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September 5th, 2005, 12:34 GMT · By Alina Plesu

Windows Vista: What Is the Right Price?

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Microsoft is facing a difficult dilemma: What price tag should the company attach to its Windows Vista OS?

One of the most important aspects Microsoft should take into account is the competition. If the company's price for Windows Vista is too high, it might encourage many users to switch to Mac OS X, or to Linux or even to stick to their
Windows XP.

The first beta of Windows Vista doesn't incorporate any significant improvement that would justify the migration to this OS, but perhaps the Beta 2 will change things.

Considering that this operating system will need a lot of resources, 1GB of RAM is the minimum a PC should have in order to be able to run Windows Vista, 2 GB of RAM being ideal. The same goes for the video card.

Although the prices for hardware components will decrease until the final release, many users might not see this as a good enough reason to invest in an upgrade.

That's why, although the price scheme for Windows Vista will only be announced next year, it seems that Microsoft is planning a lower price for Windows XP. In this way, the company would encourage the switch to the new OS.

But what is the right price?

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK:

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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: akhristov on 06 Dec 2005, 22:24 UTC reply to this comment

Since when does vista require that many resources? I can tell you that the new UI will NOT require that much RAM. This is ridiculous. Even Microsoft says those claims are ridiculous. Microsoft says even 512MB recommended RAM is ridiculous. I personally think that the new UI will not be such a RAM pig. It is not a high tech 3D game. Doom 3 is way more complicated than the Vista UI and it can run fine on a machine with 1GB RAM. The Vista UI is not even half as complicated. So it will probably not require that many resources.

It would be nice if Vista was cheaper than XP though.

Alex.

Comment #1.1 by: snuffles12345 on 25 Sep 2006, 00:06 GMT

hell u can run doom 3 FINE on less than 1 gig ram...and bf2142 for that matter...we'll be fine :)


Comment #2 by: peckerhead on 18 Jun 2006, 21:24 UTC reply to this comment

Microsofts web site for Vista claims that minimum available RAM must be 512 to operate only primary parts of the OS. They also claim on the same page that 1 G of system RAM is recommended and incinuate that more may be necessary to use the OS at peak performance. Nowhere on the site does it say that 512 is rediculous, they do in fact list it as, once again, a MINIMUM. Please remember that Doom 3 can be thought of as at current gen. (graphics programming was done prior to August of 2004) and the Vista OS being next gen, I guarantee you will have MUCH greater hardware requirements that of DOOM 3 or for that matter XP, which barely runs effectively with 512. And dont count on it being any cheaper than current XP Pro costs.

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