Are Microsoft Insane?

chrisuk said:
This is true, it gives a great wow factor but this is somewhat offset when people see the pricetag of that shiny macbook pro they saw on the telly :lol:

Still though..I think they will have a while to go before they can rival MS in the home and business computer markets. You can nip to PC world and pick up a PC or Laptop with windows on it these days for under 300 quid! Cheapest Mac is what....3 times that?
I don't think wow factor alone is enough to get massive growth. Cost effectiveness is a big deal, especially in the current climate!
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Well yes but the spec, build quality, battery life of them £300 laptops are terrible. Its like comparing a ford mondeo to a jaguar.

I think there are alot of people that will pay the extra for a better machine.

P.S Cheapest apple laptop is £709 for a 13" macbook
 
princeclan said:
Just picked up a magazine and in the first few pages its on about Windows 7 is coming out officially on October 22nd. No pricing has been set but its expected to be slightly more expensive than Vista was.

Vista was over £350 for the ultimate retail!!

Apple on the other hand is about £50 and they are offering it as £25 upgrade for recent leopard buyers.

MASSIVE DIFFERENCE!

All this will do is make more people go over to Apple (im one of em). They must be stupid. :cuckoo:
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Vista Ultimate was about £170-£200 when it first came out.

princeclan said:
The basic version and the homepremium version probably yeah. Snow leopard will be bundled with new macs too. i just think for people who dont want a new pc why sting them for such a ridiculous amount of money in these financial times when apple can do it so cheap?

Matt
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When the average consumer goes and buys an 'off the shelf' PC it's pretty much 100% that the OS is going to come with it - just like Macs - but the difference here is that the Mac is A LOT more expensive to buy.

Simply comparing the price of the OS isn't really a strong arguement to be honest, there are other factors which are very important, i.e. the hardware.
 
neil_g said:
whats wrong with vista, im running it 100% stable. no offence but if everyone you know is having problems with reliability then something is wrong with their system, either with the install some software bug within an application or a hardware issue. macs can and do crash just as much as windows in my IT support experience.

seriously who needs a "wow factor" from an operating system? id rather it just did what i wanted without having to be bullied into doing so.

oh and in my opinion osx will never be as big as windows unless apple open it up to non apple hardware.
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There were no drivers for half the software we used, it just refused to be networked, it refused to talk to our printers, it was buggy and slow as hell. Just what you need for a business, software that doesn't work properly.
We really got the feeling it was a beta or even alpha rather than a retail version.
We had to switch back to XP or stop business, it's hard to run a studio and print albums if your pc won't say "Hi" to your printer. It was after this fiasco we started the switch to Macs, never looked back, everything just worked out of the boxes, computer never just froze for the sake of it, never got a pop up message saying "your computer is not responding" how come the message never stops responding lol.
 
Thing is no-one buys the retail version. It has gone up now, but the OEM of home premium was about £60 which is pretty reasonable and all you have to do is buy it with another integral component (i got mine with some ram)
 
Snow Leopard is only $29 if you're upgrading from Leopard, it's $100 more to upgrade from Tiger, and can't be purchased outright. You have to buy a Mac to get it.

Also the underlying code level difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard is tiny when compared to the difference between Vista and Windows 7. Don't just get hung up on the UI changes. (Anyone notice that Apple nicked the idea for Dock Expose from MS btw)

Snow Leopard also excludes powerPC Macs, it's Intel only. Sceptics amongst the market would jump on this as a push from Apple to get everyone to buy new Macs. Windows 7 desktop was originally supposed to be 64bit only, but MS opted to develop it on 32bit to provide support for devices without 64bit support ( anything older than 3-4 years).

Microsoft are legally unable to sell upgrades, it always has to be new product due to EU and DoJ oversight rulings. This is because it is perceived to reduce OEM revenues since people would just upgrade the OS without buying a new PC / Laptop.

OEM prices for the highest editions are usually sub £100, and as has been stated elsewhere can be obtained cheaper through several programs. OEM is bound to the hardware it was bought with, Retail you can install on whatever you want moving it between machines as you need. Apple's OS X is bound to the hardware it's shipped with, just like the Windows OEM license.


Apple have a small portion of the market, and no OEM channels, hence have less impact in competitive markets. Apple will never open OS X up to uncontrolled hardware, OEM's etc, they sell a package, a consumer lifestyle product, an image if you will, and that's good business.

As Apple's market share grows, just watch browser wars start turning their attention to Safari, bundled into OS X, shipped on every Mac, integrated into the OS, just like IE, but when you only hold only 10% of the browser market, no one can bring a strong case, as it grows, they will.
 
I would also say the mac os does not need to be authorised or whatever it's called. Once you have the software, you can install it and you're done. Useful if you jumpfrog two machines buying one new one and pensioning one off. I will have to add the disclaimer that you should have a license for any software you use though.

Graham
 
princeclan said:
xbox is different. There is something about apples products that creates a stir on excitement. Tell me 1 microsoft product that does that? if someone buys an iphone they see how simplistic, powerful, elegant it is and are more inclined to buy a mac than a pc. thats my opinion but im sure everyone has their own.

Matt
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Just to prove your theory wrong. You have obviously forgotten about the MS Zune! That proved so popular that .....

....okay not a good example. Maybe you are right.

Chris
 
Tulipone said:
Just to prove your theory wrong. You have obviously forgotten about the MS Zune! That proved so popular that .....

....okay not a good example. Maybe you are right.

Chris
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The ZUNE HD is looking good but like the original zune its not scheduled for a released out side of the us/canada.
 
apple make their money on the hardware not the software, and sure its good for somestuff. But is a pain in the ass to integrate into a network properly same as linux, though this may have changed since the last mac I played with and gaming doesn't work, I hate not being able to just take an afternoon and slaughter people on COD (my laptop dislikes games desktops fine)
 
princeclan said:
Well yes but the spec, build quality, battery life of them £300 laptops are terrible. Its like comparing a ford mondeo to a jaguar.

I think there are alot of people that will pay the extra for a better machine.

P.S Cheapest apple laptop is £709 for a 13" macbook
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And Mondeo sales far outstrip Jaguar sales and always will.

Incidentally, my wife bought a Sony Vaio 15.4" laptop for under £400 and the spec is very good, as is the battery life.
 
swanseamale47 said:
There were no drivers for half the software we used, it just refused to be networked, it refused to talk to our printers, it was buggy and slow as hell. Just what you need for a business, software that doesn't work properly.
We really got the feeling it was a beta or even alpha rather than a retail version.
We had to switch back to XP or stop business, it's hard to run a studio and print albums if your pc won't say "Hi" to your printer. It was after this fiasco we started the switch to Macs, never looked back, everything just worked out of the boxes, computer never just froze for the sake of it, never got a pop up message saying "your computer is not responding" how come the message never stops responding lol.
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drivers for software? refused to be networked? refused to talk to your printers?

cant say ive had any of those issues with vista x64 business. or any other version of vista ive come across..

your symptoms sound more like the macs we have lol
 
I build my own PCs & install Windows OEM as I've got no use for the Retail copy which has a book & years phone support .

Microsoft have now changed the T & Cs on the OEM software such that you can only use it if you build then sell the PC.

It means that if I build my own PC in the future I'll have to buy the full retail Windows 7 pack :bang:



It's enough to make me want an eye patch & parrot ;)


princeclan said:
I think there are alot of people that will pay the extra for a better machine.

P.S Cheapest apple laptop is £709 for a 13" macbook
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My 17" Acer laptop cost £400 :shrug:
 
MS's pricing does seem rather strange at times. Most people buy the OEM version with a computer or alternatively the upgrade. Both of these are significantly cheaper than the retail amount. There are few instances when you would actually buy the retail version because if you were building a computer then you would qualify for the OEM version the only time I can think that you would actually have to pay this would be if you have a computer that did not have Windows and you buy it. Such as sticking Windows on a Mac !

I bought Vista ultimate for £90 and XP media center (with upgrade to Vista inc) for £88 and the only stipulation was "bought with hardware" so you could buy a £2 mouse.

It is still more than MacOS but the big difference is when you buy multiple OSes for a house full of computers. I bought a Leopard family pack for £129 which works out at £25.80 each for the FULL MacOS which equates to ULTIMATE but most people do not actually have 5 machines.

The retail price of MacOS Leopard is £83 from Apple and the home premium version of vista 64bit is £93 so there is virtually nothing in it. The ultimate version is £138 for the oem but most people will not use the extra.
 
cowasaki said:
The retail price of MacOS Leopard is £83 from Apple and the home premium version of vista 64bit is £93 so there is virtually nothing in it. The ultimate version is £138 for the oem but most people will not use the extra.
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Vista home premium (Retail) is £135, it is against the Microsoft licence for Joe Bloggs to use the OEM product unless he is building the PC to sell.

There is nothing to stop you buying / using the OEM version but it is breaking the Microsoft EULA and is on the same level as downloading a copy

Mad but true :shrug:
 
mrgubby said:
Vista home premium (Retail) is £135, it is against the Microsoft licence for Joe Bloggs to use the OEM product unless he is building the PC to sell.

There is nothing to stop you buying / using the OEM version but it is breaking the Microsoft EULA and is on the same level as downloading a copy

Mad but true :shrug:
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Breaching the eula is just a minor civil disagreement and there is not a lot ms can do about it really
 
cowasaki said:
Breaching the eula is just a minor civil disagreement and there is not a lot ms can do about it really
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I know, it's just barking mad that you can go out and buy something from MS & they still regard you as a Pirate :bonk:
 
Yay EULA discussions, I love these :)

Let's bring the Apple EULA into it as well, just for the giggles.

Actually, let's not bother...

Damn the EU and DoJ and their interfering in IT. They'd be better off be complaining about pharmaceutical companies instead and their shocking practices...
 
All I can say MS makes me feel really sick. I run OSX and I still feel sick. Their Office suite dominance is killing productivity. The thing is useless on Mac (incompatible with Chemdraw for us chemists, no VB script support, and other issues - so I have to run vmware). MS Office is also against standards, formatting in Word is PITA, and it is a pure rip-off. So OpenOffice.org seems to be a better FOSS alternative. Just when will people stop paying ££££ for something they don't need and something that doesn't really work as it should?!!!
 
daugirdas said:
All I can say MS makes me feel really sick. I run OSX and I still feel sick. Their Office suite dominance is killing productivity. The thing is useless on Mac (incompatible with Chemdraw for us chemists, no VB script support, and other issues - so I have to run vmware). MS Office is also against standards, formatting in Word is PITA, and it is a pure rip-off. So OpenOffice.org seems to be a better FOSS alternative. Just when will people stop paying ££££ for something they don't need and something that doesn't really work as it should?!!!
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But you'll pay for VMWare Fusion when there's at least one free alternative on the market from Sun, and several cheaper alternatives e.g. Crossover.

It's about what people know, what organisations can get support on, long term availability, other vendor integration etc. Once you get into the medium and large business market, the total cost to change is greater than the license savings too.
 
You will also get far better support with MS if anything goes wrong with office applications than you can with Openoffice.

Microsoft offer a huge support network both in terms of training and in actualy technical support. These are the reasons that a lot of companies will never leave MS for apple or Linux.
 
swanseamale47 said:
There were no drivers for half the software we used, it just refused to be networked, it refused to talk to our printers, it was buggy and slow as hell. Just what you need for a business, software that doesn't work properly.
We really got the feeling it was a beta or even alpha rather than a retail version.
We had to switch back to XP or stop business, it's hard to run a studio and print albums if your pc won't say "Hi" to your printer. It was after this fiasco we started the switch to Macs, never looked back, everything just worked out of the boxes, computer never just froze for the sake of it, never got a pop up message saying "your computer is not responding" how come the message never stops responding lol.
Click to expand...

If you think software needs drivers then no wonder you had problems :lol:

Vista does work properly...Sounds more elike a good old case of PEBCAC ;)

Was it a new machine, or were you trying to install it on an old one?

JasonRS said:
But you'll pay for VMWare Fusion when there's at least one free alternative on the market from Sun, and several cheaper alternatives e.g. Crossover.

It's about what people know, what organisations can get support on, long term availability, other vendor integration etc. Once you get into the medium and large business market, the total cost to change is greater than the license savings too.
Click to expand...

here here! Sun VirtualBox is really good.

lets throw LINUX into the mix shall we:bat:
 
Come on LINUX and it is FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
princeclan said:
Hence why i think Apple will continue to grow up to the point they will rival microsoft. They have the wow factor. Can you think of anyone that would make the above comment about microsoft?

Matt
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Matt, you're biased. You can't hold a serious argument when your perspective is completely one sided.

Windows 7 easily rivals OSX (I've used both extensively) and the pricing was rumoured by Microsoft to be set to make it affordable to the consumer market. The figures have not yet been released but the rumour is that the Home edition of Win 7 will retail at under £100 with Premium and Ultimate editions running a little higher. Your magazine appears to contradict that so who do you believe? Let's just wait and see before we shoot MS down in flames hey?

The situation is that both MS and Apple make very good products in their own right. Apple has the edge (although not for much longer it seems) on video and graphics editing, and MS has the edge on gaming/general computing. The lines are now converging though and it's down to personal preference. I'll take a PC over a Mac any day of the week right now, but in time that opinion may change.
 
andrewc said:
Part of the reason is because Apple control both the hardware and software sides then its much easier to write an OS. PC hardware could be a mixture of lots of different things with lots of different processors, motherboards and so on.
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This is a very broad misconception. If you think that it makes MS life harder because they have to write a multitude of Windows drivers supporting this, then you are wrong. They actually write very little of the core drivers themselves and force hardware manufacturers to re-certify and redevelop drivers for them. So in a way it is comparable to Apple but Apple simply does not open it up for every 3rd party hardware manufacturer. The result though is not the amount of supported hardware but the amount of quality testing that can be put to new operating system. But it does not mean that the Apple OS is any easire or cheaper to develop.

I think with MS is like with our government a bit - we are paying for their inflated staff, managers, and all those advertisement and promotion campaigns they run (like we do for our over inflated MPs expenses with our taxes) - and that's why it is so damn expensive...
 
Im always amazed when i find people who actually pay for miscrosoft products!
 
I'm amazed that people wouldn't think twice about stealing copyrighted material online, even though they pay for things in shops ;)
 
Pay for things in shops?

I thought that was a myth! I just walk out of jessops with everything i need lol!
 
cowasaki said:
MS's pricing does seem rather strange at times. Most people buy the OEM version with a computer or alternatively the upgrade. Both of these are significantly cheaper than the retail amount. There are few instances when you would actually buy the retail version because if you were building a computer then you would qualify for the OEM version the only time I can think that you would actually have to pay this would be if you have a computer that did not have Windows and you buy it. Such as sticking Windows on a Mac !

I bought Vista ultimate for £90 and XP media center (with upgrade to Vista inc) for £88 and the only stipulation was "bought with hardware" so you could buy a £2 mouse.

It is still more than MacOS but the big difference is when you buy multiple OSes for a house full of computers. I bought a Leopard family pack for £129 which works out at £25.80 each for the FULL MacOS which equates to ULTIMATE but most people do not actually have 5 machines.

The retail price of MacOS Leopard is £83 from Apple and the home premium version of vista 64bit is £93 so there is virtually nothing in it. The ultimate version is £138 for the oem but most people will not use the extra.
Click to expand...

You also need to remember (and this is the major factor for me) that mac users will have paid a premium for the hardware in the first place, which can range from £100-200 up to close to £1000 in some cases. When you add that in to the cost of the OS then things are a little different, and windows licences may seem quite cheap in comparison.:)

dalex_257 said:
I think with MS is like with our government a bit - we are paying for their inflated staff, managers, and all those advertisement and promotion campaigns they run (like we do for our over inflated MPs expenses with our taxes) - and that's why it is so damn expensive...
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Maybe I am completely wrong, but I am willing to be that Apple spend far more (per capita) than Microsoft in advertising.

When was the last time you saw an advert for a microsoft product? When was the last time you saw an advert for an Apple product? Apple are all about image, and in a lot of ways that means they need to get that image out there, and so have to advertise far more than microsoft.
 
Using Win 7 Release Client from M$ on my netbook now - runs really well. The release client is free to use till june/july 2010, and will run with no restrictions till March 2010.
 
Amp34 said:
Maybe I am completely wrong, but I am willing to be that Apple spend far more (per capita) than Microsoft in advertising.

When was the last time you saw an advert for a microsoft product?
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Erm, I actually see lots more MS Vista and Office adverts on TV than anything of the Apple - for example saw it yesterday on ITV. Have not seen an Apple advert for ages. Besides majority of Apple adverts is for their consumer stuff (iPods, iPhones) - never saw their OS advertised here in UK.
 
Why is this turning into another Apple bashing thread?

The OP is that new MS OS price appears too high. The Apple price is cited for comparison, although almost any other OS could be used and have the same impact.

I agree with the OP that the MS OS price seems insane. However I gather from other posters that there may be some legal restriction that forces MS to have high prices in order to avoid being accused of unfairly influencing the market by being so enormously dominant. Hey ho.

The fact that Macs cost more than an 'equivalent PC' is irrelevent. That some people see them as good value for money is interesting but unimportant, I fail to understand why some PC users see it as a hostile act to buy a Mac. It's quite odd.

Suggesting that Apple will catch up on MS soon as their growth was 30% rather than 10% is funny though. The MS 10% will still be much greater than the Apple 30% in volume terms. It would take many years of such a differential for Apple to even start to approach MS, never mind overhaul it. Besides, you're comparing different entities: much better to compare the software sales from Apple with the Software sales from MS.

Happily I don't have that data and couldn't care less :)
 
chrisuk said:
If you think software needs drivers then no wonder you had problems :lol:

Vista does work properly...Sounds more elike a good old case of PEBCAC ;)

Was it a new machine, or were you trying to install it on an old one?



here here! Sun VirtualBox is really good.

lets throw LINUX into the mix shall we:bat:
Click to expand...

Ahh of course when anything doesn't work it's always operator error, thats why computer shops are making good money swapping out vista for XP.
 
neil_g said:
i blame PC vendors who originally shipped vista on low spec boxes which gave it a bad name for being slow.
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Microsoft did make a mistake with Vista by have the vista capable standard that came out.

It was the equivalant of minimal spec which made vista run like a dog. PC`s minimum spec has increased a lot in the past years to the point where 4 gig of ram is increasingly the norm which makes vista run so much better.

I have been running vista since I built my new rig last year and its been great Really fast and i`ve never had any problems.

Windows 7 is getting a warmer reception because the spec of minimum pc`s has come up so the features that lagged when vista came out now run ok
 
dalex_257 said:
Erm, I actually see lots more MS Vista and Office adverts on TV than anything of the Apple - for example saw it yesterday on ITV. Have not seen an Apple advert for ages. Besides majority of Apple adverts is for their consumer stuff (iPods, iPhones) - never saw their OS advertised here in UK.
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Really? I haven't seen an advert from MS for at least a couple of months, whereas those stupid iPhone adverts are on multiple times a day, along with ipod and a few mac adverts.

it's alive said:
Why is this turning into another Apple bashing thread?

The OP is that new MS OS price appears too high. The Apple price is cited for comparison, although almost any other OS could be used and have the same impact.

I agree with the OP that the MS OS price seems insane. However I gather from other posters that there may be some legal restriction that forces MS to have high prices in order to avoid being accused of unfairly influencing the market by being so enormously dominant. Hey ho.

The fact that Macs cost more than an 'equivalent PC' is irrelevent. That some people see them as good value for money is interesting but unimportant, I fail to understand why some PC users see it as a hostile act to buy a Mac. It's quite odd.

Suggesting that Apple will catch up on MS soon as their growth was 30% rather than 10% is funny though. The MS 10% will still be much greater than the Apple 30% in volume terms. It would take many years of such a differential for Apple to even start to approach MS, never mind overhaul it. Besides, you're comparing different entities: much better to compare the software sales from Apple with the Software sales from MS.

Happily I don't have that data and couldn't care less :)
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No it's not, not when you are comparing two OS's. Mac hardware is identical to Windows hardware, the only difference "warranting" the price difference is brand, and as Macs only come with OSX and OSX only goes on Macs that means that is part of the price difference. In that way you need to take in to account the original extra cost of a Mac machine in the cost of an OS.:)

And the reason Windows users are bashing Mac users is the same that Mac users bash Windows users. Mac users regularly go into threads asking for a PC and stating to buy a mac, then coming out with a load of bull as to why macs are better...:lol:

neil_g said:
i blame PC vendors who originally shipped vista on low spec boxes which gave it a bad name for being slow.
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I think that is the main problem, which allowed the Microsoft bashers to get a foothold this time round. What really gets me is that Vista is almost certainly a better OS than XP, yet people still go on about it being as bad as ME! :p
 
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