I always thought Apple had a good price point on their OS upgrades.  Something like $150 isn't unreasonable for this type of product.

Based on my experiences with the Win7 beta so far, I'll probably upgrade to it (from Vista) when it launches later this year.

......break.......

Actually, I had said the same thing in a different more polite manner....

.......program to be continued..........

It's easy to appear intelligent in a monkey cage, it won't make you a genius though.

I admit I am a monkey and I am happy in my cage.

I'd only use it if they paid me...maybe

My thoughts are quite similar

Could we please get back OT?

My feeling, Zoomba is that M$ pulls this ME--->XP and Vista---> W7  every few years.

I cannot for the life of me understand why they would put out Mr. Bloat (Vista) as opposed to 7 first....after all, wouldn't have been easier to do just the opposite? And what's with 7's Start Menu? That doesn't look so great to me.

I'm gonna wait quite some time with this one, I'm afraid.

I just can't see myself going the W7 SP1--->n  as n increases logarithmically and the entire HDD becomes the OS. And by then, they'll have figured a way to charge for the SP's as well.

totally disagree with this......sorry, but i think your wrong.  For the sake of skinning only to please vista users, i went into debt for another year to upgrade my pc and get vista.....(after just paying off my new pc, the second in 9 or so years)  ..and let me tell you, it hurts, when your on a pension and every dollar counts.  My pc is a skinning pc, more than a gaming rig...although it could and can play the latest games ect.... but if w7 is going to cost a fortune....i wont be upgrading for some time, id rather buy food and toiletries than trying to keep up with the jones and the skinning world.......new skins can wait.....my life cant and wont suffer.

....next month i will have finally payed off my pc with the vista upgrade.........and I know i will feel very liberated and FREE.......

I can only hope that w7 will be the last os for quite sometime....i mean look at the gap between xp and vista..huge....... if ms again comes out with another os next year.....ill be throwing up my hands.....i certainly cant afford a new os every year or so.....its unfair and i think nothing more than a scheme for ms to make more money....... *grrr*

I don't mind paying the normal price of like $100-$200 for an OS (I assume that is normal price.  That is about what I've always paid for it) though I don't like the whole  Home vs. professional vs. ultimate thing.   Like, home should be totally cheap if they are going to do that, so any hum-bum user can use it.  ultimate shouldn't be a version, it would be an add-on expansion like the "plus" feature for old 95/98

The oversimplified, snarky answer is implied in your shorthand for Microsoft (M$): they are a large, formal organization with publicly traded stock at the center of their finances. They are under unrelenting pressure to produce accounting numbers that look good to Wall Street.

As we are all painfully learning more about these days, the high finance crowd tends to emphasize the appearance of short-term success over consistent evidence of long-term value. When you put that general principle into software-biz terms, you get products that are forced onto the market before they are ready because a majority of the final decision-makers care more about their 'scorecard numbers' than they do about the true quality of the software that they're overseeing.

You can look at Stardock's work in the game market as a case study of how things can be different when a software shop is led by a working dev who only needs to answer to his customers and employees. (OK, maybe to a banker or three--but business debts with banks are profoundly different from the obligations a firm assumes by publicly issuing stock.) Stardock games are released when the devs are ready to put their work in public. More importantly, they stand behind their software both as responsive bug-fixers and artisans who are proud enough of their own work to keep offering substantial updates based on customer response well after RTM.

The way it is now, I feel like I'm renting my OS.

Windows 7, Free? Don't be ridiculous.  Windows isn't open-source.  It shouldn't be free.  Microsoft would be losing out on a lot of money if W7 was free.  I honestly expect it to be priced around what Vista was, depending on how many versions come out.  I hope they go back to only two versions, and maybe one for handheld devices, but two mainstream versions, like XP's Home & Professional.  A Home version should cost around $149 and Professional, about $199 to $249, for a complete version.  Upgrades would be about $50 to $100 cheaper.   If W7 is almost exactly like Vista, it wouldn't be worth even $100.  On the other hand if W7 is just as good or better than XP, it would be worth every penny.

OK...how about $10 per improvement/brand new feature?