Windows Vista orders being taken at Amazon

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 30 August 2006 03:51

Your IT - Home IT

Someone at Amazon must know something that Microsoft is not telling the rest of us because the online retailer is taking advance orders for Windows Vista which is scheduled to go on sale in January 2007.

Prices on Amazon for complete editions of Vista (as opposed to upgrades) range from US$199 for a Vista Home Basic DVD to US$399 for a Vista Ultimate DVD.

Vista upgrades are cheaper, ranging from US$99.95 for Vista Home Basic Upgrade DVD to US$259 for Vista Ultimate Upgrade DVD.

It is not known whether these prices are in fact discounts to the actual price for advance orders four months or more out from the release date.

Analysts murmurings have already been buzzing about the marketplace, some saying that the prices are higher than expected.

As Vista is an especially memory hungry and hardware demanding operating system, analysts expect that the majority of sales will come from the higher priced full versions of the product rather than upgrade editions.

"We expect that a high proportion of sales will come from buyers of new PCs," one local retailer told iTWire. "Many will take the opportunity to upgrade their hardware and software in one hit rather than try to run Vista on their existing boxes, which may require modifications including extra memory and upgraded graphics cards."