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And the cheapest OS on the market is…
By Stanislav Kelman

Forget everything you have ever learned about free market dynamics and the notion of economies of scale. Never mind what those naive book worms taught you in Economics 101. Furthermore, get rid of all that useless basic math knowledge from elementary school. Finally, disregard everything that your parents have told you about honesty and honor. After all, the new millennium is coming and the old rules no longer apply. Welcome to the real world where Microsoft reigns supreme!

You are now ready to listen to Mark Murray, a Microsoft spokesman. "[Microsoft] has consistently driven prices downward," he claimed yesterday in response to "groundless" allegations that his company has been using its monopoly position to artificially maintain high prices. Better yet, he was pleased to inform us that "Microsoft's prices are generally lower than [those of all their] operating system competitors."

I guess fighting (and losing) legal battles is tough, particularly when the well being of a five hundred billion dollar corporation is at stake. That, however, should not have prevented Mr. Murray from doing a little research just to double check if his angry claims have any resemblance to reality. But, then again, the folks who work on One Microsoft Way don't have the time for such nonsense. The issue here is trying to uphold the status of the most "innovative" company, particularly when it comes to press releases.

Anyway, below you will find a list of some of the more-or-less mainstream commercial operating system clients and productivity software suites. This up-to-date information, including the projected cost of Windows 2000, was compiled based on the current price quotes from Buy.com and a few other discount software resellers. I'm sure that, if you search hard enough, you could stumble upon some better deals. However, I don't think that you will be able to locate any legal sub-$50 copies of Windows NT.

On the other hand, if you are one of those chosen people who are allowed to shop at the computer store on Microsoft campus (where any piece of their software can be had for a nominal fee of $20 or less), you might find the cost of BeOS prohibitively high. Perhaps, that is where Mr. Murray got the misconception about the affordability of Microsoft products…

And now, I am pleased to bring to your attention my own rather simple version of "findings of fact:"

            Upgrade              Full
  List Retail List Retail
Caldera Linux 2.3 --- --- $49.95 $27.95
SuSE Linux 6.2 --- --- $49.95 $29.99
BeOS 4.5 (Intel/PowerPC) $25.00 --- $69.95 $35.95
IBM PC-DOS 2000 --- --- $65.00 $48.86
Red Hat Linux Deluxe 6.1 --- --- $79.95 $63.95
MacOS 9.0 $79.00 $56.95 $99.00 $76.95
MS Windows 98 Second Edition $109.00 $79.95 $209.00 $151.95
IBM OS/2 Warp 4.0 $189.00 $143.95 $299.00 $174.95
MS Windows NT 4.0 Workstation --- $125.95 $319.00 $192.95
MS Windows Pro 2000 --- $186.95 $319.00 $268.95
         
AppleWorks Office 5.0 --- --- $99.00 $74.95
Corel WP Office 2000 $109.00 $90.95 $399.00 $261.95
Corel WP Office 2000/w Dragon $159.00 $130.95 $449.00 $280.95
Corel WP Office 2000 Pro $209.00 $174.95 $499.00 $325.95
Lotus SmartSuite Millennium $173.00 $130.95 $472.00 $357.95
MS Office 2000 Standard $249.00 $185.95 $499.00 $419.95
MS Office 2000 SBE $249.00 $208.95 $499.00 $419.95
MS Office 2000 Pro $349.00 $248.95 $599.00 $473.95
MS Office 2000 Premium $449.00 $309.95 $799.00 $588.95
MS Office 2000 Developer $649.00 $546.95 $999.00 $842.95

 

Talkback Forum


Authors background:
Stanislav Kelman
is one of those rare insanely rich individuals who were able to afford the enormous price associated with obtaining legal copies of a number of revisions of BeOS, MacOS and, even more incredibly, numerous Linux distributions. Stanislav can be reached for response to this column at: osOpinion@LetItBe.org.


 

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