{"id":8,"date":"2010-07-08T22:43:11","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T20:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thoughtflow.dk\/?p=8"},"modified":"2010-07-23T00:56:40","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T22:56:40","slug":"why-is-windows-so-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/why-is-windows-so-expensive\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is Windows so expensive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not sure that anyone can answer the question “why is Windows so expensive”. After all, most people get Windows when buying a new computer where Microsoft has a strong hold on the market.<\/p>\n

First, how expensive is Windows exactly? Currently, I am looking at the US prices where Windows 7 Professional costs $200 for an upgrade and $300 for a full version. To compare, I have downloaded Ubuntu Linux three times within the last year for $0 but have donated $10 every time, just to make myself feel a little less guilty.<\/p>\n

I understand that nothing comes for free and there are obviously many bright people at Microsoft that have high salaries. While being a student, one also enjoys the benefits of downloading tons of Microsoft software for free. But now, while starting my own business, $300 for just one Windows license is really a lot of money. And that is only the operating system. I won’t even get started on products like Visual Studio, SQL Server and so on.<\/p>\n

There are two solutions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Use open source. Yes, I would like to do that, especially because there are excellent alternatives to proprietary Microsoft software. The problem is that Visual Studio is needed in certain situations.<\/li>\n
  2. Swallow the bitterness and pay.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I would like to see Microsoft doing different pricing schemes on their software in the future. Until then, I will just have to pay.<\/p>\n

    Edit: The third option is to enroll in\u00a0Bizspark<\/a> which we did. See the next blog post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I am not sure that anyone can answer the question “why is Windows so expensive”. After all, most people get Windows when buying a new computer where Microsoft has a strong hold on the market. First, how expensive is Windows exactly? Currently, I am looking at the US prices where Windows 7 Professional costs $200 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,8,6,7],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","tag-costs","tag-licenses","tag-microsoft","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}