enough for people to see the problems they were going to have with it. I bought three Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo laptops at that time, all with Vista (Home Basic) because that was the only thing available on them at that time. The same model laptop had been sold quite successfully for some time previously, with Windows XP Home, but once Vista was available, they stopped offering it with XP. When I was helping my friends set up the laptops and get them ready to use, I could see that they were really struggling trying to run Vista, but they did manage to struggle along. Sometime in August, I noticed on the same web page that they had gone back to offering those laptops with XP again. I assume that they had been getting too many complaints about performance and reliability with Vista, and perhaps about that time Microsoft had stopped applying so much pressure for retailers to only sell Vista and stop selling XP.
This comment has been deleted at the users request
Thanks for the comments, all
- I take your point, chrishocking, about supply, but it's also a matter of demand. I'm sure if suppliers can buy Vista laptops cheaper, they don't pass on any more of the savings than they have to. Vista machines must be cheaper in large part because of the perceived value.
- I think your point bears this out J A. A year ago, laptop makers tried to eliminate XP, but it's still there.
- I'm not an expert on PC specifications, Moley, but I coudn't see anything major in the specs, maybe a few Gig in the hard drive. Let me know more, as it could help my laptop buying...!
- and sorry, all, for the poor links and editing in the first version of the original post.
I agree with chrishocking the supply affects more than the demand.
You may have more demand for a wii than a PS2 but if you can't get supply of wii for love nor money but can easily stock PS2 you are not going to discount the item you are having shorter supply of as much as you could afford to discount the item that is easily restockable.
Also I know that some companies are buying in vista laptops and then have to remove vista and re-install xp pro themselves which adds significant time to their production and so the cost is past on to the user.
Also comparing xp home to vista home premium or xp pro to vista ultimate is a fairer comparison.
Finally - even if Microsoft were subsidising Vista to encourage uptake it wouldn't mean it is an inferior product - just that it is the product they want to promote. It is not at all similar to Microsoft paying you to take vista.
i dont have any issues with Vista... its worked fine out of the box. its certainly not a whizzy as i thought it would be having worked with osx for a while... but nothing much to complain about other than the overkill admin alerts because 'something' is happening lol.
I'm afraid, in my book Microsoft "paying you to take Vista", is a pretty fair paraphrase of Microsoft "subsidising Vista to encourage uptake".
And if good old XP Pro is really comparable to spanking new Vista Ultimate, doesn't that just underline the point we've been making about Vista? Shouldn't Vista Ultimate be far ahead of XP?
Its not Microsoft paying you to take vista though its supply and demand. There not paying you to take it at all there are more vista laptops so they are cheaper. It seems to me you have taken nothing from this onboard.
Don't worry Chris, I have heard what you said. We're expressing things differently, but I think we can probably agree that, for whatever reason, Vista (home premium) is cheaper than XP (Pro) - something that surprised me.
This situation is even more apparent if you take account of upgrade prices:
The price to upgrade from XP home to XP pro: £145 or so.
The Vista Business Upgrade which allows you to upgrade from both XP home and Vista Home is £130. Then you realise that with this you are actually getting a double upgrade in the price, up to Vista and up to Business level networking. Microsoft are undercutting their XP prices to get you to buy Vista.
This comparison however is based on a real weak spot for Microsoft at the moment because although Vista Home uptake has been good; Vista Business uptake has been very poor.
Thanks mattp - your comment makes my original point way better than I did.
It sounds like, if you've got XP Home, then Microsoft will take £15 less from you if you go to Vista Business instead of XP Pro. THat is definitely subsidising Vista.
Peter
