Acer: Vista is an excuse for Microsoft price hikes
Microsoft is hiking up the price of its software as it
prepares to launch
Vista, according to one of the leading PC manufacturers,
Acer.
According to Jim Wong, senior corporate vice president of
the Taiwan-based
company, the issue is simply that the basic home edition
of Vista, Home
Basic, which is available for preorder on Amazon.co.uk for
154.99 pounds
($293), is so basic that users will be forced to move to
Vista Home Premium,
at 189.99 pounds ($359). A Home Edition of Windows XP is
currently available
for 165.99 pounds, but has a recommended retail price of
176.99 pounds. "The
new (Vista) experience you hear of, if you get Basic, you
won't feel it at
all," Wong told PC Pro magazine. "There's no
(Aero) graphics, no Media
Center, no remote control." Wong also said that the
manufacturer's license
for Vista Home Premium is 10 percent more expensive than for
XP Home. "We
have to pay more but users are not going to pay more,"
Wong said. This would
mean an increase in the cost to PC manufacturers of 1 to 2
percent, according
to Wong, in a business where the profit margin is around 5
percent or less.
At the top of the Vista lineup is the Ultimate Edition,
which can be
preordered for 325 pounds ($614) from Amazon.co.uk and,
again, is
significantly more expensive than the XP operating system it
replaces.
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 has a
recommended retail price of
289.99 pounds, but is currently available for 234 pounds.
Colin Barker of
ZDNet UK reported from bond.
Fri Oct 27 09:15:34 PDT 2006
It's time to move to Linux, where you can have a VISTA
experience without the
VISTA expense.
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