Microsoft announces Vista prices (for real this time)

Microsoft has just announced the official, real-deal prices for Windows Vista. So, without the benefit of a timpani drumroll, here's the deets, straight from the horse's mouth (this time): Windows Vista Business ($300 full, $200 upgrade); Windows Vista Home Premium ($240 full, $160 upgrade); Windows Vista Home Basic ($200 full, $100 upgrade); Windows Vista Ultimate ($400 full, $260 upgrade). Although Vista is to be released to the "volume license customers" in November 2006 and the general public in January 2007, what if you wanted a preview sooner than that? Our peeps up in Redmond have also said that the company will be make the Release Candidate 1 available through the soon to be re-opened Vista Customer Preview Program. The only question we have left is which VAR is going to release the first Mac with Vista pre-installed?

[Thanks, srw985]

[David Park @ Sep 6th 2006 8:52AM]

I heard that you couldn't read burnt cd's on the new windows vista. I heard there were many restrictions, is this true?

[Shreedhan @ Sep 5th 2006 2:40PM]

Vista is going to be a good upgrade for XP users! Looks good.

Macfan Boys start your "It's no OS X"
WinFanBoys start you "marketshare... yada yada yada".

[PPC @ Sep 5th 2006 2:49PM]

Why should i upgrade? Too expensive!

[duke hafa @ Sep 6th 2006 2:35AM]

pirated vista - priceless

[dov @ Sep 5th 2006 2:45PM]

yeah, the update option loox better.. :)
but my beta license works until 2007.07,
so no upgrade till then :D

[dep @ Sep 5th 2006 2:46PM]

I still don't understand why someone would by the OS straight out when you can get a new machine and have it pre-installed for just a touch more money. They charge WAY too much for their OSs.

[Tim C @ Sep 5th 2006 9:46PM]

Can someone define upgrade? If you have windows xp home can you upgrade to the ultimate for $260

[Brian C @ Sep 5th 2006 2:55PM]

yea! can't wait to see what features Windows stole from the Mac OS!

[the_godfather @ Sep 5th 2006 3:00PM]

Question. Say I have XP Pro and want to upgrade to Vista. Can I go ahead and do a fresh install of Vista with the upgrade package or do I need to install xp and THEN install Vista?

[RICK @ Sep 5th 2006 3:00PM]

so when are we gonna start seeing some directx 10 schtik? isnt that a HUGE part of this OS? i cant find a friggin thing anywhere on it and i wanna dive ball-deep into some fresh dx10 sli vid cards... i'm gettin gpu blue balls here...

PS. yes ladies, they do exist.

[Euan @ Sep 5th 2006 3:02PM]

So is the Ultimate edition the equivilent of XP Pro? I really dislike the divisions they have going on. I thought people were moving towards less complicated buying scemes. Then again this is from the people who are going to introduces having to buy health for your XBox 360 games.

[StalePhish @ Dec 8th 2006 11:37AM]

In terms of Vista vs. XP:

Home Basic = XP Home Edition
Home Premium = XP Media Center Edition
Business = XP Professional
Ultimate = XP Pro + Media Center Edition

[Kevin @ Sep 5th 2006 3:08PM]

Who actually buys a Microsoft OS?

[RICK @ Sep 5th 2006 3:10PM]

GODFATHER- i'm gonna go ahead and be the dick and make the assumption that you need to UPGRADE with an UPGRADE copy... that being said, if its anything like all previous M$OS's, you can upgrade without activating the older product. a complete fresh install can be done with an UPGRADE disk but you MUST HAVE a windows version installed on the operative boot partition... cheers mate.

[Philip @ Sep 5th 2006 3:40PM]

Holly toledo. Geez ... And if I'm not mistaking, the only way to get the "gaming" optimizations is to by the Ultimate edition. There isn't enough in Vista to prove to me it's worth the $400/$260. Sounds like MS is trying to compensate for their extensive development time.

Who else gets the feeling that Vista will become the most pirated OS in the world?

[Nathan M @ Sep 5th 2006 4:12PM]

Mmm, the fanboys have already started. This ought to be interesting. In other news, the upgrade prices aren't so bad after all. Ultimate's upgrade is just 60$ more than XP Pro's upgrade was. I doubt I'll buy on launch or anything like that, but I may get it a couple of service packs down the road. :P I love the shiny desktop. xD

[tk. @ Sep 5th 2006 3:18PM]

Sweet, another MS OS full-blown for $5! Yay for college!

[Jan Schneiders @ Sep 5th 2006 3:26PM]

@the_godfather:

Upgraded Windows 3.11 to 95 a few days ago and I only needed to insert the 3.11 discs during the installation (installed on a clean (bigger) hd, using the 3.11->95 upgrade).

Think it's the same with the vista upgrade.

[James @ Sep 5th 2006 3:30PM]

bleh. so what? more bloatware from M$ to chew up more CPU, memory and disk space ... hardware vendors should be ecstatis. $200+ ... and for what? Is it faster (doubtful)? Is it more secure (loaded question)? oh yeah ... it's prettier ... BFD.

I don't need better graphics ... I need better interfaces, better usability, better security, fewer crashes and lockups, intuitive GUIs and menus. M$ has done little to innovate OS SW since Windows 98 (when they almost forgot the internet existed) ... look back at all the previous OS releases you've owned ... NT - crap, W2k - crap (how many hotfixes were on YOUR PC?), XP - 2 major service releases to create a secure OS ... :p

[TexRob @ Sep 5th 2006 3:29PM]

In summation:

Vista prices released, varying degrees of too much, news at 11.

[boolean22 @ Sep 5th 2006 3:29PM]

Considering the differences between the two OS's, the Vista Upgrade would ask only for the WinXP disc in order to check that you've already purchased a license for it. Given this way of upgrading, you'd just insert such disc + Activation Key during a Vista Setup, without having to prior install the full XP version.

[Goobimama @ Sep 5th 2006 3:41PM]

Torrents....

[Storm @ Sep 5th 2006 4:27PM]

"so when are we gonna start seeing some directx 10 schtik? isnt that a HUGE part of this OS? i cant find a friggin thing anywhere on it and i wanna dive ball-deep into some fresh dx10 sli vid cards.."

Hmm, this has been mentioned several times. DX10 Will be released eventually (maybe even packaged, but it's hard to tell since so much stuff was taken out of Vista), and only a fraction of current developers will take advantage of it. Supposedly another 2-3 years before the majority will be using DX10.

[Jayskie @ Sep 5th 2006 4:00PM]

You can actually buy Windows OS?

I thought it was free on torrent.

[Joe @ Sep 5th 2006 4:11PM]

So what's the OEM with a screw price?

[Sam Lowry @ Sep 5th 2006 5:08PM]

A week or 2 there was info on Free Upgrade Coupons from Microsoft for Vista if you buy a "Vista-ready" computer starting in October. Does anyone know any more about this deal? I was planning to buy a new computer anyway, but figured, if it's free I could wait a few weeks. Does anybody know if it matters where I buy, or what'll I need to prove this purchase is worthy?
Thanks

[Yebot @ Sep 5th 2006 4:36PM]

"Windows Vista Ultimate ($400 full, $260 upgrade)"

$260 For the Ultimate experience of dumping flies on top of crickets. (Bugs on top of bugs.)

[jim @ Sep 5th 2006 7:57PM]

I've seen several snippets of this version has this feature and that version
has all the features what I'd love to see is a chart lik you see for
comparing electronics - across the top listing the versions of vista and
then down the side a long list of features and then a little bullet marker
so I know which one has one.

Has anyone seen one like that? I'd think that would be the first link on
MS's Vista page but maybe they haven't come to a full spec on what version
will have what?

A chart would make it much easier for me to compare - not sure about other
people.

[Jayskie @ Sep 5th 2006 5:42PM]

http://winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_editions.asp

[marcamillion @ Sep 6th 2006 5:40AM]

what I want to know is...why in God's name is everyone asking Vista support questions on this post? Does it look like the url is "windowsvista.com" or even "microsoft.com"? I don't think sooo....So please...spare us. Ask your questions elsewhere.

[strike @ Sep 6th 2006 6:14PM]

$400!?!?!?! damn...

[jim @ Sep 5th 2006 7:58PM]

Jayskie - Thanks - I just saw checked it out.

Too bad you have to get the Ultimate edition to get the media center on a business package - a lot of money but I work with a few companies in the entertainment field that would really benefit from it.

[stan @ Sep 5th 2006 6:59PM]

They are releasing it to early....

They already missed christmas so who cares if they delay again

[Chris McDowell @ Sep 5th 2006 7:20PM]

I was runnin the latest beta from MS of vista along with the new office and vista running idle was using about 700MB of Ram. It ran slugish on a PentiumD with 1GB ram and the vista ready pci e card would not install and gave graphical glitches. Vista will be horrible on release and no way faster than XP. The blurry effect was neat for a few minutes on the windows transparent border but that got old. Bugs and glitches galore. Tons of stuff was glitching up and stopped responding and had to be hard reboot.

[Pal @ Sep 5th 2006 7:59PM]

It'd be cheaper to buy XP Pro/Home and then buy the upgrade for some of these.

[cobalt @ Sep 5th 2006 8:22PM]

I don't think any computer user on any operating system has been happy about buying an OS upgrade. It just calls more attention to the fact that you have to pay for the OS at all, which is inherently painful.

[James Smith @ Sep 5th 2006 9:44PM]

I think with the $400 I save on choosing Fedora Core over Vista (FC is free), I'll buy a new computer, and even thought it'll probably be a little slow, it'll run just as fast as a 3ghz computer running the resource hog vista.

[Shunnabunich @ Sep 5th 2006 11:35PM]

As if there was any doubt left:

It's not worth it.

What a surprise. We've only known that since what, Windows 98? ME?

[keith waddington @ Sep 6th 2006 2:53AM]

My grandma was very confused about all these versions. But then she went here:

http://winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_editions.asp

Now she understands everything.

PS

The "partial" list in the above link reminds me of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_dJEM1w9cg

Draw your own conclusions. (Use a pencil so you can erase stuff later.)

waddo

http://www.waddo.net/

[KURTIS @ Jan 12th 2007 10:47AM]

vista aint worth it, the company has gone retarded with the activation process, if you have 4 computers you need to pay 4 times 400$~ to hell with microsoft entirely.