Ten years ago the cost of a copy of Windows was about $100 retail. The cost today? The cheapest that I have found a full copy of any supported version of Windows is around $120. Now I'm sure that the price is lower in large quantities, but that was true then too.
This is the cost of a monopoly. A monopoly has no market to push prices lower. A monopoly has no market to force higher quality software.
The perfect example of how a monopoly costs is the cost of a minute of long distance in 1975 and the cost today. Even accounting for inflation, it's lots cheaper today. And no, local calls don't count, the Baby Bells still have local monopolies on local calls.
Whether it's retail or through OEMs, Microsoft is gouging the market with it's monopoly.
Of course the fact that it not only supports every device you could hook to a PC ten years ago, today it supports a couple of thousand more devices and a few thousand independent developer programs that support features that didn't exist back then.
But in your ignorance of market forces, you want MSFT to supply this extra stuff to you for free. If your so damn clever - go write a couple million lines of code and solve your own problems.....
Or Stop Whining - It Doesn't Look Good On You!
And by the way - the cost of Windows when imbedded in the cost of a PC is less than 15% of the total. Get a life...
What?? OEM prices are about $25 a machine. How is that "between 20% and 30%"? A new machine runs about a $1,000 for OEM hardware, making OEM Windows a 2.5% cost.
Hey, that's a good deal.
Next time, try adjusting for inflation. If, in 1992, the price for Windows 3.1 was $100, that's $127.80 in 2002 dollars, according to the trusty inflation calculator. So, in reality, the price of Windows has dropped in real terms - $120 today is $93.90 in 1992 dollars. That's almost 10% cheaper than it used to be.
Ten years ago the Microsoft operating system that came with your computer accounted for about 10% of the cost of the machine. Today, with the prices of PCs falling the cost of a Microsoft operating system accounts for between 20% and 30% of the cost of a new PC.
The computing power that cost five hundred dollars today cost a million dollars twenty years ago.
Ten years ago the cost of a copy of Windows was about $100 retail. The cost today? The cheapest that I have found a full copy of any supported version of Windows is around $120. Now I'm sure that the price is lower in large quantities, but that was true then too.
The Windows OS integration and performance that cost a hundred dollars today would have cost thousands of dollars ten years ago.
There's no other industry that I know of that can touch those beyond-exponential increases in value. Fortunately, it's because the computer industry has had the least regulation foisted on it by politicians and bureaucrats -- parasitical elites versus market-driven hosts.
Government intervention into peaceful, private activity -- free association wherein any or all parties are free to walk away -- will make things worse rather than better.
Any government agency that is a value to the people and society could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.