Windows Vista Ultimate: $450 US?
By Ryan Block 
posted May 30th 2006 11:21AM
posted May 30th 2006 11:21AM
We have absolutely no way of confirming the information ourselves, but according to iTWire, we can expect to really pay out the nose for the most ultimate version of Windows ever conceived, Windows Vista Ultimate. Like, say, something to the tune of $450 US. Yeah, we know that's a lot, but we're assuming that's for the single-license full install retail MSRP; and when you consider the fact that the single-license full install retail MSRP of XP Pro is still $300 US, it's not too drastically unrealistic. Don't get us wrong, we're not exactly endorsing snapping up operating systems that cost more than the machines they run on but, you know, it is Ultimate freaking Vista, dude. Oh, and apparently Office 2007 Ultimate will set you back $679 US, too. Don't get dizzy now, just get your company to pick 'em up for you and you'll be well on your way to the Ultimate Microsoft suite which might have otherwise been used to put a nice down payment on a private jet.
Well there not giving it away!
$450 for 450 bugs ;)
someone's gotta pay for the DRM.
Didn't buy the last one, not gonna buy this one. But in this case, I won't download it either.
Nothing like jumping on these unconfirmed stories and giving your 2c.
I'll be saving my money for the game and BluRay playing, Internet connected PS3 - heaps more fun for the money and a lot more bang for your buck.
After all, Vista will just slow your machine down to a crawl, eat all your hard drive and for what? I already have an operating system that works...
Linux and Openoffice are still free ;)
the release is so far away, they had to figure in the cost of inflation. ;)
Ubuntu and Openoffice shutting down Microsoft one User at a time!
torrents.
Oh yeah, and to Dolphgb. You do realize that they'll make it so that you HAVE to buy/download it at some point. You can't play all the newest games and have the latest software unless you have Vista!
will be more like $225 at newegg(OEM version). and probably cheaper with a dell.
Holy Crap! $450 to load the "Ultimate" Windows on my Mac! I don't think so...
And people were saying 600 is bad for the PS3. I mean keep working on the familiar Office 2003 (if you are so certain microsoft is the way, I say OpenOffice is much better) and with the cash you save get the PS3 ... I really don't want to hear one more bash on the PS3 until Office has had its due. I mean at least for the 600 your giving to Sony your getting the equivilent of a top of the line media computer, with blu-ray and the cell. This new Office won't be even close to worth 600, especially when OpenOffice is right behind to offer the same product for free. (And I won't even start on the hell that will start because of Vista)
OS X 10.5 Leopard will be cheaper :)
#6
Goodluck doing your business presentation, taxes, spreadsheets on your PS3, You gonna use the joypad to write PS3 word documents.
Thats an outrageous price for an OS, The problem with Microsoft is that they dont seem to realise that PC's have come down in price so much, seriously I could buy two computers for the price of that $650. An OS should represent no more than 5-10% of the purchase price of a computer. Microsoft had a case for charging $200 for an OS when computers were $2k+ for a very basic system.
By the time Vista comes out, inflation will have taken its toll and $450 will be nothing.
I'm not a MS hater, and run Windows on most of my desktops... Nonetheless, Windows XP was ridiculous, trying to make me pay better than a C-note to update each machine. But half a G for a nonserver OS? Not unless it gives head and makes pie.
Go get a Mac guys. At 129$ every new OSX, it's a real deal. Plus that OSX Leopard will see daylight sooner than Vista and will leave Windows in the dust, just as Tiger did with XP. :)
19: Not really. It may cost only around $130 for each "new" OS, but they come out every year (almost), and you basically need to update or lots of things won't work/install. What is OS X on now, 10.4? That's 4 times $129 for each update.
thats nonsense no 20, i know people still using os9 and everything works fine, plus tiger really was a major update (giving us everything vista promises) and leopard is gonna be bigger still, remember no registering either so share a copy bought with friends, plus, no ULTIMATE windows viruses, thats priceless
diulei, it may be $130 every 15 to 18 months to actually have the latest, updated OS, but at least it's not $399 one time to get something today that was made 4 years ago. Like the price of most things, the price for XP should be competitive to OSX at least by now.
Also, the only way I will ever buy another Microsoft operating system is bundled with a computer.
If Microsoft was smart they would offer a vista/360 bundle that you can get both for a reduced price. Since many XBOX freaks are also windows users it makes sense.
i agree with diulei that mac osx is not cheap, given how often they upgrade.
but i'd gladly pay $130 a year for true upgrades, as opposed to windows releasing nothing but security patches in the past five years.
Yeah you have to pay for service packs on the Mac :/
I'm hoping to get it through the MSNDN academic alliance for free. One nice thing about MS is that they treat their academic customers well.
#19
you dont seem to understand how osx works. these are COMPLETELY new versions. full of new features that windows users only dream of and linux users read man pages for. and #19, jaguar was the competition to xp, you might even say that cheetah was. tiger features all the hot items (now removed) from vista, and leopard will just cause ms to realize they need to push back more to add more osx-like features.
back to #20...apple fully supports back to 10.1 for most things, sure they want you to buy the new one every time, but if you dont, you can still do virtually anything that isnt extreme cutting edge.
and for people who say windows is better because mac os9 users had to buy all new software, too bad! thats how it goes! its 7+ years old! get with the now! a new mac comes FULLY loaded with software, and besides getting stuck in the elevator after buying it, itll be a painless experience getting home and getting online with it and working.
wow, ive never 'ranted' on a blog before, where are my blood pressure pills?
Ooh, Ultimate Sh*t for only $450.00? I can't believe it!
you guys do realize that "diulei" is a curseword in cantonese right?
#14,
You are missing one important difference between the PS3 and MS Office. PS3 can't be grabbed from BitTorrent ;).
and besides getting stuck in the elevator after buying it, itll be a painless experience getting home and getting online with it and working.
Haha! That was the funniest comment ever!
>> Linux and Openoffice are still free ;)
And Worth every penny...
I'm not saying you _have_to_ upgrade OS X each time an update comes out, it's just in my experience (using my old G4 PowerBook, running 10.2.9) lots of new apps won't work unless I upgrade to 10.4, and this has never been the case with my XP box. Anything that is "XP compatible" has worked on my old, non-updated XP box, while lots of things "OS X compatible" really mean "latest version of OS X compatible".
For example, I was trying to watch some Quicktime videos the other day on Apple's movie trailer site, and realized I needed to upgrade. I downloaded the new version, and guess what, I couldn't install it since I didn't have Tiger. So now, when I want to watch videos encoded in the latest version of QT, I have to use my Windows box. Ironic, eh?
Basically - I'm saying that although each revision of OS X is "only" $129, you may end up having to upgrade and spend more, so for lots of users, it ends up being multiple times the $129 price tag.
Y'know, if they sold the OS for $50, EVERYONE would buy a legal copy, which is more than we could say for every other OS they've released... and they'd turn a tidy profit from the sheer number of sales.
And to add further to my sarcastic comment above, let me say that Linux is the white trash of desktop client operating systems; cheap, ugly, and crude. Comparing it, which is a fantastic server OS, to OSX is just comical. Vista I could care less for, but I'll give MS props for trying to catch up with Apple, even if the results fall short.
holy fuck.
#35: haha
So, a $299 Dell PC will come with a $450 OS, and you don't even own the OS? Something is wrong with this picture. Isn't this akin to a $15,000 Chevy with a $40,000 engine (one that hopefully runs and does not require restarting periodically)?
Evidently, Vista was coined to mean "view of large piles of hopeful cash for those willing to part with it". I think not.
I suggest MS offer the following: Buy 20 shares of MS stock at $20 a share in exchange for 1 copy of Vista Ultimate. They will still get the cash, but at least have to pay users with a dividend.
Can we get a PS3 Vista OMG Edition bundle pack going?
funny how people are ranting and making out openoffice to be something it's not. Open office sucks. That crap has got so many memory leaks. In my experience Openoffice crashes more than MS Office. Till today I do my word processing on my windowsXp machine instead of my gentoo machine. People just love to hate sometimes instead of looking at things clearly and rationally. I'd rather pay to use MS Office than use openoffice for free.
Thank God I have an MSDN Subscription which I don't pay for.
http://djrickp.com
Do you think big business cares how much Office costs? Office Ultimate isn't made for you or I most likely. Its made for people who need every friggen option available and it allows an IT department to buy jus tone version of Office and install it on every computer in the office, instead of getting one that includes frontpage one that includes PPT SUPER XTREME EDITION. It makes maintence and backups easier to have every comp on the same exact setup so that is why Office Ultimate can cost $600+ and will still sell like crazy.
And comparing Windows Vista Ultimate to Mac OS X is stupid. If you included 20+ aftermarket programs that will be in Ultimate into OS X then you would be able to compare the functionality of the two, and then the cost's would be equal. Vista Ultimate won't be like XP Pro it will include tons of goodies that are probably not worth paying for but will make computing easier.
That's rediculous.
meh, looks like I'm saving up for a Mac then, I can't afford it any more than I can a windows at this point, jesus.
There are many very capable Linux operating systems out there right now some even rivaling what i have seen of Vista.Open Office is a great replacement for MS Office there is also Abiword which though not has sophisticated is very capable, i think a lot of people just don't know they have a choice.
>> "So, a $299 Dell PC will come with a $450 OS, and you don't even own the OS?"
Uh..no. a $299 Dell PC will come with a $50-80 OS called Vista Basic. And what exactly do you mean by not owning the OS? Surely you're not one of those nutball GPL zealots who believes that all code should be free and we should all write code for free as well. I wish your employers treated you that same logic..."What? You expect me to pay you for your work? "
I like my XP.
Of course I just recently came from ME. If you gave me a monitor with a picture of Xp on it, I would have had more stability.
While that $450 for Ultimate is a chunk, that's for ultimate. Most of everyone will want the Professional or some other consumer equivalent. I can imagine the 5 DVD install discs Ultimate must come with.
Of course what irks me is that none of these will stream video to a 360, making everyone wonder if the 360 wasn't some half baked attempt to increase MCE sales.
Thank God for pirates.
It is the 'ultimate' version after. I think all the bitchers need to go back and look at the distinguishing characteristics between all 57 versions of Vista and realize it is most likely going to cost them a lot less.
I know the idea of everyone in the office sharing one big ass Vista Tivo sounds cool, but most likely there is a cheaper, less feature wasteful version out there for you.
and to #34, SLED10 and Looking Glass are (2) *nix UI's that kick OSX ass, douchebag.
"Like the price of most things, the price for XP should be competitive to OSX at least by now. "
OSX doesn't really compete with Windows though. And you still need to pay more for a Mac.
"If you included 20+ aftermarket programs that will be in Ultimate into OS X then you would be able to compare the functionality of the two, and then the cost's would be equal"
you mean like, iPhoto, Garageband, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, PhotoBooth, XCode? ya if they included that stuff with OSX it'd be really ... expensive... oh, wait. well i'm sure all of that software is included with ULTIMATE VISTA ... oh, wait.
the software bundled with OSX is so good that paul thurrott wished microsoft could bundle such good software with windows.
http://www.connectedhomemag.com/HomeOffice/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=49259
so to recap:
i can get OSX which comes bundled with software MS wishes it could create, with all the features Vista promised (but dropped), for $129. oh but wait, Leopard is almost out. in three months, for $129, i can get all the features microsoft will be promising 4+ years from now in addition to great bundled software microsoft can't seem to copy.
I wouldn't care if they gave it away, no thanks. -Not Linus
I am sorry to post so late in the chain, but I believe that the real bugbear is not the price of Windows but rather the steep decline in the US Dollar value.
The pricing reflects inflation not M$ taking advantage of a monopoly position.
600 USD for a gaming console and 450 USD for a operating system. Robber baron times and inflation to match!
:) George
...and Bill was ranting how it makes sense for the UMPC to be near the pockets of average people and can still fill his pockets with Vista sales. Come on Bill we are average people too..
READ THE FIRST LINE.
"We have absolutely no way of confirming the information ourselves..."
Its funny how fanboyism clouds peoples rational thinking and intiates a blind knee-jerk reation from the macophiles, the linux camp and even MS.
If you actually read the damn article, it clearly indicates this is UNCONFIRMED!
You should wait till it is officially annouced before you react. Also, as mentioned this is the ULTIMATE edition. The VERY large majority will not need alot of the features that are exclusive to it. Unless you guys run multi-million $ companies that its peanuts and will probably get discounts anyways (licesing and so on)
Geeze i hate fanboys
As a correction beta 2 does stream video via the MCE to the 360... and also for those bitching ultimate is exactly that it stands to be ultimate... rumor is it will come with URGE subscriptions and other stuff like that for free that will be part of the "ultimatE" experience its not just the OS...
Throw out some rumors on the price of the Home Premium Edition. If that seems "too high", then I'll start my spitting and swearing.
FOR KENT P
Uh ... thanks Kent, but alas, you did not see the sarcasm in my post. The point is that we now have a an OS more expensive than the hardware it runs on. A somewhat new idea don't you think?
You lept to a conclusion ... I do not believe the OS should be free, or even close to free ... hence my suggestion of spending $400 for MS stock. Nor do I believe that a car engine filled with gasoline should cost more than the vehicle in which it sits. After all, the OS is the engine required to make the hardware run.
Get it?
I think people are once again shooting off at the mouth before they really take time to do the research. the ultimate edition of vista is going to be the most bloated, useless OS known to mankind, there's other skews of vista that will be available and much much cheaper.
i love the person that thinks with a 299 dell that he could run Vista Ultimate. LOL. vista ultimate is going to render about 60% of consumer PCs worthless upon it's release.
I'm ma Mac guy personally, i think Apple has a better development network and constantly innovate and have the most intelligent operating systems known to mankind. if Microsoft could ever huddle around hardware manufacturers and get the type of integration that OSX has with it's hardware then maybe we might have a battle for my money.
also people looking to dual boot with their mac will be happy to know that this "ultimate" version will not be available to run on Boot Camp until...the OS comes out. I'd love to see the face on the person who runs out to buy Ultimate only to load it on Boot Camp when the OS is completely unsupported by it. hahahaha
#43 and #46 have it right. This article is talking about Vista Ultimate. Check out Microsoft's site to see the differences between the versions.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/default.mspx
You're practically buying ALL the Vistas in one, and then some. For the security and networking nuts, this bud's for you! (jokingly, for those who dislike MS, "this bug's for you")
If you want Vista for gaming, Home and Home Premium are all you need, not raking more than probably $100 to $150. For something I know I'll have for a few years, I think that's a good price.
And buy the $450 version if you use OpenOffice, and quit with the Linux and OSX jokes. For some, there's a reason why some of us choose to stay with MS.
http://www.torrentspy.com -- windows vista
fuck paying 500 dollars...
Why are people crying about the cost of Vista Ultimate? MSRP retail at $450, OEM will probably be $200.00 so who cares. We pay more on a video card these days than the full retail of Vista Ultimate, which is only going to be for the power house user anyway. I've been running Beta 2 for weeks now, flawlessly as an IT pro, and i've been playing games like GRAW, BF2 and more. The guy that said slower system, and more crashes? Don't knock it till you try it. Especially if you have the freaking equipment to handle it. It loads way faster than XP does so far, and handles installation errors with up to date solution reports.
I'm running an AMD X2 4800, with a X1800XT 512, 4GB, and 4x250 sata 2 drives. Yeah with all the extra addons i've got a beast, that will blow those 500 buck shit systems from dell out anyday. And let me tell you, Vista runs way freaking better than XP, and most common linux flavors i've been running since i'm in the web hosting biz. so keep talking crap, OSX will probably still be more stable, but the new features of VISTA really pack a damn punch. Of course maybe the main prob is, you guys are wanting to run awesome stuff with nickels and dimes...this is the pc world guys, gotta dish the cash to keep up with kicking ass.
And yeah I agree, if you are talking about running Vista on a 300 dollar Dell, your out of your dumb ass mind. Real system users running CG apps, intense games, studio software, etc will be running ultimate. So quit crying like you guys actually have some impact on the community.
They cry about the cost because it is, without doubt,
too high. There is only one solution for any of us:
do not purchase a Microsoft product - ever. That
includes the Mac. As long as we give them money, they
will continue to create high-dollar crap: security problems, conceited GUI's, hardware-draining bloatware,
and all manner of crap for us to digest.
Microsoft rapes every single one of us worldwide with
insane pricing, poor coding, industry strong arming,
ridiculous edition-based pricing, etc, etc, etc.
They exist souly for profit - everything else is false.
It is high time for the Windows operating system to
become a public resource. MS is no longer in touch
with reality. Most people around the world crap in
a hole in the ground. Get real...
They do not have to "dish the cash to keep up with kicking ass." Are you smoking crack, you brain-washed
Jack Ass? That's a big problem, after all. MS does
not need that much money.
Actually I wasn't talking about the cost of Vista when I said that, I was talking about your system hardware. If you want to think you can run high end programs, lets say Maya Unlimited, 3ds Max, stuff that is intensive, which will be tailored to Vista Ultimate, you're not going to be running a cheap 400-300 dollar Dell. That's all I was saying. But remember this is Ultimate pricing if it's even around what it will really cost. The two lower versions of Vista will be Home Basic and Home Premium (XP Pro equiv). So those prices will be more current to the standard XP pricing. And for an OEM disc at $139 from newegg, that's really not too much for an OS. How much do you spend on gas in a week?
I'm brainwashed, yet I run CentOS 4 and slackware on one of my drives, and load Linux mainly on all my clients servers. I run windows for gaming and cg apps. Mac would be nice, but I like being able to mod my hardware, overclock my stuff when I want to, and have a broder range of expandability with PC. Linux as a main OS has limited driver support anyway. Can't run an Adaptec Sata Raid card $199 on a Web Server for FreeBSD or CentOS, I need to go out and pay 300+ for a good 3ware card. Although in Windows I can use the adaptec.
Oh yeah. In this age of expanding software piracy, I'm sure $450 will make people think twice about downloading Vista instead.
*rolls eyes like Jerry Seinfeld*
Thanks.
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http://www.dl4all.com
thanks