Vista sales is a mess. Microsoft knows that and has to swallow the bad pills. Vista known to be sold only 200++ boxes in China. Gosh. Can’t imagine how much money Bill would lost for this (for people who actually never touch the money — only numbers on papers, I don’t think he actually lost it. For sure, this is only will make Bill Gates angry for the rest of the quarter, and makes his executives sweat big time. 😀 ). Yeah who will appreciate a “interface make over” OS. Vista is not substantial upgrade for computer owner. Yeah it’s substantial resources killer 😀 Got less than 2GB mem? What? Only 512MB? Forget it. Go get yourself a useable OS. XP for now for you PC fans.
Even Dell knows how to satisfy his customers. Slow demand for Vista, just make him re-offer XP as bundle offering. Oh la la. Feels like the new MacBook Pro have to bundle with OS 9 due slow adoption of OS X 10.4 😀 Never happens in Apple lands.
But Bill is Bill. The genius sales person earth ever faces. Now he came up with Bill Sales Plan 2.0; To resell Windows XP + Office bundle for only 3 US dollars for students in China. Damn, you’re genius Bill. You really know how to serve the market. When people is only struggle for 100 dollars a month paycheck, why would they spend $299 dollar for flop OS like Vista. With millions students will be back in Microsoft’s flag, this strategy will definitely a clear winner for Microsoft. Gaining booster from education (who soon become executive, and ready to buy big time Microsoft’s hefty price tag), in the same true moment is serving 5 billions people who haven’t reach by PC revolution. Damn you’re genius Bill (read: 3 x 5,000,000,000 ~ 15,000,000,000 dollars potential market).
Now you’re talking! This same true strategy will work just fine in any other country outside China, just as it would work well in Indonesia. I keep telling Apple executive to follow the path, but they ain’t listening. Imagine, the same moment Vista sales flop and slow adoption, all sudden Apple re-introduce Mac OS X Retail Edition for PC White Boxes. Hahahaa…. It’s only happening in your dream. Dream on, lad. Apple will never be a mainstream. Dang!
April 24th, 2007 at 8:46 am
dreaming a $30 (yes, thirty dollars, it is ten times) microsoft office 2004 (or, X) students edition license in indonesia… do i have to be an expatriat in beijing for that? wakakakak…
April 24th, 2007 at 9:47 am
1. When people being faced to option that they can obtain a real thing with a price not that different from the pirated one, they may think that the real one is better bargain, right? So the issue here in MS China is not about the market penetration, it is about combating piracy. The penetration is already there, it is pirated everywhere. That is why there is no use of Apple to follow the same path. They do not have the piracy problem, their problem is penetration, which is blocked by hardware locked in.
2. In Singapore, the license for MS Office 2003/2007 for education, which can be used for 3 installation per-media, is only S$185. That is almost Rp 1.000.000. Divided by 3 then it will be around what Adam dreaming of. If rich country like Singapore can do that, why Indonesia can’t? Whose fault is that? I know that some education body in Indonesia can do site license. But the one in Singapore here does not need any endorsement from any education body. You can just come to any shop and purchase.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:05 am
1. When people being faced to option that they can obtain a real thing with a price not that different from the pirated one, they may think that the real one is better bargain, right? So the issue here in MS China is not about the market penetration, it is about combating piracy. The penetration is already there, it is pirated everywhere. That is why there is no use of Apple to follow the same path. They do not have the piracy problem, their problem is penetration, which is blocked by hardware locked in.
-> The third issue is about whether they want to keep it as niche player or not.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Actually being a niche player in the x86 is a nice thing :
a. Imagine the cut throat margin of the x86 hardware. By being niche you can jack up the price just because you are “luxurious”
b. Not to mention the “time to market” which rarely more than 1 year, way too fast
c. Enjoying the “security by obscurity”, since the cracker will attack the wider audience.
Be blessed the minority =D
April 24th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Dedhi said,
April 24, 2007 @ 11:04 am
Actually being a niche player in the x86 is a nice thing :
a. Imagine the cut throat margin of the x86 hardware. By being niche you can jack up the price just because you are “luxuriousâ€
b. Not to mention the “time to market†which rarely more than 1 year, way too fast
c. Enjoying the “security by obscurityâ€, since the cracker will attack the wider audience.
Be blessed the minority =D
-> Now you’re talking 😛
April 24th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
But, fortunately, I have Microsoft Office 2004 Mac Pro Edition license from my campus for academic purpose (Microsoft Academic Alliance, MSAA).
kok jadi pada ngomong bahasa bule gini?
April 26th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Read it somewhere that Microsoft don’t really care of ‘low-level’ piracy. ‘Low-level’ refers to piracy done by individuals including students. They even think that it is an ‘investment’. For example, it surely would be hard for us to afford a $150 for Windows OS plus another $150 for standard office suite (not all of us are conglomerate like the owner of gudangbatere.com. no pun intended. :P), Microsoft would be happy (in the term of ‘tutup sebelah mata’) to let us pirate their os and other productivity software.
When a person being introduced to windows since 6-7 years old till he/she graduated from college, that’s 15-16 years of Microsoft brainwash!
When he/she got into workplaces, he/she got no other software skills other than Microsoft’s. Worse, the brainwash also created Microsoft oriented programmers, who prefer (or maybe just lazy) to program in Visual Basic, thus creating businesses program that run only exclusively on Windows.
Microsoft would make sure that each business entity uses legal softwares. Businesses usually have money and in most cases trying to abide the law.
April 26th, 2007 at 11:24 am
sorry bill, got US$ 3 vista down here, with office 2003 and extras
you’ll never beat two mangoes bill !!
April 27th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Actually there’s an option in Indonesia to get MS product for far less (and still be legal). In UNPAD and ITB there’s this student program in which the university along with microsoft offer a bundle of programs for student for a very low price (usually between $5-$10).
Check with your university/college/school official whether they already have an agreement with Microsoft to sell the license or not. The bundle includes Visual studio, MS Office, Windows XP, and Encarta if I’m not mistaken. It’s definitely worth it 🙂
@soerja: Well actually most of the college student I’ve spoken with, they are willing to shell out between $5-$10 for an ORIGINAL program. I guess everyone has their preferences…
April 27th, 2007 at 10:55 am
@Dedhi: I think the security in MacOS got nothing to do with Mac being a minority here. The architecture is a lot different and since MacOS is using a BSD architecure, it is almost impossible to ‘inject’ a virus like a traditional Windows computer does. In BSD architecture, the user must willingly open the firewall, let the virus in, and then install the virus by themselves (which is very unlikely). And after that for the virus to multiply, they have to manually send the virus again (and reinstall it on another computer).
That’s way too hard for a virus to breed which is why Linux, BSD, and MacOS is a relatively safe OS.
To add to my argument, most of the web server around is based on some variant of Linux, do they ever get virus (PS: DDOS is not a virus… that’s an attack and got nothing to do with OS architecture — it’s network thingy)? No, so I think security by obscurity is just a whole lot of bullsh*t.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:56 am
PS to Adinoto: mas, APP + LCD ya ya ya ya ;))
April 27th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
@mr. oscar,
sir, how about graphics suite such as adobe genus? or macromedia’s?do they willing to unleash the same scheme?
the main problem is, teaching our students ‘how to open a documents’ is not the same with ‘ click start menu – micro$oft office – microsoft word’…
back in my junior high school, i’m fortunate enough of met someone who kindly teach me about chi-writer, not the de-facto-standard of wordstar..
for me, it’s about freedom of choice, and freedom to learn, sir
wah, iki bosoku koq dadi ko ngene ki piye? indonesia plissss :p
April 28th, 2007 at 12:38 am
What’s going on with Apple nowadays? Lately, this company has been in the news for reasons that are good and bad. Of course I always expect something good is coming out of it :). However, here I am talking about the bad part of it. It has been reported in many financial articles that executives committed crime by backdating the options of grant stocks awarded to them. One got caught, CFO (Fred Anderson). From various sources say that Jobs agreed to backdate the option prior to his announcement about the Ipod product. Which we all now know has made a major boost to the company’s overall performance. I don’t know if it is because of greed or something else.
So there you have it. Not agreeing to lower your price when it might help its market share but agreeing on giving kick back to your lieutenant at company’s expense.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:58 am
halah..pararusing!…jadi pada bule gini?…ya udah setiap OS ada kelebihan dan kekurangan…biar market yang menentukan…di awali di Bandung!…sugan tahun 2015 sudah 70% pendudukanya menjadi Mac user gara-gara walikotanya! hahaha….mangga ahh..:P
April 28th, 2007 at 8:51 am
@oskar:
i’ve got microsoft licenses for free from my campus with MSAA 😛 (STT Telkom)
April 28th, 2007 at 10:08 am
yoki said,
April 28, 2007 @ 2:58 am
halah..pararusing!…jadi pada bule gini?…ya udah setiap OS ada kelebihan dan kekurangan…biar market yang menentukan…di awali di Bandung!…sugan tahun 2015 sudah 70% pendudukanya menjadi Mac user gara-gara walikotanya! hahaha….mangga ahh..:P
-> kena scam kabeh nyak kang? wakakakakaka
April 30th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Oskar said,
Actually there’s an option in Indonesia to get MS product for far less (and still be legal). In UNPAD and ITB there’s this student program in which the university along with microsoft offer a bundle of programs for student for a very low price (usually between $5-$10).
—
Does the $5 – $10 entitle you, as a student, to OWN the software? or is it just a rental fee for the student to legally use the software as long as he/she is a student or a faculty member, and will expired as soon as he/she left the school?
The $5-$10 if a great deal if you can own the software, and still keep the licenses after you left the school. Else, it’s just like you pay Microsoft to brainwash your brain.