Microsoft Cuts Vista Prices in Hopes of Spurring Adoption

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

As we close in on the public release of Windows Vista SP1, Microsoft has taken what’s likely an unprecedented step: it’s cut the prices of many of the retail versions of the OS. The timing is obvious: Microsoft has been betting heavily on SP1 as many corporations have been waiting to deploy Vista until its release; Microsoft simply wants to enhance its chances of a bump in adoption rates.

At the same time, who’s going to see the best cuts? Not you or I. The biggest price cuts will show up in developing nations, where upgrade versions of Home and Premium will be dropped and full versions will sell at upgrade prices.

In a press release/interview, Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows Consumer Product Marketing at Microsoft indicated the major cuts in developing nations were to:

“meet the demand we see among first-time Windows customers who want more functionality than is available in current Windows XP editions.”

In other words, a it’s because of a largely first-time customer base in those countries - and though they didn’t say it - piracy.

In the U.S., Vista Ultimate’s full version will go to $319 fro $399 (an upgrade is now $$219, down from $259); Home Premium’s upgrade is now $129, down from $159. I’m unclear as to the full range of price cuts, however - and these cuts only apply to retail versions.

How much will this help adoption? If you’ve got XP on your computer, unless you have Express Upgrade (in which case you should have updated long ago), I see no reason to upgrade your OS. I think most end users feel this way as well, and thus I see this as a rather curious move.

The rather stringent hardware requirements to get full functionality of the OS (as made obvious in the “Vista-Capable lawsuit“) is also a turn-off for end users, and XP remains popular enough for Microsoft to have extended its availability. In fact, it’s so popular many analysts feel it’s Vista’s #1 rival, and should in fact have its lifespan extended still further.

One thing to note, however, if you do want to upgrade: you can buy an upgrade and do a clean install of it, even without an XP license key, as I outlined previously. Just a BTW.