Pricy Vistas?

I seem to recall a lot of people whining about how expensive Windows Vista is. I didn’t pay a lot of attention at the time because it seemed a long way off (for me, it still is — I’ll probably sit out until the second service pack before spending money on it) but kind of accepted that it was going to be horrendously expensive when the time came.

And then today I took a look at OEM pricing of it (incidentally, I was looking for something else) and wondered what on earth all the fuss was about. Vista Business is $190, and Ultimate weighs in at about $250. It occurred to me at that point that those who had been complaining have probably never paid for software in their life. Newsflash: XP Pro OEM has cost around $200 for the last couple of years and I don’t hear anyone whining about the cost of that.

Maybe I’m getting older and grumpier, but it seems like a lot of the Internet’s self-professed geeks really don’t have the foggiest sense of real-world perspective.