Microsoft Needs Family Pack Pricing
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One of my biggest gripes about Windows Vista has nothing to do with hardware incompatibilities or driver issues, but with its lack of a family pricing plan. Now I know Microsoft had a “family discount” plan where users who purchased Vista Ultimate could purchase two more copies of Home Premium for $50 each, but this discount didn’t last too long and was a poor attempt at enticing users to purchase additional licenses.
Now I don’t have any figures to back this up, but I would bet most households have more than one PC and I would also imagine the majority of those are Windows based machines. In my house alone I have three Windows machines, and only my main PC runs Vista Ultimate. I would like to upgrade the other two machines, especially with the parental control features in Vista, but financially it’s just not worth the extra expense.
I didn’t want to bring Apple into this, but I have to say it has the right idea when it comes to pricing. Right now you can pick up a single license of OS X for $129, but you can also purchase a five pack of licenses for $199 so you can easily upgrade your entire household. How many people like myself, who has multiple PCs, would jump at a chance to get a family pack of Windows licenses for a reasonable price? Quite a few, I would bet.
Vista is already out in the wild, but with the next version of Windows already on the minds of some users, I would encourage Microsoft to take a hard look at family pricing and the benefits it would bring.
3 Comments
Xbox » Microsoft Needs Family Pack Pricing
October 9th, 2007
at 3:59am
[…] schestowitz wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptNow I know Microsoft had a “family discount” plan where users who purchased Vista Ultimate could purchase two more copies of Home Premium for $50 each, but this discount didn’t last too long and was a poor attempt at enticing users to … […]
Echoes of Microsoft » Microsoft Needs Family Pack Pricing
October 13th, 2007
at 8:08pm
[…] Erick Schonfeld wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptNow I know Microsoft had a “family discount” plan where users who purchased Vista Ultimate could purchase two more copies of Home Premium for $50 each, but this discount didn’t last too long and was a poor attempt at enticing users to … […]
John
October 15th, 2007
at 9:36am
By *not* making a reasonable accommodation for multiple computer households, Microsoft is *inviting* piracy.
Why is it that in China, where 95% of the MS software out there *is pirated,* does MS give *them* a break, but here, where the compliance rate is higher, and they have other mechanisms to enforce large-scale compliance, do they insist on gouging us for each and every one?
You would think they’d offer the Chinese gov’t an incentive to kick doors down, sieze all computers using pirated software and fine all the offenders. With the 6 billion population in China, they’d make crazy revenue. But no, let’s bow and scrape to the Maoists, and make the Americans pay through every orifice possible.
Between all the mistakes they’ve made with Vista, and their predatory pricing policies, lack of function, and total lack of support, MS is *actively* driving people away, either to Apples or to Linux. Pretty soon, folks will be asking for ABM products… Anything But Microsoft products. Bill and Stevie will get exactly what they deserve, but not near soon enough..