Price cuts for Vista
In an effort to boost sales, Microsoft has cut the price of the Windows Vista operating system.
Microsoft's flagship operating system, Windows Vista, clearly hasn't been the outright success which Microsoft had hoped for. Whilst there are undoubtedly groups of users who think it is excellent and a vast improvement over XP, there are others to whom it is a disappointment and adds little if anything. In particular, I read of people complaining that thanks to the glut of "features" added to Vista, their new high-speed PC with gigabytes of memory still runs no faster than their older computer running Windows XP.
Whilst it is almost impossible for the average consumer to still buy a PC which still runs XP, the business channels have continued to supply machines loaded with XP in response to demand from customers who, amongst other things, want stability, a tested product, and to avoid yet another learning curve.
A lot of business customers say they are holding off buying Vista until the first service pack (SP1) is released, but SP1 has had a troubled time this month. One of the key pre-requisite updates had to be quickly withdrawn after Microsoft discovered a glitch which meant some customers were unable to reboot after installing it. Now Microsoft admits that after installing SP1, some third-party security products may no longer work properly. The most notable of these is ZoneAlarm, a widely regarded product which has provided firewall protection to millions of users.
Perhaps in an effort to boost sales, Microsoft has announced price cuts in the US ranging from $30 off the basic edition to $80 off the premium edition, with corresponding cuts in the UK to follow soon. Meanwhile, a third and final update for Windows XP is scheduled for release in June which will give reassurance to users who have chosen to stay, for now, with the operating system they are familiar with.
1st March 2008
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.