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Punch-drunk Microsoft cuts Vista prices - but not in Britain
Microsoft must be feeling punch drunk this month after a poor reception to its $40b bid for Yahoo, a tricky end-game in its battle to get its Open XML formats adopted as an ISO standard, scepticism over its claim to be launching an new era of openness over its programming interfaces, and a £608million fine by EU regulators overshadowing what had been billed as the company's biggest enterprise launch in history – the release of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008.
To cap it all there have been problems with Microsoft's Hotmail email service.
Then there is the lurking problem of public perceptions of Vista. Having spent an evening setting up a new notebook for a non-techie friend I can understand why people are less than enthusiastic. My friend was overwhelmed by the number of message boxes, demanding permission to do this or that, popping up every time he tried to do anything. I had only the haziest idea of what some of them were for: how on earth could he be expected to know?
I held fire on the new Office interface when it was launched because as an experienced user I was not the best person to judge something designed to be easier for newbies. But how can it be easier when the most-used menu, for basic tasks such as New, Open, Print and Save does not have a label on it?
The Home and Student edition is very good value, though. PC World gave us it bundled with Norton 360 for £80. That is with three licences, officially for one household; but it means three students could get a copy for around £30 each. It lacks Outlook but includes the excellent OneNotes module.
But the company is setting itself for a new pricing row with its latest announcement. In a posting couched in barely comprehensible Microsoftspeak, the company has cut prices on standalone versions of Vista by up to 40 percent in some countries - but not in Britain. Microsoft says prices here have already been cut, but as they were already higher than in the US it is unclear what this means, particularly as no details are given.
Whatever, the cuts on shrink-wrapped products will not affect the far larger number of pre-installed copies of Vista. Which means we can't expect to see a cut in the large number of people who (notebook and PC vendors tell us) are requesting XP rather than Vista in new machines.
Posted by Clive Akass on February 29, 2008 | Permalink
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