Make a story out of Vista prices if you dare

Stan Beer
Thursday, 31 August 2006 16:57

Opinion and Analysis

Talk about copping some flack! iTWire ran a poll asking readers whether Windows Vista is too expensive based on the prices that were posted on the Microsoft Canada site a couple of days. Now some readers are berating us about the results.

For example, one reader who admits to being a software vendor emailed me saying: "Everybody thinks everything is too expensive, mate. Your poll is meaningless. How can you price software? What price should it be? That would be an interesting poll."

Sure that would be a really interesting poll. What price do you think Vista should be: free; $1-50; $51-100; $100-150; $151-200; more? Of course, we would have to run six separate polls to cover each edition of Vista.

Another reader responded to our Vista poll in the talkback section saying: "This isn't news, it's a poll. You just posted a poll and wrote about the results."

Funny, I always thought the idea of running a poll was to find out what people think about a topical issue. If the results are interesting, such as more than 90% of the respondents think that paying up to US$400 for an operating system they will probably be forced to use is too expensive, then perhaps it's worth a story, no?

Anyway, we live in a free enterprise society and Microsoft has the right to charge what it likes for its software. That's beyond question. And people will continue to pay the prices that Microsoft asks until a realistic alternative comes along. There's nothing to suggest yet that we should be holding our breath.