Microsoft reduces Price of Windows Vista

Microsoft has announced a price reduce on stand-alone Windows Vista packs. This announcement will be effective along with the shipment of its first update to Vista, Service Pack 1, in March.

The move came a day after court filings revealed internal dissent over which Windows XP computers would be considered capable of running the new operating system – and a feeling on at least one executive’s part that the company had “botched” the marketing of computers as “Vista Capable.”

Microsoft said the new prices will apply to the Home Premium and Ultimate versions of Vista, in both their full editions and the editions that upgrade an older or more basic operating system.

There will be no price cuts for PC manufacturers who install Vista on their machines.

Microsoft’s new Windows Consumer Marketing Vice President, Brad Brooks, has pointed to the increase in sales when the company made a price cut (to manufacturers) for Windows XP Media Center Edition. It was initially pitched as a high-end version, something above XP Professional, but when Microsoft lowered the price to not much higher than Windows XP Home, it became the dominant consumer version: “It went from a run rate of about 1 million (copies) a year to a run rate of several tens of millions a year,” Brooks said.

We can’t possibly expect anything like this for Vista, of course, for reasons starting from driver compatibility and going all the way to the question of why upgrade “when XP’s fine”. In fact, the price-cut seems to be yet another giveaway of Microsoft recently admitted, though not officially: that they knew Vista wasn’t ready.

Source: Tech2.com , techtree.com