Why Micro$oft should give Windows 7 Away

Overheal

Windows 7 is shaping up to be an awesome OS. It's everything people wanted Vista to be and more. Which is exactly why Microsoft should give it away—or offer it dirt cheap—to Vista users.

Windows 7 is the solution to Microsoft's Vista problem, which is really a nasty hydra of a problem. Let's not pretend that this isn't the case. There are three major heads to the beast: Consumer perception of Vista as an abysmal failure and a crappy OS (hence, Mojave); the use of XP instead of Vista in increasingly popular netbooks; and the critical lack of Vista interest from the business community.


Windows 7 neatly resolves them: Word-of-mouth sentiment for Windows 7 has been overwhelmingly positive, even from Mossberg, a dude who spent half of his Sprint Instinct review pre-reviewing the iPhone 3G. Windows 7 is slimmed down when it needs to be, running fantastically on netbooks. And the IT buyers and consumers who skipped Vista have been waiting, cash in hand, for whatever came after, so Windows 7 will have a much more enthusiastic customer base.


The stars are aligned for Windows 7. It could wash the bad aftertaste from Vista out of everybody's mouth. But that's only if Microsoft sells it right.
For starters, Microsoft needs to get rid of all the separate license types (OEM vs. upgrade vs. full) and trim the number of boxed configurations. Give buyers three versions, Home, Business and Ultimate, all at a reasonable price. $129 would be ideal for the first two, with $149 for Ultimate.


Second, every Vista user should get it for $49, or even less.
Apple gave away OS X 10.1 for free, and Microsoft should take a lesson there. It doesn't matter that Vista isn't really broken—like OS 10.0 really really was. Or that it was mostly the hardware guys' fault for not delivering their drivers on time. Or that Mojave proves, at least to the nimwits who appear on camera, that Vista is a warm and fuzzy OS. Or that, conversely, most people who hate Vista have never really used it. All of that could be true, but regardless, people's perception is that Vista was, is and always will be broken. And perception is reality.


Microsoft screwed up the Vista launch, and well, first impressions are the ones that matter the most. True, it's already paying for that mistake. But taking that small hit per user wouldn't just be the final cost of the Vista screwup, it would be "earnest money," as they say in business. Microsoft would be buying something it hasn't had the opportunity to get in the last few years: People's faith.

From Gizmodo.

watty

It should be free to Vista owners.

Really it's SP3, but for marketing reasons they want to promote it as a new OS. It isn't.

Apple is a bad example as mostly they charge for what with MS have been service packs. I used OS9, OS X and the Patched Version OS X.1 The initial release of OS X was indeed to 10.1 what Vista is to Win7. Vista is Windows 6.0, Win7 should be Win 6.2 as I beleive Server 2008 is Win 6.1. However they charged Win2K users for XP (Win 5.0 and Win5.1).

Win7 is anything but awesome. It's mediocre, but much less buggy than Vista. Gizmodo are scarily "fanboish" about Windows 7, most un-discerning.

It would be good PR to give Win7 as a free upgrade to Vista, but since a high percentage will pay for an upgrade, esp. with the huge flock of Win7 beta "puppy dogs" loose, I can't see it happening.

An Fear Aniar

watty wrote: »

Really it's SP3, but for marketing reasons they want to promote it as a new OS. It isn't.

It's got a new calculator though.


.

ScumLord

Bill Gates wouldn't give you the steam off his piss for free.

Dartz

Steve Ballmer now.... Just so's you know. But just read Gate's Open letter to hibbyists for a good summary of continuing Microsoft position on things.

MS take the opinion that if you can charge for a product, you should charge, and charge as much as the market will bare.

Overheal

watty wrote: »

Win7 is anything but awesome. It's mediocre, but much less buggy than Vista. Gizmodo are scarily "fanboish" about Windows 7, most un-discerning.

Unfortunately Gawker has been selling itself of piecemeal. Consumerist is now owned by Consumer Reports Magazine and Gizmodo is owned by some company or another. Either way since the buy I have noticed their articles getting a bit more flowery.

MS take the opinion that if you can charge for a product, you should charge, and charge as much as the market will bare.

This market is a disaster, and Vista was ultimately farcical (as much as I find it nicer to use than XP). And Micro$oft just last week liquidated the entire branch that has been responsible for Flight Simulator for the last 30 years, so they can go to hell. I'll use the same argument I have for years: its Software, its very easily and cheaply replicated, there is a near infinite supply of the good, there is no need to try and charge $350 for 1 license that 10 people will buy when you can sell the license for $50 that 100 people will buy. In the latter case Microsoft gets $1500 more in gross profit.

PaddyTheNth

Overheal wrote: »

Gizmodo is owned by some company or another. Either way since the buy I have noticed their articles getting a bit more flowery.

afaik they're part of the conde nast group which includes arstechnica, lifehacker etc.

And yes, there's a lot of praise for Windows 7 in those sites. I have to say though that from what I've seen of it it is very smooth. They've made UAC much better and a lot of UI looks a lot better eg native snapping of windows to fill half a screen, window preview on hovering over taskbar and a few other things which I thought were cool at the time of looking.

Will I pay for it? Possibly...I didn't and never will pay for Vista because they changed too many control panel things and UAC was a disaster at first....I probably will buy 7 in a couple of years though, because I like the look of a lot of the things I've seen in the beta.

311

It being at a cheap price , would guarantee a purchase from me for a few licences.
Couldn't be bothered paying anything over €150 for it. Ubuntu is becoming more of an option for a lot of people after all.

watty

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

It's got a new calculator though.


.

I have this on XP
http://www.esbconsult.com/esbcalc/

Overheal

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

afaik they're part of the conde nast group which includes arstechnica, lifehacker etc.

Lifehaker is part of gawker. if you go to any of the gawker blogs it has links to all the rest on the left

PaddyTheNth

Overheal wrote: »

Lifehaker is part of gawker. if you go to any of the gawker blogs it has links to all the rest on the left

You're quite right, I was confusing gawker and conde.

Wired/Ars is Conde, lifehacker/gizmodo is gawker.

pwd

ScumLord wrote: »

Bill Gates wouldn't give you the steam off his piss for free.

miscrosoft express products
visual studio 2008 free at launch events last year
microsoft dreamspark
microsoft products free for student members of computer society in ieee (registered colleges only)
Free streaming service for silverlight developers
"As of 2007 Bill and Melinda Gates were the second most generous philanthropist in America, having given over $28 billion to charity."

There's plenty more like this. Some of these are about attaining market share rather than about being generous, but they're still free.

I know it's fashionable to slam microsoft and bill gates but try to maintain some sort of connection to reality in the process.

Overheal

and to be fair they acknowledged their mistake and have been very good about redeeming repairs for the xbox 360 and the RRoD.

EvilMonkey

Free Software from MS
Why would they give win7 away for free when the know most people will pay for it and windows vista will still be supported for a few years?

PaddyTheNth

Overheal wrote: »

Unfortunately Gawker has been selling itself of piecemeal. Consumerist is now owned by Consumer Reports Magazine and Gizmodo is owned by some company or another. Either way since the buy I have noticed their articles getting a bit more flowery.

In the same vein...it's not MS, but the big G this time...:p

Have a sconce at this - http://lifehacker.com/5142343/how-to-work-for-us

Things You Should Be / Have
- Tech-savvy
- Nimbleness with numbers
- Details, details, details
- Expert at calendar keeping
- Brain for logic, puzzle-solving
- Love for the Interwebs
- Fan of Gmail and other Google Apps

lmfao

Capt'n Midnight

watty wrote: »

It should be free to Vista owners.

Really it's SP3, but for marketing reasons they want to promote it as a new OS. It isn't.

LOL

Windows 98 was really Windows 95 SP3
but was sold as an upgrade to Win 95

and Windows 98 Second Edition was only available when you bought a new computer , it wasn't available retail.

If it wasn't for netbooks then Windows 7 might not have been as light on resources as it is.

Windows server 2008 you can use for up to 240 days on trial so it could outlive windows 7 trail

watty

I know people that have bought Server 2008 for laptop (aks Vista.1 aka win6.1) since it is a mostly "fixed" version of vista and thus works on HW that has vista drivers and not XP drivers.

sceptre

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

and Windows 98 Second Edition was only available when you bought a new computer , it wasn't available retail.

98SE was available in retail (full version and upgrade, both are even still listed on amazon). Plus there was a cheapo upgrade (about 20 quid IIRC) for people who already had regular 98, ordered it myself, still have the disc somewhere.

Capt'n Midnight

sceptre wrote: »

98SE was available in retail (full version and upgrade, both are even still listed on amazon). Plus there was a cheapo upgrade (about 20 quid IIRC) for people who already had regular 98, ordered it myself, still have the disc somewhere.

sorry my bad
I was getting mixed up with Windows 95 OSR
the retail version didn't have propper USB Support /FAT32 Support / UDMA Support

But I'll still say that 98 is just a service pack of 95

watty

Win98SE on DOS7 and WFWG3.11+Win32S+VFW1.2+32bit TCP/IP on DOS6.22 or DRDOS6 are the best two "legacy" 16bit/32bit hybrids. Essentially Win9x and ME are actually Win3.x with 32bit TCP/IP, VFW and Win32s "built-in" instead of options, a few extra APIs so Office 95 (16 bit) can't run on Win3.1 and Explorer Desktop. Apart for drivers for USB there is almost no difference, same TCP/IP stack. USB not at all and TCP/IP didn't even work properly on first release of 95.

Win9x and Win3.x are same relationship to each other as NT4.0 to NT3.5. NT3.5 is true 100% 32bit yet can't run office95 (you needed NT3.51). NT4.0 was first viersion of NT with explorer builtin though there was an add-on technlogy preview for NT3.51