Watch Out Win 7 Hackers

[ua549]

The Windows 7 introductory price in the USA was ~$75. That's about £48 at today's exchange rate.

[Steve R Jones]

The current Win 7 price is less then an HP 2030 laserjet my company bought a few weeks ago....For some reason, I'm rather certain HP didn't spend as much time and effort building the printer compared to what MS did build an OS...

[Learux]

Don't give me the non sense that it is so expensive, if you buy an OS for $200 use it for, lets say three years. it comes down to $0.20/day.

Of course you can get it cheaper than $200 and use them more then three years.

Just my $0.02

[wh666-666]

Its far from nonsense. You can pick up a quite modern PC for around £250 brand new. The OS is sometimes almost the same price as a complete PC. That is an unreasonable price.


Some of you can try saying about the effort that the programmers or manufacturers went to, but thats not what I said.



As a general rule of thumb across most sectors of society:

A large amount of people WILL pirate/steal a copy of a £200 OS instead of buying it legitimaly.

They will only get to the point of deciding the whole debarkle isnt worth it when the price is less than they value THEIR OWN effort in pirating it.

Given that pirating it, even without the headaches takes a few hours and as pointed out, we can say people value each hour of their time at least £5 in value, then we can say pirating would take at least £25 as a rough figure in a thieves valued effort. Therefor a price of £20 would stop nearly all pirating.





If you guys still want to argue, quit arguing with me since all Im doing is informing you of facts and instead go and argue with physcologists and people more adept at dealing with crime than yourselves.

Honestly, you lot would argue with a white wall whether it was white or not!

[Timman_24]

I got my Win 7 update for 30 dollars, I think that is reasonable (student offer.) For the amount of productivity an OS provides, it is amazing that the base version is only 75 dollars. Just think how many hours you spend with the OS. A typical user probably spends 20 hours a week on the computer. Over two years (typical life span) that would be 2080 hours in total. That would equate to 15 cents a hour. If you are an enthusiast like us, I'm sure the number jumps to 50+ hours a week on the computer. In which case we are at 6 cents a hour.

Compare that to other productivity expenses such as gasoline, electricity, cable, internet, etc then we can start to see this is a hell of a deal.

Do you expect the OS to be as much as a PC game even though the development cost hundreds of millions of dollars more, not to mention on going tech support through patches, updates, etc without any further cost outside the initial expenditure?

In the end MS is the one getting screwed. People playing WoW pay 10x more money to Blizzard than they do to MS.

[taggart6]

If people don't want to pay for Windows they can always run a Free OS like Debian

[wh666-666]

BINGO - we don't care what you said.

You may not as you just want to be deliberately rude, but then what is the point in taking part in a discussion if you are only interested in what you say? Can we please keep this civil and have a productive conversation?

No its not.....

Yes it is, as I proved. I can give you links to shopping sites with prices backing up my claims.

Win 7 Ultimate instore price as an example, price has come down a lot recently (product ID 175244):
£190
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&category_oid=

PC, refurb but as new with garuantee, same price, £190 for a dual core setup (product ID 820408):
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&category_oid=

As I said before, sometimes the same or almost as much as a new PC, this is a popular micro pc, brand new and available for cheaper elsewhere, but il stick to PC world prices for fair comparisons (product ID 153594):
£230
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&category_oid=

Only £40 more there, just for the hardware.

[wh666-666]

If people don't want to pay for Windows they can always run a Free OS like Debian

Exactly!



I wasnt drawing away from that at all, the only point I said is that some consider £200 too much as its a weeks wages for some, rtaher than 1/2 a days wage.

[ua549]

You seem to be comparing retail software prices rather than bundled OEM software prices.

You are also ignoring many other sources for inexpensive Microsoft software such as Tech Net where $250 will get a home user 10 Windows 7 Ultimate licenses plus all sorts of server and Office products.

[wh666-666]

Im not ignoring that at all.

I am saying about the cost for the average joe, with little experience. We may know of places where you can get good deals, but services like technet require you to be able to access technet in the first place, which if you dont have a PC, you cant do!

The advantages of retail over OEM are very little and not usually applicable to users who buy one machine to last them until it dies and a couple of OS's later, they'll buy another. Retail may be ebeneficial for us upgrading our systems but for most it doesnt.



The point is, those who dont know enough about computers will see windows 7 in the shop for £190, then machines with windows 7 on starting from £190, which do you think they would pick?




The other point is, regardless of MS's effort and expense or any other issues, if someone looks at a product that costs a weeks wages, they'll probably pirate it.

If it costs half a days wages, they'll just buy it rather than dealing with the headaches of torrenting or even learning how to do so, assuming the even have an OS in the first place.


Research has shown this time and time again, so arguing with me about human nature is a bit pointless, but at least we're on topic

[Steve R Jones]

You may not as you just want to be deliberately rude, but then what is the point in taking part in a discussion if you are only interested in what you say? Can we please keep this civil and have a productive conversation?





Yes it is, as I proved. I can give you links to shopping sites with prices backing up my claims.

Win 7 Ultimate instore price as an example, price has come down a lot recently (product ID 175244):
£190
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&category_oid=

PC, refurb but as new with garuantee, same price, £190 for a dual core setup (product ID 820408):
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&category_oid=

As I said before, sometimes the same or almost as much as a new PC, this is a popular micro pc, brand new and available for cheaper elsewhere, but il stick to PC world prices for fair comparisons (product ID 153594):
£230
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&category_oid=

Only £40 more there, just for the hardware.

Everytime YOU post something you hurt my head..So I consider it more then rude on your part..

Here you are comparing computer systems WITH AN OS on em against just an OS....

I forget ...What was your point again

[ua549]

So you are saying people will pirate anything that costs more than the efforts required to obtain it illegally. That is a piss poor attitude that totally ignores human characteristics such as honesty and honor. I'd like to have a database containing all of the world's greatest music, but I wouldn't ever consider stealing it. Same with a Ferrari.

An owner of any property, intellectual or not, has the right to defend it and insure that it is used according to any license granted to others. People who steal for pleasure are not fit for society.

[Steve R Jones]

1) The other point is, regardless of MS's effort and expense or any other issues, if someone looks at a product that costs a weeks wages, they'll probably pirate it.


2) so arguing with me about human nature is a bit pointless,

1) You're hanging out with the wrong people wh666-666....I don't know any one that would steal....


2) Ya got that one right - good for you.

[Timman_24]

wh666-666, the cost for the average joe is rolled into a premade system from dell. Dell pays next to nothing for their mass licenses which is passed on to the consumer.

I like how you quote the ultimate edition of 7 and then build a pos computer to put it on LOL. I could just as easily build a powerhouse computer and then put home edition on it and say "hey look, it the os was only 5% of the cost...)

People that are tech savvy enough to pirate Windows 7 are smart enough to take part in the incentives MS has. The OEM edition of premium costs 100 dollars. Introductory offers were 75 dollars. Student deals were 30 dollars. There are many more legit ways to get it on the cheap rather than walking into walmart and getting raped.

[Nater]

Yet Windows 7 IS light years ahead of the next best. (Ubuntu - IMHO)

I don't miss the days of Apple, Commodore, TRS-80, KayPro - nothing works with anything else. One BIG reason I detest the Mac - a return to proprietary crap.

DOS was the great unifier of all things computer, Windows keeps things unified.

Windows is really no more or less a proprietary operating system than is OSX. The big difference is that Apple only ostensibly allows installation of it's OS on it's own computers. You can't access Microsoft's source any easier than you can Apple's. As for proprietary, they both run on the industry standard x86 ISA and nothing else excluding older versions of OSX (PowerPC) and the IA-64 versions of Windows 2000/2003/2008. I'm would be surprised if Microsoft drops IA-64 support before too long, it just never took off.

I'm sorry, but if you look at it purely from the OS alone, nothing touches OSX. Windows 7 goes a long way to making Windows a better place, but Microsoft is still pretty far behind in key usability errors.

The Dock is still marginally better than Windows 7's improved Task Bar and Expose is still light years ahead of Flip3D. When it comes to managing system memory, OSX is again a lot better than Windows. That's not much of a problem anymore though, everyone can afford masses of system memory and should be running a 64-bit OS.

The funny thing is that both operating systems (Linux has ext4) are missing modern file systems. Apple completely dropped the ball when it didn't ship 10.6 with ZFS. Why they dropped it I don't know, but I'm guessing that Apple will get to a modern file system a couple years before Microsoft ever gets around to doing it.

Linux is a great server operating system, Linux is a great embedded operating system, Linux is a horrible desktop operating system. The only reasons to run Linux on a desktop are because you're administrating Linux servers, you're a software geek, you're a security geek. That's about it. Any standard program outside of Firefox and OpenOffice (if you could call that a standard) won't run on it. If you want a mostly-POSIX (as of 10.5 OSX is fully compliant) compliant desktop operating system, get a Mac.