News Microsoft blames error for Windows 8 price drop

The early upgrade offer was too good compared to regular pricing - I got several win8 pro upgrades for 15 pounds or so each, for the 5 pcs in my family (some without even valid win7 licences), and I was happy to pay that. It was actually the first time I've paid for windows (used pre-installed, or linux). Now I want another copy to run in a virtual machine, and I'm expected to pay 190?!? Not going to happen.

 

Yeah I think most wanting to upgrade did so when the offer was about. I'm sure we will see more offers in the future if it's such the disaster some are saying.

 

LOL. So MS believe a fair price for an OS upgrade is either £25 or £190. They really don't have a clue!

 

bargain-basement £44.99 price for Windows 8 Pro Upgrade

Not for me, maybe if they gave me a free windows tablet with 8 installed i would go for it.
But even if they payed me i wouldn't use it on a desktop.

 

I'm sure they'll be devastated and shipping one over to you now.

 

Still wouldn't have bought it for £45 to be honest. Good that they're honoring the purchases though!

 

45 quid was a great price tbh. And while I actually like Windows 8, there's no way I'd ever pay 190 for it. Operating systems just don't have that much value nowadays in and of themselves. For that much money, you can get a Nexus 7 that includes the necessary OS with it for free!!

 

lol

 

Shame really, I kind of regretted not upgrading my main PC when the £25 offer was available. I held off because I upgraded 2 other machines instead.

 

Damn right
Anyone want to buy my free tablet ?

 

I'm confused; when I checked 10 minutes ago CCL Computers were selling Win8 Pro 32 / 64 bit Upgrade discs for only £49; am I missing something?

 

Several retailers are still selling Windows 8 at £49 probably because they bought the stock when it was cheap.

 

I should buy an copy I guess for later on (just I have no plans on using windows 8 at all) as I only going to be using the desktop not metro so see no reason to use windows 8 if all I am going to do is install startisback to restore the missing function

windows 8 probably the first os I have ever skipped (excluding ME)

 

Their millions and billions of monies begs to differ with you on that one!

 

General public blames Windows 8 for not purchasing Windows 8.

Got to agree £190 is quite frankly ludacris. Especially when you think of the hardware you can get for that. 8core AMD / Top 250GB SSD / 1KW+ psu / Mid-high GFX card / Premium Mobo. My nexus 4 was £50 more.

The fact that there are plenty of the pre deal priced copies floating around doesn't look good.

 

Your Nexus 4 was heavily subsidised. A decent smartphone costs about £300,-- to produce, £600,-- on the open market.

I think that y'all seriously underestimate what it costs to develop an OS that is reliable enough to be able to run mission-critical systems.

 

A full version of MacOS X is available for $20 in the App-Store and in the near future you'll have the option of getting a USB-stick for $60.
Ubuntu costs nothing as a download, and some $10 for a DVD in the Canonical store.

That's how much a modern OS is worth it. And Windows sure is totally overpriced.

 

None of those OS' run mission-critical systems: ATM's, bank computers, hospital computers. Applications that can't crash or develop errors because they're kind of important (although real life-or-death stuff runs on very proprietary OS' that are none of the above). Moreover unlike OSX Windows has to run on any of the millions of weird and wonderful PC configurations out there, and has to set itself up with minimal user assistance because unlike, say, Linux users, most Windows users are muggles.

Another note: Linux costs nothing because of the generosity of thousands of programmers. That does not make it, or indeed any other OS, worthless. Linux is worth paying for, and some time in the future, you will have to.

 

Yes, Windows has to cope with tons of different configurations, but so does Ubuntu. For the bigger part Ubuntu runs out of the box without any problems on most systems, just like Windows.

If anything, then Microsoft should heavily lower the price of Windows and demand extra payment for service/assistance ontop of that. This way endconsumers could get the OS for little money, and those who need could purchase an additional service-plan.
It's the better business-model imho instead of forcing everyone to pay these high prices to begin with.