Vista Upgrade Pricing Announced
James Bannan01 November 2006, 9:40 PM
Microsoft has announced Windows Vista upgrade pricing for Australian consumers. Read on to see if you'll be able to afford to buy Vista while still eating three meals a day...
Recently Microsoft announced Australian pricing for the full packaged retail versions of Windows Vista (up to $751), drawing many astonished gasps from users while their credit cards tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.
Microsoft has just released some extra pricing information, this time relating to upgrades. Here are the details, along with the full package RRP in AUD:
- Windows Vista Home Basic – $385
- Windows Vista Home Basic Upgrade - $199
- Windows Vista Home Premium - $455
- Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade Academic - $179
- Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade - $299
- Windows Vista Ultimate - $751
- Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade - $495
- Windows Vista Business - $565
- Windows Vista Business Upgrade - $379
In general, the upgrade pricing is about $150-$180 cheaper than the full package price. It’s not a bad solution for those users who already own XP, but there’s no information available as to whether the upgrade pricing is available to those with OEM licenses. There’s also still no information on OEM pricing for Vista – and it seems likely that few people are going to look at upgrading to Vista any other way than OEM.
But spot the version that’s being pushed – Vista Home Premium. The academic upgrade pricing is pretty good, but it’s a real shame that there’s no academic pricing offered on the full package of Home Premium, or on Vista Home Basic at all. Not every household needs or wants the bells and whistles of Home Premium.
However, Microsoft seem to be trying to get across to potential Vista buyers that the move to Vista Ultimate is really worth their while. Accompanying the upgrade pricing we received from Microsoft was the following statement:
“With Windows XP, customers often had to make tradeoffs in features and functionality as the Windows XP editions were aligned with specific hardware types. With Windows Vista, customers now have the ability to make choices between editions based on the features they want, which are now available as standard features in mainstream editions. For example, 64-bit support and Tablet PC and touch technology are standard features of the Home Premium and Business editions.
Windows Vista Ultimate is the first operating system that brings together all of the consumer-oriented features available in Windows Vista Home Premium with all of the business-oriented features available in Windows Vista Business.”OK fair enough – Vista Ultimate has been the OS of choice in the beta testing, and it’s certainly a nice package, but I think Microsoft will have to come up with arguments a bit more tangible and meaningful than that if they want to get home users to fork out a minimum of $495.