Weven Upgrade
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Can someone explain the Weven upgrade thing to me? I'm finding it very confusing. On the microsoft store site they have pre-order pricing, but it looks like home premium is 200$ for a non-upgrade copy, which is the same price(i've heard) it will be at ship time. Then the pre-order upgrade price is only 50$! That's pretty cheap, but it doesn't say exactly what you need to have bought (and when) to get that upgrade. THEN they've said that if you buy Vista now(from them or a store I'm not sure if it matters), that you can get a FREE upgrade to Weven when it ships. This is all very confusing to me. Why would anyone pay 200$ for home premium on pre-order, if they can just buy Vista now for 90$ and get a free upgrade. Or can I go out and buy a cheap XP license and get the 50$ Weven upgrade pre-order price? Anyone know exactly what the deal is?
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Can someone explain the Weven upgrade thing to me? I'm finding it very confusing. On the microsoft store site they have pre-order pricing, but it looks like home premium is 200$ for a non-upgrade copy, which is the same price(i've heard) it will be at ship time. Then the pre-order upgrade price is only 50$! That's pretty cheap, but it doesn't say exactly what you need to have bought (and when) to get that upgrade. THEN they've said that if you buy Vista now(from them or a store I'm not sure if it matters), that you can get a FREE upgrade to Weven when it ships. This is all very confusing to me. Why would anyone pay 200$ for home premium on pre-order, if they can just buy Vista now for 90$ and get a free upgrade. Or can I go out and buy a cheap XP license and get the 50$ Weven upgrade pre-order price? Anyone know exactly what the deal is?
I believe the $200 Home Premium version is a retail version, meaning you can reinstall it on as many machines as you want provided that only one instance is installed at any one time. The cheap Vista/XP licenses are probably OEM which is tied to one machine and cannot be reinstalled on another. In fact strictly speaking, even if the machine is no longer usable (e.g. mobo fries), you still can't reuse the license. So basically, apples and oranges.
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I believe the $200 Home Premium version is a retail version, meaning you can reinstall it on as many machines as you want provided that only one instance is installed at any one time. The cheap Vista/XP licenses are probably OEM which is tied to one machine and cannot be reinstalled on another. In fact strictly speaking, even if the machine is no longer usable (e.g. mobo fries), you still can't reuse the license. So basically, apples and oranges.
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Can someone explain the Weven upgrade thing to me? I'm finding it very confusing. On the microsoft store site they have pre-order pricing, but it looks like home premium is 200$ for a non-upgrade copy, which is the same price(i've heard) it will be at ship time. Then the pre-order upgrade price is only 50$! That's pretty cheap, but it doesn't say exactly what you need to have bought (and when) to get that upgrade. THEN they've said that if you buy Vista now(from them or a store I'm not sure if it matters), that you can get a FREE upgrade to Weven when it ships. This is all very confusing to me. Why would anyone pay 200$ for home premium on pre-order, if they can just buy Vista now for 90$ and get a free upgrade. Or can I go out and buy a cheap XP license and get the 50$ Weven upgrade pre-order price? Anyone know exactly what the deal is?
DiscoJimmy wrote:
Why would anyone pay 200$ for home premium on pre-order, if they can just buy Vista now for 90$ and get a free upgrade
I don't know the answer to your question but I will observe that MS have always had strange but legal pricing of this sort, e.g., Visual Studio Pro is upgradable from Express editions which are free so why would anyone buy VS at full price? In the past Office was upgradable from MS Works which was either bundled with PCs or was priced lowly enough that Works + Office Upgrade cost less than full price Office. There are other examples. I'm sure there must have been many consumers who did not spot these and paid full price unnecessarily.
Kevin
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DiscoJimmy wrote:
Why would anyone pay 200$ for home premium on pre-order, if they can just buy Vista now for 90$ and get a free upgrade
I don't know the answer to your question but I will observe that MS have always had strange but legal pricing of this sort, e.g., Visual Studio Pro is upgradable from Express editions which are free so why would anyone buy VS at full price? In the past Office was upgradable from MS Works which was either bundled with PCs or was priced lowly enough that Works + Office Upgrade cost less than full price Office. There are other examples. I'm sure there must have been many consumers who did not spot these and paid full price unnecessarily.
Kevin
It's a market segmentation gimic. Home users can jump through hoops to get a cheaper copy while corporate buyers pay more. For Office the home/student edition gives everything that a typical home user would need for a very low price; in this case the segmentation is primarily enforced by it being licensed for noncommercial use only. Free home anti-virus, coupons, and rebates are other examples of the same thing. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html[^]
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
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dighn wrote:
So basically, apples and oranges
But both are fruit. If you just want to have Weven on your machine, the comparison is valid (and confusing).
This is exactly what I want. I just want Weven Home Premium. What's the cheapest way to make that happen? A) Buy it pre-order for 200$ B) Buy Vista Home Premium and get the free Weven Home Premium upgrade (if so when and where do I have to buy Vista) C) Buy an XP license and get the 50$ Weven Home Premium upgrade what's bothering me is that as you go down my list, the options get cheaper, and more confusing about how to go about it, and maybe more 'too-good-be-true' sounding. what are you guys planning to do?
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It's a market segmentation gimic. Home users can jump through hoops to get a cheaper copy while corporate buyers pay more. For Office the home/student edition gives everything that a typical home user would need for a very low price; in this case the segmentation is primarily enforced by it being licensed for noncommercial use only. Free home anti-virus, coupons, and rebates are other examples of the same thing. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html[^]
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
But in the examples I cited this did not apply.
Kevin
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dighn wrote:
So basically, apples and oranges
But both are fruit. If you just want to have Weven on your machine, the comparison is valid (and confusing).
It's an important distinction if you upgrade often (as in changing the components yourself) or want to reuse the license later on another machine. Legally the OEM license goes with the motherboard, so if you upgrade that you need a new license, but with retail you don't. Now Microsoft doesn't enforce that strictly, but that's another matter.
modified on Thursday, July 9, 2009 1:39 PM
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This is exactly what I want. I just want Weven Home Premium. What's the cheapest way to make that happen? A) Buy it pre-order for 200$ B) Buy Vista Home Premium and get the free Weven Home Premium upgrade (if so when and where do I have to buy Vista) C) Buy an XP license and get the 50$ Weven Home Premium upgrade what's bothering me is that as you go down my list, the options get cheaper, and more confusing about how to go about it, and maybe more 'too-good-be-true' sounding. what are you guys planning to do?
The reason you see such a large gap in pricing is because you are comparing retail Win7 to OEM Vista/XP. On newegg you'll see the retail Vista Home Premium still costs $200+. The OEM version of Win7 isn't available to the general public yet. If you don't play to upgrade your motherboard or reuse the license on another machine, then by all means get an OEM version (options B/C). Personally my laptop came with Vista OEM so I'm getting the $50 upgrade. But beware that if you do get OEM, then if you upgrade the motherboard, or try to reinstall it on a new machine, MS CAN refuse to activate it.
modified on Thursday, July 9, 2009 1:43 PM
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But in the examples I cited this did not apply.
Kevin
Yes they are. Both upgrading VS from express, and upgrading from works to office are primarily home/small business options. Larger companies and individuals for whom jumping through hoops will cost more in time than the dollar cost of the full boxed edition will buy the full boxed edition instead. In the works to office case there's probably a second complication. The bundled works that was the primary upgrade vehicle was probably OEM licenced and thus non-transferable. Technically when you got a new PC as a result you'd be obligated to get a new copy of works to upgrade. OTOH when joe moron generally fails to understand that he can't buy one copy of office and install it on every PC in his house, and his friends houses, and etc expecting him to follow that fine a distinction is probably futile.
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
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This is exactly what I want. I just want Weven Home Premium. What's the cheapest way to make that happen? A) Buy it pre-order for 200$ B) Buy Vista Home Premium and get the free Weven Home Premium upgrade (if so when and where do I have to buy Vista) C) Buy an XP license and get the 50$ Weven Home Premium upgrade what's bothering me is that as you go down my list, the options get cheaper, and more confusing about how to go about it, and maybe more 'too-good-be-true' sounding. what are you guys planning to do?
There are also the less-honest options: D) ask a student you know to buy it with his student discount E) ask a Russian or Chinese friend to send it to you for $5 F) ask a European to pirate it for you (probably free) Z) pirate it yourself (not recommended in the US and Germany) I wouldn't especially recommend any of them, but they're options :) And certainly cheaper. I'm not planning to get weven at all any time soon, if I do I'd probably go for option D, if that fails I may give up or resort to Z.
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Yes they are. Both upgrading VS from express, and upgrading from works to office are primarily home/small business options. Larger companies and individuals for whom jumping through hoops will cost more in time than the dollar cost of the full boxed edition will buy the full boxed edition instead. In the works to office case there's probably a second complication. The bundled works that was the primary upgrade vehicle was probably OEM licenced and thus non-transferable. Technically when you got a new PC as a result you'd be obligated to get a new copy of works to upgrade. OTOH when joe moron generally fails to understand that he can't buy one copy of office and install it on every PC in his house, and his friends houses, and etc expecting him to follow that fine a distinction is probably futile.
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
Your post emphasised the non-commercial use aspect. But in the cases I cited there was no wording to that effect. Larger businesses will often be on some volume licensing agreement or for dev houses they will have MSDN subscriptions. For individuals and small businesses I reckon there will be many who did not spot the legal (non-restrictive) upgrade options.
dan neely wrote:
In the works to office case there's probably a second complication. The bundled works that was the primary upgrade vehicle was probably OEM licenced and thus non-transferable. Technically when you got a new PC as a result you'd be obligated to get a new copy of works to upgrade.
If Works was on the PC and you wanted Office then purchasing an Office upgrade was allowed. If Works was not on the PC and you wanted Office it was cheaper to first buy Works (non-OEM licensed) and then buy an Office upgrade than buy full Office. That's all I'm saying.
Kevin
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Can someone explain the Weven upgrade thing to me? I'm finding it very confusing. On the microsoft store site they have pre-order pricing, but it looks like home premium is 200$ for a non-upgrade copy, which is the same price(i've heard) it will be at ship time. Then the pre-order upgrade price is only 50$! That's pretty cheap, but it doesn't say exactly what you need to have bought (and when) to get that upgrade. THEN they've said that if you buy Vista now(from them or a store I'm not sure if it matters), that you can get a FREE upgrade to Weven when it ships. This is all very confusing to me. Why would anyone pay 200$ for home premium on pre-order, if they can just buy Vista now for 90$ and get a free upgrade. Or can I go out and buy a cheap XP license and get the 50$ Weven upgrade pre-order price? Anyone know exactly what the deal is?
First, it appears the discounts are only on the "upgrade" versions. Second, you are talking upgrade prices against retail prices. The discount appears to be only on the upgrades to W7. If you buy Vista Home Retail (which seems to be the requirement for the free upgrade) is around $224 at NewEgg. The $90 price for Vista would be OEM, the upgrade needs to be "Retail" versions. There is another deal for OEMs, but I think that is just specific manufactures.
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