More Desktop Fun and Games
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Let's start counting the desktop pricing and support headaches coming your way this Christmas. Expect the budget battles to begin next month, and they will be brutal.
Microsoft, of course, hasn't released pricing for Vista, their upcoming OS upgrade. XP Professional now costs $300 at retail, although actual price tends to be lower and hidden inside computer hardware. With six versions of Vista clogging your order forms, pricing guesstimates run an increasing scale starting at $99 and topping out at least at $350. Since you're a corporate purchaser, you'll need the Vista Ultimate XP Pro replacement, which will be the most expensive.
Compare this to Apple's OS X Tiger version at $129.99 direct, which really is the upgrade price. Since Apple controls hardware and software distribution, you get software "free" to help ease the sting of Apple's traditionally overpriced hardware.
99 percent of corporate desktop managers wouldn't care about Apple pricing, but now we have the Dual Core Intel chips inside Apple iMac hardware. This causes new hardware lust among Mac faithful and disaffected Windows users alike, many of whom are angling for some justification.
Worse, this is a dual core justification need, since these users and managers want new Apple Intel hardware and an upgrade of their current traditional Intel desktop to a new system capable of running Microsoft Vista.
Throw in Boot Camp, the dual boot software to transform an Apple Intel box into a Windows Intel box. And users actually want to spend more money on Apple Intel hardware than other Intel hardware, then pay more money to replace a fairly elegant and secure OS with Windows XP. Crazy as that sounds, some of these eager users are the vice presidents setting your budget.
Let's see - everyone wants new hardware, either from Apple to get the Intel iMac or your current Intel supplier to run Vista. Add in both Boot Camp and another Windows license to run on your Intel iMac. And retrain your help desk personnel to cover all the new hardware and software.
Desktop budgets will grow as fast as the national debt magnified by the trade deficit. Line of business managers are already scheming for ways to make IT pay for their hardware cravings multiplied by their desired software redundancies.
Ladies and gentlemen, buy your headache relief medicine of choice early and in quantity.
ITworld.com
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