Why is windows 8 so expensive?

None of what you said is relevant though (in reply to glen8). If you walk into a store today and want to upgrade your 3 year old laptop to Windows 8 you're going to pay ~£100 for it. To do the same for your 3 year old Mac is free.

It's absolutely right that people question this. Saying that Mac OS would probably cost more if they licensed it, or that Windows is probably the cheapest OS doesn't change the reality of the situation.

It will be interesting to see what happens to tablet customers when the next Windows release comes out, will this be a paid update or free like every other tablet OS?

It's in Microsofts interest to have as many people on the latest version of Windows as possible, to help drive the development of applications forward. Putting price barriers in the way is very short sighted.
 
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They won't take an axe to the Windows prices on a whim, even for Windows RT. It's just bad business. They'll pile on more "value add" and extend support long before they resort to the alternative. You can already see this in action with the bundling of Office in certain products.

Upgrade licenses is a slightly different story. You'd think they jump at the chance to convert some of those XP boxes and tempt as many people as possible to upgrade for a small fee. It's currently £79 to upgrade, which is not a very tempting price point for your average Joe if you ask me. £25 on the other hand is well within 'worth a punt' territory.
 
i don't think the "average joe" is put off by price. most won't even know or care what version of windows is running on that laptop or OEM pc they've bought from purple shirt land. windows 8 could be free and i honestly don't know a single person who'd be interested in installing themselves. if i offered to do it for them perhaps i could convince one or 2 but that's about it.

i think people here are blinkered because they are extremely pc/windows literate and maybe surrounded by those types of people as well. we really aren't your "average joe".
 
People would upgrade if it didn't cost a silly amount, the new version introduced new features that people wanted, and probably most importantly - Microsoft managed to make upgrades not be a complete pain in the rear. Dumping everything into a Windows.old folder and saying "well you're just going to have to reinstall your applications" isn't an upgrade.

Apple really put them to shame in this area.
 
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