Microsoft Drops the Price of Vista
February 29th, 2008 Catherine Posted in Technology and Science | 
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It is a drop in price. Microsoft is offering Vista at a reduced price:
“Microsoft on Thursday said it plans to slash prices for retail copies of Windows Vista up to almost 50 percent for certain editions in poorer countries, in order to boost sales that one analyst said have failed to meet expectations.”
link: Microsoft cuts retail Vista prices
This would be a welcomed move if the only barrier to computer users moving to Vista was the price. Price is not the main problem. The significant problem is functionality. Simply, will Vista work well with what you have? And, sadly, the answer might be “no”. That is the problem that Microsoft must address.
Catherine Forsythe
Tags: functionality, Microsoft, price, Vista
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February 29th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
The price of Vista is one consideration… true… but only in an oblique way.
Vista is known to require higher end computers and resources in order to be able to run well. So while the price of Vista is a consideration, often, the bigger consideration is whether to buy a new computer capable of running Vista. That has been a conundrum for me.
I love technology, and do not hate Microsoft (which so many seem to want to mold into their whipping boy for everything wrong or imagined to be wrong in their computing lives). I would also love to have the latest and greatest in both hardware and software. However if I am honest, I don’t need the latest and greatest to do most of what I do relative to computers and software. So, to move to Vista requires abandoning perfectly good hardware and software that serves me well, and is likely to for some time.
Personally, I think Vista gets beaten up far more often than it deserves. While I don’t know from personal experience (my computers run XP), comments from Vista users I read online suggest for a majority of Vista users, it has been mostly a good experience. So much of the negative press seems to come from the “power users” (whatever that means), but I suspect they push the envelope no matter what capabilities their current system provides. When a wrinkle arises using something new (Vista, e.g.), many are quick to carp at Microsoft. Personally, I think it is misdirected.
And then there are the Apple Acolytes. I don’t begrudge them any level of satisfaction they enjoy. In my small circle of friends who look to me for some help in solving computing problems (hardware or software), several have gone and tried Apple using current software (Leopard) and hardware. All have retreated back to Windows PC’s because in spite of Apple no doubt being a solid computing platform, like anything else, adapting to using one requires going through a learning curve. If you are not a full time geek and are instead a normal user needing to get work done, all of a sudden Windows based platforms look pretty good.
It’s almost like politics today. No matter your party affiliation, most are bound and determined to be in oppositon to the other party, for no other reason than the other party is not yours. Truth be known, both can work very well. What matters most is that you use what you have to the best you know how. Then, you are likely to accomplish what you need to. The platform doesn’t matter nearly so much.