Windows VISTA cost... :-(

[Grizzly_Adams]

G'day all,
As much as I hate to do it I need to get another Windows license for my PC's at home.

My PC has a (legitimate) Windows XP license and instead of purchasing another Windows XP license I figured I'd bite the bullet and get a Windows VISTA Home Premium license as it's something I would have to do eventually anyway.




Trouble is they are expensive - $499 for the complete package and $299 for an upgrade from Harris Tech (for example).

Does anyone know / have a way (excluding pirating) to help me get a cheaper copy?

[incisor]

G'day all,
As much as I hate to do it I need to get another Windows license for my PC's at home.

My PC has a (legitimate) Windows XP license and instead of purchasing another Windows XP license I figured I'd bite the bullet and get a Windows VISTA Home Premium license as it's something I would have to do eventually anyway.




Trouble is they are expensive - $499 for the complete package and $299 for an upgrade from Harris Tech (for example).




Does anyone know / have a way (excluding pirating) to help me get a cheaper copy?


if the oem license is the same as xp then you need only buy a "essential" component to make a computer work to be able to buy it at the oem price.

i havent checked so i may be blowing spoke up your kilt...

power cable $5
Vista Home Premuim $189.

chow baby.....

[Grizzly_Adams]

Thanks inc :cool:

I'm doing a whip-around at work and with my friends to see if they wanna purchasing anything from Umart :D

[waynep]

do you have anyone in the family who is a teacher or student ?

if you do you can get the education/student version.....much cheaper

[Grizzly_Adams]

Unfortunately, no.. my neices and nephews have all started their working career :angel:

[Mick-Kelly]

Or you could run Linux with all the eye candy for free..............just a thought.;)

[aaron.miller]

Anyone can buy the academic licensed version, as long as you say its for use at home and not to make any money out of then they will sell it to you. The ownus is on you, not the retailer to decide if you qualify for the academic version.

Aaron

[dmdigital]

Anyone can buy the academic licensed version, as long as you say its for use at home and not to make any money out of then they will sell it to you. The ownus is on you, not the retailer to decide if you qualify for the academic version.

Aaron

That's what I just did cost $179

[Captain_Rightfoot]

This must be bloody annoying for windows users. I think the mac upgrades (there are only upgrades) are predicted to be less than $200.

At $500 that's nearly half a low cost pc.

[JDNSW]

.......

At $500 that's nearly half a low cost pc.

Last PC I got was under $800 - box only, without O/S (motherboard died, so no need to replace anything else, installed Linux)

John

[camel_landy]

Now who was it who was knocking Apple for the amount they charged for OS X when it was launched.... :angel:

M

[Quiggers]

There's some really good stuff about Vista, which is very informative, on this site:

http://www.apple.com/getamac/

have a look, they're fascinating....:D :D :D

GQ

[Pedro_The_Swift]

There's some really good stuff about Vista, which is very informative, on this site:

http://www.apple.com/getamac/

have a look, they're fascinating....:D :D :D

GQ

all that talk about macs just made me hungry:p

[Wazza]

Hey Grizzly

I am a teacher if you need an academic version.

Is it worth upgrading to Vista

Wazza

[martin r]

Microsoft have given up trying to police the academic/student versions. The version offerd now is just a cut down version of the full price package which can be sold to anyone.
What is great value until the 28th May is the full suite of Microsoft Office 2007 being offered to uni students for $75.00 for a lifetime licence. It's only available by download ( 502mb ) for registered students at Australian universities.

[Wazza]

where do u download that version from?

Have mates that are Uni students


Cheers
Wazza

[martin r]

Go to www.itsnotcheating.com.au

[Grizzly_Adams]

Thanks for the info guys. If it wasn't for needing a license for my wife's PC I wouldn't be upgrading the Vista, however I figured if I was gonna buy a license then I might as well get a Vista one as I'll need one eventually (my wife needs Windows in order to work-from-home for her on-call).

As for other OS's - well I've got OS X on my MacBook Pro, which is great for most of the things I do at work. Linux? No thanks, I want a system that does what I want with minimal of fuss - I don't want to be stuffing around compiling and trying to figure out why this website doesn't work and these video settings don't do what they're suppose to and and and...

.. and before you scream and jump - I work with Unix & Linux (because they *are* different) every single day, I don't want to go home and have to stuff around with them too.

My home PC is a gaming PC, best platform for gaming is (whether you like it or not) Windows....

Some of my friends wanted some hardware so I ended up getting the OEM copy at the same time. Unfortunate issues with the OEM copy are:

- You can choose to purchase the 32-bit OR the 64-bit. If you paid the full price for the retail have a "free upgrade" from 32-bit to 64-bit if you like (you need to pay the postage and media costs).

- The OEM version can only be installed on 1 motherboard, it's completely non-transferrable. The retail version can be transferred between machines / motherboards. Having said that I only purchased my machine about this time last year and have no plans on upgrading within the next 2 years. At that time it'll be a major upgrade and the motherboard will go and I will purchase a new copy of Vista for another $170.00.

Considering the full retail cost is $370'ish, I'm still saving $170 for the next 2 years (OEM cost is about $170)... so I don't see it as an issue as such.

[Tote]

Be aware that Vista will break all your apps. I reverted to XP as getting it all to work was too hard.
As an example:
Nero didn't work
Pinacle video editor required a 120mb beta patch
Canon Camera software required large updates
Mailwasher didnt work
My Skype wireless handset didn't work reliably
etc etc.......
I'm in the computer industry and I'll be waiting a while before I go back, Vista looked nice though ))

Regards,
Tote

[incisor]

ALL versions of windows can only be installed on a few motherboards as that is what they activate against. 5 during the life of a copy windows i seem to remember.

if you change boards you just use phone activation and tell them the old board died in a storm and you had to get a new one ...

[Grizzly_Adams]

See
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061102-8140.html

"
A previous version of the Windows Vista retail license restricted the
number of times you may transfer Vista from one device to another. The
license read: "The first user of the software may reassign the license
to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other
device becomes the 'licensed device.'"

The new license has removed this language relating to device transfers,
and now reads: "You may install one copy of the software on the licensed
device. You may use the software on up to two processors on that device
at one time. Except as provided in the Storage and Network Use (Ultimate
edition) sections below, you may not use the software on any other device."
"

However:

"
It bears repeating, however, the the OEM license that comes with Vista
is indeed similar to the Windows XP OEM license in that it forbids any
kind of transfer. As we have previously reported, users have
nevertheless had success transferring those copies of Windows, but they
are technically stepping outside of the bounds of the EULA when doing so.
"

[incisor]

xp oem can be legally transfered to another board if it is a warranty or insurance type issue or at microsofts descretion on boards that die in storms, i do it day in day out in summer when the storms are about, only ever had one knocked back because the user had it on several machines at once and they had had enough of him in the past...

[Grizzly_Adams]

Yup and they are much more likely to allow it if the request is coming from a business and not an individual - purely because M$ trusts businesses more than individuals :(

[incisor]

nah,

they are droids on the line, they look at situations database and act from there....


only once have i needed to really announce who i was...

[Grizzly_Adams]

Fair enough, I was speaking from the point of view of a friend who had to deal with them for exactly the discussed reason (moving of OEM license from 1 machine to another).

His words:

The OEM copy will not re-activate on a second motherboard over the internet. You can ring Microsoft's 1800 number and they may re-activate it for you if you cry enough. I had some succes doing this with WinXP Pro - I tried it with 2 different copies of XP, they re-activated 1 and refused to re-activate the 2nd (each try was about 2 months apart) and I ended up having to buy a new copy.

This problem has caused me to vow never to by OEM Windows again, even though it costs more for the retail copy I figure it is worth it to avoid the hassles since I tend to upgrade each year.

#############

As an aside this bloke upgrades at least once a year so it was probably bad timing on his part to have to request moves twice so close together...

I didn't see it as such a big issue as I'm not going to be upgrading half as often as he does, so I was happy enough with being restricted to 1 motherboard for half the cost.

I guess it all comes down to which drone you get on the day and whether they've got PMS or not :angel:

[Quiggers]

This thread has been fascinating...

My father is running an older iMac and has been advised by peers to dump it and go PC/Vista....

We Mac lovers here will know what I said to dad.:D :D :D

GQ

[Grizzly_Adams]

Hey don't get me wrong - I have and love my Mac :)

But it's not a games machine (though yes it can play games) and I can more easily "beef up" my PC when the time comes with a lot wider choice of Hardware... of course the downside to that much wider choice of hardware is some incompatibilities (which is the major cause of blue screens).

I don't want any slanging of OS's / architectures going on, they've all got their pros and cons and all have their niche where they excel. As much as I hate giving money to M$ I've gotta take my hat off to them for their ability to write an OS that runs stably over a huge range of hardware (my experience with Windows XP is that it's a *lot* more stable than previous releases)... and yes you can point to Linux also, but Linux has only recently come into the GUI world with both guns flying - it took them quite a while to get their own heads around GUI's - whereas Windows had a working GUI even with Windows 95, possibly (if you want to call it that) way back when with Windows 3.1....

[Rovernaut]

Be aware that Vista will break all your apps. I reverted to XP as getting it all to work was too hard.

Regards,
Tote

That's why we Linux users say Microsoft has a feature called...'
' PLUG AND PRAY' :wasntme:

[Tote]

That's why we Linux users say Microsoft has a feature called...'
' PLUG AND PRAY' :wasntme:
Still better than trying to decipher misleading man pages though ;-)
Regards,
Tote

[camel_landy]

Still better than trying to decipher misleading man pages though ;-)
Regards,
Tote

That's what OS X is for... ;)

Nice, sexy GUI on BSD UNIX... Can't beat it. :D


whereas Windows had a working GUI even with Windows 95, possibly (if you want to call it that) way back when with Windows 3.1....

Don't forget that there was a GUI for the PCs well before Windows came out... Digital Research GEM. :cool:

M

[HangOver]

Just a thought but have you used a PC running Vista recently?


A PC running Vista needs 2GB of RAM to run at the same speed as a PC running XP on 1GB or RAM.

And....... unless you have at least a 3.0 with 2GB of RAM I would stick to XP really.

[Mick-Kelly]

My latest version of Ubuntu Linux, fully stable with three years free tech support neads 256mb of RAM :p:p:p

[incisor]

so does the base vista with the pretties turned off and the base gui running..

horses for courses

you get pretty much same functionality out of 8bit atari 800 with its 128k GEMS cart, just faster these days than the old national semiconductor 6502... but same stuff....

telnet into one today, 30+ years old and still running happly

ran my first BBS system on very similar setup on a hand built 300baud modem.

telnet://cth.dtdns.net (telnet://cth.dtdns.net/)