Microsoft Raises UK Prices By a Third and Can't Rule Out Future Hikes 185
New submitter DerekduPreez writes "Microsoft has revealed that it will increase volume licencing prices in the UK by an average of 29 percent to adjust for the 'sustained currency differences between European countries'. UK businesses have until 1st July to place their orders under the current prices before the changes take effect. Microsoft claims that because of sustained differences between the British Pound and the Euro, price spikes are necessary to maintain consistency across the region. Microsoft also confirmed that it could not rule out future increases, as it will continue to monitor currency movements and may make further adjustments if there are large fluctuations."
Sound like a kick in the NUTS! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry... No it isn't.
In the grand scheme of things license cost is just a drop in the bucket. Also the license cost for most of the products are absorbed in the cost of the equipment.
If it was just license price was the major issue Linux would have regained massive market share when Windows XP came out.
Re: (Score:2)
Got yea... (Score:2)
Meh! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice!
Problem for Ireland (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a pretty obscure outcome of the recent Quantitative Easing of the Fed and the Bank of England, and a little confusing as Microsoft is a US company.
You have to remember that Microsoft's main European headquarters is in Dublin in Ireland, and hence operates in Euros. The quantitative easing of the pound means that the UK goods become cheaper to export, and that conversely, it becomes more expensive for UK-ians to import good from abroad. In this case, it has become 33% more expensive for them to impor
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a pretty obscure outcome of the recent Quantitative Easing of the Fed and the Bank of England, and a little confusing as Microsoft is a US company.
You have to remember that Microsoft's main European headquarters is in Dublin in Ireland, and hence operates in Euros. The quantitative easing of the pound means that the UK goods become cheaper to export, and that conversely, it becomes more expensive for UK-ians to import good from abroad. In this case, it has become 33% more expensive for them to import MS software from Ireland.
You have it completely the wrong way around as this has nothing to do with quantitative easing as the Pound is currently stronger against the Euro than at any point in the last few years. This would make imports CHEAPER, and hence exports more expensive to Europe. Now if they were dealing with USD, then that is another matter entirely as the Pound is still relatively weak against it compared to what it was a few years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
If I'm not mistaken, Dublin is a major Tax Haven for large corporations.
Re: (Score:3)
Which raises the question: Why should Microsoft continue to choose Dublin as their main European base of operations if this is the kind of price hikes they will be forced to impose on perhaps their single largest European market?
Why on Earth would the UK be Microsoft's single largest European market? What do you think they use in France, Germany, the Netherlands and so on?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are assuming that there is some actual rational behind the price hike other than greed.
I don't think that Microsoft is 'importing' volume licensing from anywhere. They're raising prices because they can, nothing more. The rest is bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich [wikipedia.org]
That is only reason why Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle etc. all have their international headquarters in Dublin.
Will it continue? Who knows...
Re: (Score:2)
If they can only get an expensive, high tax centre pegged to the Deutschmark, they'll just move to London, or York, or whatever.
Completely aside, it tickles me that you would pick York (pop. 200,000, 80th largest city in the UK) as second choice to London (pop. 8 to 14 million, depending what you're counting). Sometimes I think New York, New York has done more to raise the profile of that town to foreigners than a thousand Visit England advertising campaigns.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that USians say "England" and "English" when they mean Britain and British.
It's great fun calling New Yorkers "Mexicans" - they're all Americans, right? Same thing, right? And it's not like they can do anything like it - unlike people in the UK, New Yorkers aren't allowed to own guns...
Time for a new "Ask Slashdot" post (Score:2)
Maybe by the time the switch is complete, OD will match AD in functionality. Win-win.
Re: (Score:2)
These days it is just easier to use Likewise Open.
It will do everything for you.
Before bothering with that though, setup a vm and learn about the distro you want to use. Learn about automation of updates, locking down the desktop etc, before you even bother with AD stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess learning about the other stuff comes from reading the documentation... Always a thrill! Thanks for your post.
Re: (Score:3)
Why stick with a MS product as the core? look at Zentyal, which among other things, acts as a PDC in an easy to setup and configure way. There is no group policy (yet, samba 4 is due in zentyal 3.0) but you can push login scripts.
Re: (Score:2)
Or just use something like puppet. Group policy was a great design for its time, and for what it was working with. For an OS that does not have windows limitations with writing to open files and such, things can be done much more on the fly.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed.
I know how to install a Linux server in an AD domain, but proper Linux clients these days?
Confuses me.
Windows doesn't do the "Unixy" stuff, so we maintain a separate sub-net with NIS, NFS and the other Unixy stuff. But I have no idea how to "log in" to the Windows AD domain. Some magic, obviously. And, after that login, SMB file shares should somehow be mapped -- if the pushed AD information can be made available, it could be parsed for the mount details.
This would certainly make my life much easier.
Re: (Score:2)
You can mount SMB shares like any other kind of network shares, using mount (they aren't dependent of AD). You'll probably use CIFS, as last time I looked, SMBFS was deprecated. There is a FUSE drive for that, so you can mount as a normal user (as always, KDE will mount it for you if you are using it).
Well, I have no idea how to replace NIS with AD, as I never had to do that. Samba 4 may help you, or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I just pass Samba the 'domain' option in my fstab to mount shares and ignore the rest of the AD crap.
What does the Euro have to do with this ? (Score:3)
What does the relationship between the Euro and the Pound have to a supplier based in the USA who trades in dollars ?
Looking at http://www.x-rates.com/d/GBP/USD/graph120.html [x-rates.com] , the pound has been very close to the dollar for quite a while now. They're both weakening on the global markets, but they're keeping pretty good pace with each other.
Re: (Score:2)
For the European market, Microsoft is headquartered in Ireland and is a company that trades in Euro.
Surprise! (Score:2)
Microsoft Exec 2: We could raise the price of our most successful product!
Microsoft Exec 1: I don't know - then we risk people switching over to Macs or Linux.
Microsoft Exec 3: What if we raise the price of Windows in just a single country?!
Microsoft Exec 1: I love it! The only question is which country should we raise the price? Which country has been the bi
Whereas in Asia... (Score:2)
Over here we buy our licenses in USD. Why the inconsistency?
Exchange Rates? (Score:2)
Well, it's always been $1 = £1
So now it's €1 = £1 as well.
It is British Pound against Euro (Score:5, Informative)
This price increase is a measure against http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market [wikipedia.org]
Two years ago 1 Pound = 1.5 Euro, now it is 1.3 Euro. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GBPEUR%3DX [yahoo.com]
MS is increasing the price in GB so that M$ price is around the same in Europe zone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll believe the price increases are due to currency and economy shifts, and not "because we can", when they lower the Australian prices by about 60%.The Australian dollar is fluctuating a few cents either side of the US one, depending on numerous factors like the colour of our respective head of states' underwear each day, yet the prices seem even slightly higher than they were when AU$1 = US$0.50.
Re: (Score:2)
How do UK (and EU) prices stack up against US prices?
I'd think that people in the UK could easily work with the English/US version (assuming they don't get bent out of shape about the spelling of colour or aluminium).
Re: (Score:2)
I'd think that people in the UK could easily work with the English/US version (assuming they don't get bent out of shape about the spelling of colour or aluminium).
There's also a lot of other localization to do to make things work in the UK (stuff like date and time handling).
However, the big difference is almost certainly to do with totally different sets of laws relating to liability for faults and other things like that. That sort of thing can have a really big influence on costs, and it's pretty substantially different on the two sides of the Atlantic.
always one way? (Score:2)
Looking at the currency conversion chart over the last 5 years [imgur.com] (note axis doesn't start at 0) you can see that MS is getting less dollar or Euro for each £1 GBP in income. The chart appears to show an initially fairly steady exchange giving, for every £1, around abouts $2 or €1.30, which has since dropped to around $1.60 (down 25%) or €1.20 (down 8%).
Now look at the second chart on that link. We can see that over the 10 year period the 8% drop in the amount of Euros being obtained for
Riiiight (Score:2)
By that logic we wouldn't need a price gouging inquiry [slashdot.org] in Australia.
The $AU has been at parity with the $US or above for years now - but Australians are still paying massively over the top prices compared to their American counterparts.
Re: (Score:2)
It's worse than you think, the majority of licensing are only increasing by 20-25% while Open Value is going up by 33.5%, which is presumably where the 1/3 figure comes from, so the "average" quoted isn't even representative of the actual changes.
Re:Since when... (Score:4, Interesting)
Human-speak recognizes 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/4, 3/4 and maybe 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, and 4/5. Once you go beyond that, the normal human brain will have to think for a period of time.
So the nearby choices are 50%, 33%, 25%, or 20%. In the interest of extra dramatization, it was the one higher that was picked. 1/3.
Where would you draw the line? Would you use two-seventh?
Re: (Score:2)
I really wish we could either shit or get off the pot.
We're not all crazy Europhobic trying to claim that "Brussels" dictating how curved a banana has to be if you plan to sell it, or other ridiculous nonsense. It's like the Tories (and parties like UKIP) want all of the benefits to the UK of close european trade, but don't want to make any of the concessions (like standardising on a currency). Just makes it awkward.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't need a common currency to have free trade - the Scandinavian countries do it quite happily at the moment.
Nor do you need an European Parliament, and Commission, to decide laws affecting each country. (note: we still don't have valid trade laws that promote common trading - VAT is still all over the place in each country for example). And note that the EC still hasn't had its accounts signed off - and the gravy train of expenses and other payments probably means we will never get open accountabili
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And note that the EC still hasn't had its accounts signed off - and the gravy train of expenses and other payments probably means we will never get open accountability from them.
A common cry of the Eurosceptics -- for some reason missing out the fact that most UK government departments haven't had their accounts signed off in many years either, and the gravy train of expenses and other payments probably means we will never get open accountability from them. But hey, at least it's honest-to-goodness British corruption, not like that nasty foreign sort, eh?
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:4, Interesting)
"Nor do you need an European Parliament, and Commission, to decide laws affecting each country."
That's because it's not just about free trade, but utilising Europe's combined resources to make Europe more prosperous as a whole - bringing the poorer Eastern European nations up to the standards of Western Europe and also making sure Europeans share some bare minimum sets of rights. This in itself has an effect on free trade though, as free trade isn't a good thing if one country in the free trade group has no laws on slave Labour and so can jack all the manufacturing business from the others.
"VAT is still all over the place in each country for example"
What do you mean all over the place? there are restrictions on how high and high low it can be so it's only "all over the place" within a fairly narrow boundary of values. I'm not really sure what you're arguing for either, on one hand you seem to think it's bad Europe takes power away from individual nations, yet here you seem to also think it's bad that countries have the freedom to at least change VAT to some extent? It's like you're contradicting your own argument for the sake of having a pop at the EU.
"Many eurosceptics want trade and integration with the rest of Europe"
They don't want integration, they just want to be able to exploit it where it suits them, and ignore it when it doesn't. The problem is that's not a sound basis for a two way relationship and ultimately most Eurosceptic viewpoints tend to boil down to outright xenophobia. UKIP comes up with some good ideas, but the more you watch them, the more you read their policies, the more you realise they're really no that much different to the BNP, they're just only slightly less overtly racist but are certainly at least just as fascist. Ironically they're also the ones who have been most guilty of corruption in terms of stealing expenses and so forth.
Some of the UK's Tories are less xenophobic, but their intentions are no more moral, their arguments come down to the fact they're just demanding more power for themselves, not for a care for the country and the people in it - it's no suprise there is a strong correlation between the Tories that are anti-EU and the Tories that support the undemocratic first past the post system that gives parties like the Tories and Labour grossly more power than the electorate voted them to have. The number of eurosceptics whose position is genuinely based on rationality and a care for the British population rather than a lust for greater power or irrational xenophobia is probably less than 10 out of 650 MPs.
Whilst the European Parliament and Commission is without a doubt nowhere near perfect and has many problems, I find it rather odd when Eurosceptics, complain about corruption as a reason for wanting to get out. Britain is after all the country that has for the last few years seen scandal after scandal after scandal, and not just small ones - we're referring to those that hit right at the heart of democracy, whether it's expenses, peerages for sale, cash for votes, or phone hacking at every level of British society, to Jeremy Hunt not fulfilling his legal obligation to be impartial. There's a good reason Murdoch is himself a Eurosceptic and pushes that agenda in his British media - because he recognises that it's the biggest threat to his immensly corrupt stranglehold on the British establishment.
Europe may well be corrupt, but compared to our government? It's still far better.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that these scandals can be exposed in Britain is a strength not a weakness as you imply. Now that they have been exposed action can be taken against them. I am not a Eurosceptic but these types of issues are known to exist in even greater amounts in France, Italy, Greece and other countries but are never exposed. We should be pushing for greater British-style transparency not more opaque bureaucracy in the EU.
That's one of the very few good things to come out of this, that it has become clear that there are still some honest (or at least mostly-honest) people about and they care about cleaning the cesspit that yawned under too much public life.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree some European countries are worse than others (i.e. Italy and France) but others are far better (i.e. most of them that aren't Italy/France/Greece) - this is in large part due to a healthy democracy in these countries, i.e. Germany's where politicians are forced to accept the majority will of the people and build coalitions representative of that view, rather than build a one party government that only represents say 30% of the population, screwing the other 70% over.
British transparency maybe a gre
Re: (Score:2)
(Assuming you, like me, live in the UK) Almost all the food we eat is imported - mostly from Europe.
We buy it in Pounds, and the Banks convert those Pounds to Euros to pay the producer, in exchange for which they take a miserly commission of 4%. Then we export something of equal value to pay for that food, and get paid in Euros, whihc those very same banks convert into Pounds, for another 4%.
Thusly, the banks have an 8% tax on our food, which
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't the issue the other way around?
The pound down more than the euro and hence price increases in pound?
You've got massive QE and hence weak pound.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:5, Informative)
That's the nicest thing about Google's business model. They don't have to raise their prices, as the prices are "automaticaly" set by their clients on bids.
Re: (Score:3)
A year ago, one Euro was around 88 pence.
Now one Euro is somewhere around 81 pence. This is the same rate as during a temporary dip around 22 months ago. The last time the Euro was lower than that was in late summer 2008.
The Euro is going down against the Pound, not vice versa. There is less justification for this price hike than there has been at pretty much any time since late 2008.
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:5, Informative)
The Euro is going down against the Pound, not vice versa.
EUR vs GBP 1992-2012 [reuters.com]. Whether it is up or down depends on the dates you measure from and to. Nobody knows what will happen in the future.
There is less justification for this price hike than there has been at pretty much any time since late 2008.
For the last few years the pounds has been down on the euro in contrast to the preceding decade. Most large corporations don't regularly change end-user prices to track currency variations, unless they are in the currency or oil/gas business. It is entirely possible that Microsoft was willing to absorb a lower profit margin in the UK relative to other countries for a few years, but now predict that the weaker pound is a long term trend for the next decade, and are resetting prices accordingly. It is also possible that the Microsoft accountants believe that the UK market is more willing to bear higher profit margins.
Re: (Score:2)
"this" at the beginning of a post is shorthand for "I agree with the parent post", not "I am replying to the parent post". So, not redundant.
If you want it shorter, replace with "yes", or even shorter, "+1".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think it's the Euro that's the problem. Sounds like it's the pound. Looks [x-rates.com] like the U.S. dollar has been growing against the pound pretty consistently in recent months.
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:5, Insightful)
the U.S. dollar has been growing against the pound
Not sure what you mean by growing, I see a weakening US dollar. But we all know that - the Fed keeps printing them, how can the US dollar not get weaker? And your graph supports this. So if the US dollar gets weaker the answer is to charge more pounds? This is just a cash grab by Microsoft with some currency exchange gloss to hide the fact that they're being greedy suckers, they see more value in holding pounds than dollars, and hardly anyone bothers to take 30 secs to understand exchange rates properly.
Re: (Score:2)
Umm. Yeah... The US dollar is currently trading at about 1:1.6 with the Pound, well stronger than the 1:2 that it had been for quite a while. It's also about 1:1.3 against the Euro, well off the 1:1.6 that it had been. The Dollar has been strengthening the last year or so. that's not completely a good thing (it hurts our exports), but it's definitely a true thing. For all it's current weaknesses, the US economy is considered relatively strong vs Europe and good chunks of Asia right now.
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you calling us a backwards nation?!?!?!
(You are right though. I can't believe those guys think its the dollar getting stronger. They must be Republicans.)
Re: (Score:2)
If the dollar is getting weaker, then that wouldn't bode well for Obama, don't you think? Of course, when the dollar goes up, it is bad, when the dollar goes down it is bad ... so ... ;)
Re: (Score:2)
A weaker dollar
Helps exports, thus helps creating jobs in the export business. More true in manufacturing.
Hurts imports, thus helps create inflation. (People like to complain about Walmart importing cheap Chinese stuff, but, IIRC, without cheap imports the average middle to lower income American would be paying about 20% for the basic goods of life - based on the effect of reduced inflation for the past 20 years.)
Should hurt US Treasury Bond yields. Foreign buyers should be demanding higher yields because o
Re: (Score:2)
The Dollar is bad. Its that simple. In fact, Dollar comes from the Latin word "Dolor" which means "grief". Just get rid of them (giving them to me would be a good start).
Re: (Score:2)
That's mostly due to people fleeing other currencies for the "safe" haven of US dollars during the financial crisis of 2008-2009.
Yeah I didn't really understand that bit.
1) A lot of the "exploding" stuff was in the USA.
2) The federal reserve was "printing" trillions of US dollars, and refusing to say where it was going. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aatlky_cH.tY [bloomberg.com] ).
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:4, Informative)
Since yesterday. I'm talking long term trends. You can't look at 24 hours and say the dollar is weakening. As little as a year ago it was more like $2 to the Pound. There were variations even then, but "in general" the dollar has been getting much stronger lately. Right now we're approximately where were against European currencies before the recession. For quite a while we were 25-50% lower than we were pre-recession.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The graph you linked shows the opposite of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Today's exchange rate: 1 Euro = 1.31 US dollars. Pretty much where it has always been [yahoo.com].
What that tells the rest of us is that the US$ has problems too.
Re: (Score:2)
Today's exchange rate: 1 Euro = 1.31 US dollars. Pretty much where it has always been [yahoo.com]. Certainly it's off its all time highs. Certainly it's not at its all time lows. But yes, let's play the popular press's game of "The Euro is Dying!".
How do you look at that graph and conclude that the Euro has "pretty much ... always been" at $1.31? The 12 month hi is $1.48 and the 12 month low is $1.26. 10 years ago it was under $0.90. Over the past 5 years there are a lot of peaks and valleys, but the general trend is downward. The peak in July, 2008 was higher than the peak in Nov, 2009, which was higher than Apr, 2011, which is higher than anything since.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I'm being stupid but maybe you could elucidate the perceived linkage between the two as I don't see it...?
Re: (Score:2)
Closing off a major channel for pirate copies of Windows, at the same time as raising the price for legitimate copies of Windows. To paraphrase Bill Gates, the biggest competitor to Windows is pirated Windows.
Complete nonsense, I think, but that's what the GP was insinuating.
Re: (Score:3)
How is this +4 Interesting? They are raising the price on volume licensing. Can anyone show me on the TPB where I can download a volume license? Actually let me use that same idea.
Re: (Score:2)
As for Chebacca, a Wookiee has to eat, and Black Market prices for Ewok pelts is "out of this world." If you're interested, I may still know of someone who has an Slow Ewok Blanket for sale, it fits a Queen size bed.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea, but there's a reason for Ewok pelts being "out of the world" in pricing. Is simply Jawas have better pelts, and are quite easy to kill. Leaving a piece of a droid over a bear-trap. Presto unlimited Jawas!
Re:The British are proud of their Pound (Score:5, Insightful)
All socialism fails
Correct, however you need to head to the library and do some reading on what socialism actually is (unless the library is too 'socialist' for you).
Europe, Canada etc. are not socialist nations. Do they have social programs for their citizens? Yes. However, socialism is defined as state ownership of enterprises. A good example of a socialst nation is Cuba - The state owns all means of production. Cuba is failing, which is why they are moving away from socialism.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like how the US owns a chunk of GM?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that is a temporary measure, eh? What do you get out of making a mountain out of mole hill?
And if the U.S. hadn't stepped in tided GM over a rough spot, how many thousands of people would now be on the unemployment line? Last we heard, the U.S. auto industry is coming back and GM has been paying down their debt.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that many parties and governments actually describe themselves as socialist. There's
(1) An economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production
(2) A political movement regarding redistribution of wealth.and universal services
True, the last one typically call themselves social democrats in the full form to separate themselves from the marxist/communist forms of socialism, but in practice you can refer to them as socialists. There are people that hate the latter form of socialis
Re: (Score:2)
A good example of a socialst nation is Cuba - The state owns all means of production. Cuba is failing
One could argue that Cuba is doing extremely well for a nation that has been under embargo for 50 years. The question becomes acute when you compare them to other caraibean countries that enjoy free market. I am not convinced Cuba's socialism flavour is a panacea, but I am not convinced either that it is the cause of their problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Europe has tons of socialism. The US has too much of it as well.
Europe, the USA, my country (Canada) have social programs, all to varying degrees. There's no such thing as "tons of socialism." You're either socialist (Cuba) or you're not. If you don't have mass state-owned enterprise you're not socialist.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a strong possibility that the Euro will disintegrate imminently.
There is the absolute certainty that all currencies will disintegrate eventually. However I'm not so sure which will go first, the Euro or the US dollar. Europe's biggest problem is the non-uniformity of its financial policies but on the other hand it's the greatest safeguard. The US, on the other hand, is 100% aligned and on board to sink its own currency and dissent is not even talked about let alone permitted.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If dissent is not permitted, how long do you think it will be before the secret police show up to take you away?
Re: (Score:2)
Did the sinking of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac destroy the Dollar?
The fact that one or two users of the Euro are bankrupt does not mean there is a problem with the Euro, any more than the fact that your car is out of petrol means Opec are in trouble.
This was actually a response to the parent, but slashdot servers seem to be hosting s
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest problem in Europe is the absolute uniformity of it's financial policy to secure Germany's economy no matter what the price is for any other nation in the Europe.
What are you talking about? The German economy is one of the strongest in the world, without it the Euro would be in a much worse condition.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, quite. International companies use exchange rates changes as an excuse to slowly edge the price up across the board.
And just to echo some of the other /.ers - I really do hope UK companies give Ubuntu (et al) a decent evaluation before they make any licensing decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Given that they are an American company, presumably they use the US price as the standard, and judge large currency fluctuations from that.
Re: (Score:3)
Will they lower their UK prices in that case? Or will they just raise euro prices to compensate?
Well the Oz dollar has gone from $US0.80 to $US1.04 in the last few years, and MS haven't lowered their prices at all there, so I guess you have your answer.
Re: (Score:2)
It all boils down to lock in. Once companies and government were sucked in to commit to a particular direction. M$ is now basically screwing them. If those Government departments and companies make sufficient noises about Linux and Foss the M$ price comes crashing back down again but only if the kick backs fail to ensure continued questionable decision making.
it's not like they weren't warned, again and, again and, again and, oh yes again. By people who had been similarly scammed with promises of one thi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I think you are reading that graph back-asswards. Click on invert. On November 22nd, 2011 £1 sterling would buy you €1.15. On May 2nd, 2012 that same £1 will buy you €1.23. That's the opposite of what you are trying to argue.
Or to put it another way, in November a Euro would cost you 86p. Today it'll cost you 81p. That means the Euro is worth less, not the pound.
Re: (Score:2)
So unless Microsoft has been running prices 30% too low for 3 years the reason they gave was fallacious.
No. For it to be fallacious it would at least have to be plausible.
Microsoft is misunderstood. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just my opinion, but I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
Re: (Score:2)
It's all fun and games until someone needs to use a package that runs on windows only. Old stuff can probably be emulated (though I've had pretty mixed success with even simple programs in Oracle VMs), but the killers are the commercial packages which run only on windows and are absolute resource hogs. I suspect there are some in many industries, but it mine - structural engineering - AutoCAD is about the only game in town for archtiectural products, and many (if not most) of the analysis programs are Win
Re: (Score:2)
It is getting tougher for MS though with OSS and raising their prices just makes that worst. If we read about them doing another corporat
Re: (Score:2)
Volume licensing like this covers all versions. A desktop enterprise licensing can be 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 or 8, same for server enterprise licensing. You can license based on perpetual intance of a version, but then you can't go to the next version without a new purchase. The treadmill still applies as you have to keep paying each year for this right.