Microsoft Cuts Windows 8 Price to $49 (€36.5) in China

Microsoft is getting ready to launch a new massive discount for those who want to make the move to the newly-launched Windows 8, cutting down the price of the operating system to no less than $49 (€36.5) in China.

According to a report by Chinese website WPDang and cited by Neowin, the discount campaign will kick off on November 11 and will run through November 24. Of course, Chinese users who buy the operating system at the discounted price can now switch to Windows 8.1 using the Windows Store update.

Microsoft is attempting to kill two birds with one stone with this new campaign.

First, the company is attempting to bring more users to its modern operating system, as Chinese uptake has so far been relatively slow, with only a few users rushing to see what’s new in the touch-ready Windows 8. Many are still running Windows XP and, with end-of-support coming soon, Redmond is hoping that more users will take advantage of this offer.
Microsoft Cuts Windows 8 Price to $49 (?36.5) in China
 
Interesting way of upping the market share figures. Lots of scare stories about the alleged horrors awaiting XP users, coupled with big price slashing of the "Nu" os.

Chinese uptake has so far been relatively slow, with only a few users rushing to see what’s new in the touch-ready Windows 8.

Perhaps they don't like it very much? Just a guess.

many of the features requested by people, including a Start button

:roflmao:
 

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wish MS would do it here for $39 again. I've got a couple vista notebooks I'd like to upgrade, cheap.
 

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Hardly a shock that the only way they can sell w8 is with oem machines. I don't know anyone who would pay anywhere near $200 for this os.
 

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Hi there
this is often a way manufacturers use to "sucker" people in to an "eco system" and then get them to pay for ancilliary services.

( OT for a bit here-- what's happening to the English Language here -- words like "Monetisation", "Eco-system" "people Let Go" when you simply mean FIRED etc etc - there's NOTHING "eco" about computers neither in their production (heavy metals etc) or their use - energy use, over use of computers means people do less exercise / other things and get less healthy - causing the Health care systems to go into overdrive - more energy consumption again !!!. - Note I'm not against computers though - but their use should be done properly - not as a substitute for every other human activity).

Amazon with kindle for example takes this approach -- virtually GIVE AWAY the e-readers and then make the money on getting people to buy the e-books --- not against this in principle - I read a LOT more now with an e-reader than I did before - but people need to be careful as you might find you SPEND a lot more in the long run with a cheap OS but paid for or subscription typed Apps than a more expensive fully complete OS.

In any case if you can flog a BILLION copies of Windows you'd still make an absolute FORTUNE - even by Ms's standards if you sold it as cheap as 10 USD a copynever mind 30 USD or so. !!! You'd probably also put the pirates out of business forever. (At 10 USD a copy for Windows I might try and learn some Chinese/ Cantonese myself !!!).

Cheers
jimbo
 

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- but people need to be careful as you might find you SPEND a lot more in the long run with a cheap OS but paid for or subscription typed Apps than a more expensive fully complete OS.

You are so right there Jimbo! Unfortunately most people only look at the price of the individual transaction instead of the total cost of ownership.
Another great example is the montly payments of the insurances. I pay them on a yearly basis instead of a monthly basis. I get a 4% discount while doing that (or more to the point, I don't get a 4% higher price by paying monthly) and since the savingsaccounts here do only 1,25% (and your savingsaccount gets taxed each year for netto 1,2% by the government, so that just leaves 0,05%) the total cost of ownership descreases ;).
 

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:ditto: Even worse are mobile phones. Anyone who gets one on contract must be mad.
 

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:ditto: Even worse are mobile phones. Anyone who gets one on contract must be mad.

Hi there
Maybe in France - but I travel a lot - especially in the EU and EEA countries and using a pre-paid would cost me a lot more than taking out a Monthly contract - especially in Isl. the 4G contracts give UNLIMITED mobile data usage too -- the advantage of that particular offering saves me LOADS OF EUROS by not having to buy expensive hotel Wi-Fi -- the more expensive hotels seem to charge for Wi-Fi in Europe while the more modest or "Doss-House" type throw in Wi-Fi for free --strange but true. !!

Cheers
jimbo
 

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- but people need to be careful as you might find you SPEND a lot more in the long run with a cheap OS but paid for or subscription typed Apps than a more expensive fully complete OS.

You are so right there Jimbo! Unfortunately most people only look at the price of the individual transaction instead of the total cost of ownership.
Another great example is the montly payments of the insurances. I pay them on a yearly basis instead of a monthly basis. I get a 4% discount while doing that (or more to the point, I don't get a 4% higher price by paying monthly) and since the savingsaccounts here do only 1,25% (and your savingsaccount gets taxed each year for netto 1,2% by the government, so that just leaves 0,05%) the total cost of ownership descreases ;).


Hi there
Works in principle - BUT there is ONE slight flaw in your logic.

Imagine the cost is 360 EUR a year or if you pay monthly say 31 EUR a month (372) so a small saving - agreed there.

Now instead of paying out the full lump sum of 360 EUR - could you find some other use for that money that would GAIN you MORE than 12 EUR in the year.

I'd suggest there might well be if you look at ways of investing -- forget Banks -- and I'm not turning this into a "Get Rich Quick" scam or things like that.

(I do some OPTION trading on the US markets - that's usually a decent source of income - but you must SELL the options not BUY them -- 95% of SELL option contracts expire worthless - which strangely means that YOU as the SELLER are making a small but regular amount of money. BUYING options on the other hand LOSES around 95% of the time but the gains can be absolutely STAGGERING which is why large hedge funds etc use these tactics -- however this isn't a market traders Forum so I won't say any more on these. All I'm saying is that it's worth looking to see if you can make MORE than the discount you get from the insurance premiums when you pay yearly).

Certainly there are advantages to Pay it once and forget it -- also you avoid any price rise during the year too - but this approach isn't always the one that saves the most money. It's worth looking at what is possible and then decide if you want to do this.

Note if these insurance companies get LOADS of people paying lump sums in advance they can EASILY make far more than the small discounted premiums you get too -- less admin, they get a HUGE cash inflow etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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OK, a bit overstated perhaps. I do have a contract but it is much cheaper per month as I bought my phone separately.
 

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OK, a bit overstated perhaps. I do have a contract but it is much cheaper per month as I bought my phone separately.

Hi there
I got my phone separately too -- that is a much more sensible piece of advice -- also if you are an occasional user a Pay as you Go plan may well be cheaper -- like all these things it depends on how you use the phone.

Remember also for a lot of people - DON'T BOTHER with expensive mobile data plans unless you have an unlimited one when local Wifi is available - these even function when you don't have a SIM Card in the phone at all - and with Wi-Fi you can use systems like SKYPE to make calls anyway

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Interesting way of upping the market share figures. Lots of scare stories about the alleged horrors awaiting XP users, coupled with big price slashing of the "Nu" os.

Chinese uptake has so far been relatively slow, with only a few users rushing to see what’s new in the touch-ready Windows 8.

Perhaps they don't like it very much? Just a guess.

many of the features requested by people, including a Start button

:roflmao:


The Chinese would probably prefer the give-away-priced Ubuntu as it's bound to be a lot cheaper....;) I would imagine that in China the price most US software companies have to compete with is $0, which makes it tough. Although Microsoft did sell Win8/8.1 including Media Center for less than that in the US--$39.99 for the first 3-4 months (when I bought it.) The saving grace of 8/8.1 is that use of the touchscreen UI is optional--entirely. I think Microsoft does itself a huge disservice by idiotically trying to hide that facet of the OS, especially from people who don't own/want touchscreens. Go figure.

Microsoft has been out of control on the consumer front for the last couple of years, obviously.
 

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    Had a brain amputation followed up by an all-lobe "clean-up" lobotomy last year, am doing fine. Life is so much simpler, now.
They don't want you to ignore the metro stuff. That is the entire point of Nu Microsoft. They are trying to get the consumers sucked into the online services/gathering user data/no ownership/no privacy/subscription payment/constant monitoring/DRM "features". That is what 8 and 8.1 are for.
 

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:ditto: Even worse are mobile phones. Anyone who gets one on contract must be mad.

Yeah good one don't be so thick, a contract is basically being able to buy a nice phone but pay monthly for it. Plus you get loads of data i get 10gb of 4g data a month. I use my phone continuously for everything.
Might pay extra on top for the privilege but not much.
 

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:ditto: Even worse are mobile phones. Anyone who gets one on contract must be mad.

Yeah good one don't be so thick, a contract is basically being able to buy a nice phone but pay monthly for it. Plus you get loads of data i get 10gb of 4g data a month. I use my phone continuously for everything.
Might pay extra on top for the privilege but not much.


Hi there
We're going a bit off track here - but your maths is a bit off : Imagine that the cost of a new SAMSUNG S4 (Retail) is around 360 EUR - that means in 24 months you would have paid approx. 15 EUR a month for the phone. (You can source these things cheaper but I'm taking Bog standard retail).

Now a typical contract tariff with an S4 is around 65 EUR a month - so it's hardly a good deal when you can get SIM only deals giving you the same data / call allowance for around 10 - 15 EUR a month. Unless you can find a decent UNLIMITED data contract ( I have one but they are as rare as hens teeth these days) then it makes NO sense to include a phone in the contract - get a SIM only deal or if you don't make a lot of calls get a Pay as You go SIM.

I can see why a lot of people are often short of money - and you can't blame it ALL on poor wages or unemployment - I'm utterly appalled at the general public's total ignorance on handling Money in general -this should be taught in Schools - from an EARLY age - rather than concepts around "unprovable" deities etc etc.

A recent example of people's general lack of understanding about handling money comes from the UK - people were moaning about the latest hike in their Energy Bills -- approx. 8% - however there was loads of warning this was going to happen so people could save money by FIXING their tariff's for up to two years in advance BEFORE the price rises or simply switch suppliers at the click of a mouse -- Guess what - less than 10% actually DID - the average saving was estimated to be roughly 230 GBP / 270 EUR a year for the typical household - easily saving them the 8% price rise and over the period considerably more.

Back to the point - Ms is doing this as it will easily recoup on subscriptions and store apps. However not all of us are so easily fooled.

I remember what a teacher told me in School when I was very Young (was I ever Young once !!) " The price of a good education might be expensive but the price of Ignorance is ASTRONOMICAL".

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Jimbo,

The problem in the UK with energy prices is the market is broken. There is no effective competition with the energy companies making huge profits.

Various politicians have been calling for a windfall tax, and /or an enforced price freeze. When the wholesale energy prices go down, the retail prices don't. As a result of that, there has been some last minute scrambling by some of the energy companies to offer slightly better and more transparent deals - for the moment.

They are probably hoping to stave off being forced to freeze prices by the next government ( who have said that is exactly what they will do ). Until the recent efforts by the apparently panicked energy companies, those price fix deals are not what you might think, often at a a higher price than you are currently paying, and carrying heavy penalties if you need to move. There are so many tarrifs , at one stage about 400, even David Dimbleby said he could not understand them.
 

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Hi there
I'm not involved in the Politics of the UK market -- all I was saying was that Warts and all - even in the current situation around 90% of the UK households failed to take advantage of considerably better deals that were available than the tariffs they were actually on at the time.

However where the UK Market IS totally hosed up is that the Energy companies (Production Arm) Sell the power / gas to their RETAIL arm which they also own and then blame "Higher prices" charged by the RETAIL Arm as "Escalating costs !!!" - A nice Perpetual Motion Money Machine if ever I saw one -- what a Scam !! -The RETAIL divisions need to be split away from the UPSTREAM stuff.

Also threat of a Price Freeze is so totally Bovine -- if you don't control your own supply and you have to get it from a world wide market - then you only have 3 choices - Bid a higher price than other competitors, find alternatives or go to War and grab it via Military means.

the UK can't Outbid anybody, the Militiary wouldn't win this type of war if they attempted to grab it by force so the only answer is to shut the Green Party up and start Fracking - or just pay higher bills and put up with it.

The other bovine piece in the equation is having GREEN TAXES on the energy companies so one needs to REMOVE the Green taxes on the energy suppliers and move it to the GENERAL TAXATION.

- if Green taxes are added to Energy Bills this hurts the poorest considerably more than the wealthier people -- Green taxes should be borne as part of GENERAL TAXATION (not actually abolished - in the long run they are a good thing).

Anyway end of this particular issue.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Imagine that the cost of a new SAMSUNG S4 (Retail) is around 360 EUR...

I'd love to know where you're getting a Samsung S4 at that price!
 

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Imagine that the cost of a new SAMSUNG S4 (Retail) is around 360 EUR...

I'd love to know where you're getting a Samsung S4 at that price!

Hi there
Shanghai in one of the electronics shops in the old French Concession area (probably the most "touristy bit of Shanghai") I probably could have got one a lot cheaper if I'd have gone to one of the more "dubious" places - but I felt safe enough in the French Concession area of Shanghai.

You could also import from Hong Kong or even S.Korea -- import as "Educational material" to avoid paying EU import duty and VAT).

Cheers
jimbo
 

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    0.12 GB/s (120Mb/s)
Imagine that the cost of a new SAMSUNG S4 (Retail) is around 360 EUR...

I'd love to know where you're getting a Samsung S4 at that price!

Hi there
Shanghai in one of the electronics shops in the old French Concession area (probably the most "touristy bit of Shanghai") I probably could have got one a lot cheaper if I'd have gone to one of the more "dubious" places - but I felt safe enough in the French Concession area of Shanghai.

You could also import from Hong Kong or even S.Korea -- import as "Educational material" to avoid paying EU import duty and VAT).

Cheers
jimbo

Cheers jimbo!
 

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