... and I've no doubt for Britain all they'll do is change the $ to a £ ignoring the currency conversion

Luckily, however, I have a MSDN subscription so get everything for free

Ripped from Wikipedia

  Regular Price   Additional License   Upgrade Price   Additional License
Ultimate   $399.00   $359.00   $259.00   $233.00
Business   $299.00   $269.00   $199.95   $179.00
Home Premium   $239.00   $215.00   $159.00   $143.00
Home Basic   $199.00   $179.00   $99.95   $89.95

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Editions_and_pricing

I wonder why OEM pricing will look like.

Are those upgrade prices from both xp home and pro?

Marcello

Don't you think it rather sad in this world we live it that they go out of their way to create multiple versions at hugely different prices, when the only change is a couple of registry values to restrict certain things. In other words, it initially costs more (in effort) to create the lower value item.

It's basically a tax on businesses and people who feel inferior for using a Home edition.

Well, unless you can somehoe entice the USA into the common market there's really nothing anyone can do that. UK prices usually include VAT whereas US prices don't include sales tax, but I don't think that makes up the difference. I assume of course that you always consider whether the UK is more expensive to live in than the US when you're visiting a doctor or a hospital?

Oh well, maybe it shall soon come to pass that "the Microsoft platform" is .NET and not Windows.

I remember reading long ago about some company with an IBM computer bought a $15K upgrade to double the speed of their computer. When the field guy showed up, one of the employees watched to see how it was done. All the field guy did was cut ONE jumper wire! The guy was so po'ed he posted how to do it on Usenet.

Will it be like XP, where you needed Pro for the domain joining and group policy features? I personally prefer XP Pro, because there's options, like non-simple file sharing, group policy editor (I just used that to make Automatic Updates stfu about rebooting, because with the new Windows Defender in order to recieve it's updates, it requires wuauserv to be running).

<quote>
UK prices usually include VAT

I am assuming VAT stands for Value Added Tax. If this is correct, should you pay it considering Microsoft adds very little value to computers using thier products? Case in point: I have seen postings mentioning upgrading to IE 7 causes severe problems. I suggest downloading a Linux flavor for free, upgrading it for free, etc.

Heh, IE7 totally blows from what I've read. I guess a lot of sites break with it and such. But as far as it causing problems with the OS or something, I wouldn't worry about it as it comes as part of Vista, so no OS problems, then you can use Firefox or Opera or whatever suits your fancy.

My god, $400 for the only decent version? Thanks but no.

If people seem to generally like it, I may buy a copy. Then again, I'm not spending $400. If I can get an OEM copy for $150-200, and it's a good version, maybe I'll bite.

Ill stick with my Beta copy till it expires

I bet the final version will be nothing like the Beta. I know i had multiple issues with Beta, and if those problems aren't fixed in final, I won't get it.

You could always grab one of the RC's when they come out and use that.

I just might. You can't beat free when you barely take in enough money to survive.

Hey, I don't blame you for taking free. I get everything free that I can too (including signing up every time I see a free EGM offer... my subscription says I still have 5 years left on it. ).

Well, they released a post-beta/pre-RC1 just a couple of days ago and from what I've heard it's not that much different from betas.

My question is: Why upgrade? We know what to expect from Windows XP and we have already spent the money. Is there a big enough difference (I would like to say improvement, but that is optimistic) to warrant the expense? My XP works well enough for my needs. If they want to give me a big rebate check for my copies, I may think about it. I know the problems with IE 7 are limited to that software, but it reflects poorly on the company. They have been writing IE for more than 10 years.

Yes you should, because the market value they're able to add to a few bits of paper, cardboard and plastic disc just by putting Vista on it is remarkable!

Okay, I don't know the exact facts of the matter because I switched to Mac but I'm sure I read somewhere that the new UI comes with a new API rather than just being a horrid Luna style theme that makes all your old software look stupid. In that case you should upgrade eventually because if you don't then eventually you won't be able to run new software. Otherwise why not play wait and see?

Not necessarily, the rest of Europe have far lower prices for the majority of goods than the UK, and some have far higher taxes than Britain, and a higher or equal cost of living. And before you start your pro-european stance, it has nothing to do with being out of the monetary union

Then buy your goods in or from our European neighbours. The EU guarantees free movement of goods. Although a quick check reveals that the cheapest 30gb iPod on the first page of Froogle.de translates as about £185 whereas the cheapest 30gb iPod on the first page of Froogle.co.uk is about £176. So if that is representative then don't buy from Germany!

And I know you searched for a 60gb model, it's just that I happen to have the 30gb and was a little curious...

EDIT: Okay, SOMEONE in a thread somewhere recently compared the prices of a 60gb iPod in the USA versus the UK. But I may have just gone crazy.

Because Microsoft will only be releasing certain new stuff as Vista only, even when there's no practical reason it won't work on XP.

I definately will play wait and see, I'd rather let the early adopters find/fall foul of all the early bugs, holes and general wrinkles. Once that's settled down a bit, along with the prices hopefully , I'll look into an upgrade..

One of the main reasons I want to upgrade is that my dual core AMD64 has a strange load balancing problem with games, I have to set the CPU affinity to one core or the other to get rid of it. It manifests as games running too fast with a stuttering, halting effect. At first I thought it was my vidcard till I found out it was a common problem involving dual core AMD64's. There was a hotfix on the Microsoft site about it but none of the suggestions there worked. I'm hoping Vista will have it ironed out.

have you tried the AMD dualcore optimizer? It fixes some of the flaws with processor affinity and also should synchronize the timestamps on both cores so RDTSC should give the same numbers on both cores.

Hey I didn't know about that thanks hoho..
I did have a poke around AMD but not throughly enough obviously!