Dvorak para Microsoft: Pare de brincar com os consumidores!

Bom artigo de John C. Dvorak sobre a prática de remover funcionalidades de um sistema operacional para vendê-lo sob diferentes precos:

"The glory days of Microsoft ended with Vista for one reason, and one reason only: Vista Ultimate. It was part of an ill-advised scheme called "subtractive marketing" or "fake versioning"—purposely taking features out of a finished product to create an artificial range or selection.

Who ever dreamed up the Vista Ultimate moniker, I consider that individual responsible for the decline of Microsoft. This is where the tide turned. Microsoft had been selling disabled versions of its products for some time, but never went to the extreme that it did with Vista, and now we see the company doing the same thing with Windows 7.

This is all the same one product, folks. What is the point of selling six versions of the same code base? It does not cost one nickel more to manufacture Windows 7 Ultimate than it costs to manufacture Windows 7 Home Basic, and the differences are confusing to just about everyone.

Microsoft could sell a single version of the new OS at some median price just as easily as it can sell disabled versions of the product for various prices. The public will realize this eventually." (Fonte:PC Magazine)

Este esquema será particularmente irritante no Windows 7, que virá com todas as funcionalidades instaladas mas desabilitadas.

Ou seja: você recebe o sistema operacional pronto, mas bloqueado.

Use Linux - todas as versões são "Ultimate".