Jon Honeyball rails against Vista and travels to learn about Microsoft SharePoint 2007.
Before I dive into Vista’s bugs and problems, there’s the small matter of the money to deal with. I point my web browser at www.amazon.com and find it’s selling Vista Home Premium (full package) for $263, while the very same item at www.ht.com.au comes in at a list price of $455, a difference of $192.
With today’s exchange rate, the US prices clearly convert to our advantage. I accept there are matters like sales tax, and that sometimes sales or state tax are levied in the US, both of which can confuse the issue a little. But there’s no doubt that the Australian price for Vista is around 50% higher than the US price, and it’s hard to come up with any reasonable justification for this. Of course, Microsoft has to take a longer-term view about likely currency rate movements when setting its prices, as it can’t change the Vista pricing on a weekly basis. In the past, we’ve loudly criticised other vendors for their rapacious pricing in Australia, mainly Adobe, and so it’s only fair the same criticism be applied to Microsoft in this case. Look at Vista Ultimate: $431.25 from the US, yet $495 listed on Harris Technology. Clearly this pricing is not the fault of the vendor, as Microsoft’s margin on each copy defines local pricing of the OS.
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| Why are we paying nearly twice as much as the US for this? |
Microsoft might say, with some justification, that Vista Ultimate needs to be pricey because of all the new features on offer. You can’t compare it to XP Professional because of all the Media Center bits, nor to XP Media Center because of all the domain administration, BitLocker and similar components. All of this is undoubtedly true, and I’d expect Vista Ultimate to cost more than the previous version of XP, but that still doesn’t explain the gross price difference between territories at all.
Things get even more complex when you scroll down the list of available products at extremepc.com.au. What’s this, “Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate OEM DVD” package for $250.80? It appears this version “intended for system builders and small OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) who manufacture computer systems and preinstall Microsoft OEM system builder software onto those systems” is just a one-click purchase nowadays. Am I really to believe that my local computing shop, which assembles new computers from components, is going to buy its OEM editions of Vista Ultimate through Amazon? The mind boggles. Of course, there are licensing restrictions on what you can do with the OEM/OEI version if you’re a genuine OEM – you must supply technical support to the end user, for example, and clearly stick your contact details onto the case of the computer. The install can only go onto one machine because it becomes tied to that motherboard, and you get no manuals or packaging, but that’s a small price compared to the almost $245 saving on the list price.
It’s hard to know what to recommend here. Not only do we have a significant price difference between the US and Australia, we also have OEM products being openly sold through online retailers. So why would anyone buy the full Vista Ultimate retail package for $495 when they can have the same thing (OEM) for $228 on Amazon? All right, it isn’t “the same thing”, the licensing is different, but does anyone give a stuff about that at the end of the day? I’m not going to venture down the thorny path of condoning mass piracy – theft is theft, and that’s plain and simple – but there’s now a vast grey area, brought about by the sheer confusion and flood of choices available.
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| Microsoft tries to justify the high price of Windows Vista by stressing all the new features on offer. |
For example, were I a small businessman who wanted to deploy Vista Ultimate onto five new computers in my office, and these were machines I was building myself to my own specification (with a spare in the cupboard), would I be permitted to install the OEM version? I would, after all, be “OEMing” my own machines and providing myself with my own support and contact details. So is this a licence violation or not? It’s actually quite hard to know and, even if it were, it’s going to be difficult to persuade said businessman to cough up an extra $245 per seat to, in his eyes, get precisely the same thing. He is, of course, a law-abiding chap, but he doesn’t want to waste money.
Now look at the cws.net.au pricing for Office 2007 Home and Student edition OEM. It’s $172, and it gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for three computers, so that’s $57 per computer. The words “Home and Student edition” are important: the box makes it clear, albeit in small print, that this product is licensed for non-commercial use only.
So what’s the cost of the commercial equivalent? Well, the Small Business retail edition contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, loses OneNote and gains Outlook and Publisher, but the cost has leapt up to an RRP of $715 (cws.net.au), give or take a few cents. A $543 increase in cost is hard to explain or justify here, and I’m sure it will stick in the throat of any business that has to write out the cheque for the Small Business edition. I accept there’s a slightly different mix of products in play here, but the core tools remain Word and Excel with a sniff of PowerPoint. I might already have Outlook from a previous Exchange Server installation and be quite happy staying with the 2003 version for the time being. All of which makes the $500 price difference quite extraordinary.