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Why Windows 7 should be a free upgrade to Vista users
November 11th, 2008
Details have been coming out about the next version of Windows, to be called Windows 7. Vista hasn’t gotten very good praise since it came out. Even though I’m a Vista user and do like it overall, it seems like Windows 7 is basically designed to make critics of Vista happy. And to make it up to people, I think Microsoft should offer Windows 7 as a free upgrade from Vista.
Let’s compare prices of the different editions of Vista when it was originally released compared to current prices:
| Vista Editions: | Home Basic | Home Premium | Business | Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original Prices: | $199 | $239 | $299 | $399 |
| New Prices: | $199 | $259 | $299 | $319 |
The most popular edition, Home Premium (what I’m using as I type this on my laptop) has gone up in price while the most pointless edition, Ultimate went down by a considerable amount. Looking at that, two conclusions can be made. First, there should only be two editions, Home for $199 and Business for $299. And that pricing is reasonable considering the fact that most people just upgrade their PCs with the OEM editions anyway and it looks more competitively priced to the Apple OS which is $129. And second, anyone who bought Ultimate when it came out got jipped. My dad is one of those people, in fact buying two copies, one of which was for me to upgrade my home desktop PC.
Based on some of the initial features for Windows 7, it looks like some are fixes to issues with Vista, while others are improvements to things that are pretty much already a part of Vista. I’m not sure if the features are worth the upgrade cost, probably being $150-$250 (which is basically what Vista costs to upgrade from XP).
So for Microsoft to get some of its reputation back, it should 1) offer upgrade options from XP to Windows 7 for the standard $150-$250 upgrade price 2) offer Vista users a lower-cost upgrade for Home Standard/Premium and Business editions at half the standard upgrade price and 3) for those who actually bought the Ultimate edition, Windows 7 should be free via Windows Update.
Tags: microsoft, software, windows
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