3 ms·

No this is naive. You are asking for business versions to be slowed by fancy virtualisation, home versions to be confused by power user features etc. Okay so

No this is naive. You are asking for business versions to be slowed by fancy virtualisation, home versions to be confused by power user features etc. Okay so let's imagine that you can pick some magic confic option when you install to get around this. Then every version will include the price of all features. So the home user and netbook OEM user will be required to pay the current "Ultimate" cost.

ctingom 17y ago
One solution I've seen described is for Microsoft to spin off all of those features as separate products. So sell IIS as one product, and so forth.
- smokinn 17y ago
  So instead of bundling the software together to match common use cases, put the burden on the shopper to know what every single part of windows does and whether they need it? That would be fine for geeks but the vast majority of the population would not appreciate that at all.
  - invisible 17y ago
    I think the idea is that the "Home" functionality is built-in, but say media center is an option, domain/security permissions is an option, and maybe "server" is an option (to transform into Windows 7 Server). It's stupid that they have like 9 (home, pro, server, server small business, etc.) versions of a very similar solution (an operating system). They're all fundamentally similar.
    - smokinn 17y ago
      While it's true that there are a lot of versions, there aren't 9 boxes side by side on a shelf in a store. I think home, pro and server is all that should be in a best buy or equivalent. More specialized but very real and useful cases such as enterprise, unlimited, small business, etc should still be available but only through a vendor or website.
russell 17y ago
I think the article has the right idea. No one thinks that if the single version is the Ultimate, it will cost $500. That's silly. It would be priced somewhere near the bottom of the current range. Starter should not exist. It's just a way for low end OEMs to screw the end user. It is reasonable to have two or three versions: a desktop/laptop for nearly all users, a server version with fewer UI frills and more system management/security, and possibly a smaller fewer frills for low end devices but not crippled like the starter version.
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  Why would it be silly? Microsoft would charge the price where they can make the most profit and that would probably be somewhere in the middle of all the current price ranges. The current setup allows Microsoft to sell to people who don't have the budget of companies without appearing to rip companies off. Similarly OEM demanded that the price be cheaper so Microsoft made a new version but had to justify to regular users why they don't pay the starter price.
ja2ke 17y ago
Apple doesn't seem to have this problem with MacOS X -- my mom uses the same exact operating system for Word, email, and posting photos, that I use for graphic design and web dev, that my programmer friends use for writing desktop and web apps and game development -- but maybe they have other problems as a result of having only 2 SKUs (Standard and Server) that I'm not aware of.
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  I think the mac pricing model has room for this because of the typically bundled hardware etc.

ctingom 17y ago

One solution I've seen described is for Microsoft to spin off all of those features as separate products. So sell IIS as one product, and so forth.

smokinn 17y ago
So instead of bundling the software together to match common use cases, put the burden on the shopper to know what every single part of windows does and whether they need it? That would be fine for geeks but the vast majority of the population would not appreciate that at all.
- invisible 17y ago
  I think the idea is that the "Home" functionality is built-in, but say media center is an option, domain/security permissions is an option, and maybe "server" is an option (to transform into Windows 7 Server). It's stupid that they have like 9 (home, pro, server, server small business, etc.) versions of a very similar solution (an operating system). They're all fundamentally similar.
  - smokinn 17y ago
    While it's true that there are a lot of versions, there aren't 9 boxes side by side on a shelf in a store. I think home, pro and server is all that should be in a best buy or equivalent. More specialized but very real and useful cases such as enterprise, unlimited, small business, etc should still be available but only through a vendor or website.

russell 17y ago

I think the article has the right idea. No one thinks that if the single version is the Ultimate, it will cost $500. That's silly. It would be priced somewhere near the bottom of the current range. Starter should not exist. It's just a way for low end OEMs to screw the end user. It is reasonable to have two or three versions: a desktop/laptop for nearly all users, a server version with fewer UI frills and more system management/security, and possibly a smaller fewer frills for low end devices but not crippled like the starter version.

nopassrecover 17y ago
Why would it be silly? Microsoft would charge the price where they can make the most profit and that would probably be somewhere in the middle of all the current price ranges. The current setup allows Microsoft to sell to people who don't have the budget of companies without appearing to rip companies off. Similarly OEM demanded that the price be cheaper so Microsoft made a new version but had to justify to regular users why they don't pay the starter price.

ja2ke 17y ago

Apple doesn't seem to have this problem with MacOS X -- my mom uses the same exact operating system for Word, email, and posting photos, that I use for graphic design and web dev, that my programmer friends use for writing desktop and web apps and game development -- but maybe they have other problems as a result of having only 2 SKUs (Standard and Server) that I'm not aware of.

nopassrecover 17y ago
I think the mac pricing model has room for this because of the typically bundled hardware etc.