Buy Windows Vista. Microsoft, the worldwide leader in including operating systems on computers, has announced a price drop for their newest OS child, Vista.
Later this year Vista will be dropping from 399 dollars to 319 dollars for the full Ultimate version while the Home Premium version will drop from $159 to $129. And if you act now I hear they’re throwing in a set of steak knives absolutely free.*
If the savings aren’t enough to get you to jump to the Vista side of the fence consider this; these price drops will come hot on the heels of the highly anticipated Service Pack 1. According to WindowsVistaBlog the service pack will be "addressing specific reliability and performance issues we’ve identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards."
So you’ll be getting a more reliable Vista that, with any luck, will be future proof. All for the awkwardly looking price of 319 dollars. Microsoft thinks that the new lower price coupled with the release of the service pack will draw the Vista holdouts from their hiding places.
Personally I think a $299 price point would look a lot better on paper than their new $319 one. Consumers worried about price probably don’t want to break that 300 dollar threshold and being able to advertise Vista Ultimate for under 300 dollars would certainly get people to pay attention.
Besides, I’m not sure price is the biggest problem with Vista. It could be the compatibility and stability issues that the operating system seems to be riddled with. Microsoft is going to have to have to make sure Service Pack 1 is all that and a bag of chips if they hope to grab any kind of market share with Vista.
*Operators are not standing by, and Microsoft is not actually going to give you a set of steak knives. Sorry.
[via gamesindustry.biz]
