I’m sure you’ve already read this elsewhere seeing as how every other news outlet has already mentioned it, but I felt that you might enjoy The Dojo’s spin on the subject. In case you haven’t seen this already, Microsoft has announced that it has dropped the prices of Windows Vista in 70 countries, including the US. This price drop only affects retail copies, so it won’t make your PC any cheaper. Additionally, Microsoft is contractually required to make 90% of its sales to its OEM buyers to make only 10% of its stock available to retail. Vista Ultimate originally retailed for US$399 and is now available for US$319 (£169).

This is a ridiculously huge drop for a product which was in development for five years and is less than a year old. Microsoft claims to have already sold 100 million retail copies of Windows Vista but does not reveal the version breakdown and how many of those have actually been activated, or even more telling how many of those activated copies are still being regularly updated. Its not even clear of the 100 million refers to all distributed copies of Vista or just retail sales.

This is a very unpleasant time to be Microsoft. Apple is surging in the markets, Bill Gates is gone, Steve Ballmer is a wack job, Vista is a bomb, the European Commision has ordered Microsoft pay fines of 2.5 billion, and the Redmond giant is seemingly actively joining the open source commmunity. These are interesting times.

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