Hidden Fees Discovered For "Free" Windows 7 Upgrade 406
An anonymous reader writes 'Thousands of recent computer purchasers who are expecting to receive free upgrades to Windows 7 when it is released on October 22 may be surprised to learn that some big computer makers are quietly tacking on hefty processing fees as high as $17 to mail out those disks to some buyers.' How about they process $0 to click a link and download a file?
Is this news? (Score:4, Informative)
I am sure I read when they announced that the free upgrade doesn't include shipping. Also the Vista upgrade, I got with my laptop didn't include shipping. Maybe the manufacturers and sales reps aren't being clear, I don't know. I do know when I was talking to my sister about free upgrade when she purchased her new computer, I definitely told her she would need to pay the shipping.
Re:hidden? (Score:3, Informative)
i never quite understood how fees can be hidden... do they sneak into your apartment and take the CA$H hidden by the XYZ fairy under your pillow, or something?
Generally if it wasn't mentioned in the literature provided or it was only in the small print, then its is considered 'hidden' since you had to look for it to find out.
Digital Dist is NOT FREE! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't get in today's age of informed individuals how people still think digital distribution is "free". Maybe your personal site is dirt cheap, but larger companies that use a ton of bandwidth pay a fortune for that bandwidth and the management and guarantees that go along with it. I work for a small company that doesn't have a large website and we do nothing like digital dist, but our bandwidth still costs over $2m per year. I agree downloads vs sending disks would be cheaper, but saying it would be free is just plain ignorant.
Re:hidden? (Score:3, Informative)
Or if the retailer says "Qualifies for a FREE upgrade to Windows 7", that's a hidden fee. The cost is $0 and if you have sales tax, the tax is on $0 (as opposed to a gift like on The Price Is Right where the receiving party is responsible for sales taxes and/or licenses).
Strange I Wasn't Charged Any Fees (Score:4, Informative)
Re:similar to Snow Leopard (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Digital Dist is NOT FREE! (Score:2, Informative)
Bandwidth is still relatively cheap. 1TB costs from $35-80 depending on the service provider, higher requirements come with cheaper rates. Even "cloud" services are pretty cheap, Amazon was about $170-250 for 1TB that last time I looked. If your bill really is $2,000,000 a year, you should investigate your network as stop employess from running torrents 24/7.
Re:$0 to click and download a file (Score:1, Informative)
Bullshit. THis is NOT 1990.
Put them on Amazon S3. One download 7 GB is between 70 cents and 1,40 usd if i have gb prices right in memory.
There are also other offers.
NO infrastructure is needed - all can be rented for very reasonable per gb prices.
Re:Digital distribution has been needed for a whil (Score:4, Informative)
and it's not like they don't have the resources in place already. my company has an agreement with MS that allowed me to purchase - legaly - a copy of office 2007 enterprise for R$ 26.00 ( that's $ 15.00 american bucks), download an instalable .EXE and run it. it's now working under wine on my personal notebook.
at the company, for business use, we have access to ALL microsoft software products free. all available for download as instalable .MSI, .EXE or burnable .ISO
this handling fees, this is plain old greed IMHO.
one more way that shows how apple handles this much better. you can buy snow leopard upgrade for a few bucks, then install it on top of tiger. tiger users are not eligible for the cheap upgrade, only leopard users are. but apple didn't put any verification on the upgrade. they just trust tiger users will do the right thing and buy the full package. wanna bet it's paying off ?
PULL MY HAIR cause $17 for a disk = SCREWED (Score:1, Informative)
To "Digital Dist is NOT FREE", $17 for 24Gb (3GB) is cellphone-data pricing. It's "I laid my OC3 down out of continuous clear rubies and emeralds"-pricing. It's I-can-screw-the-customer-and-get-away-with-it pricing.
What's going on here is you have stupid evil companies that are used to making $20 every time a customer needs a CD, and are merrily continuing their extortion.
That being said, my brother requested his windows 7 upgrade from Acer, and they did it for free. Props to Acer.
Re:similar to Snow Leopard (Score:1, Informative)
I don't know about Snow Leopard, but in the past Apple certainly has described these updates as "Free*" (plus shipping and handling).
Re:$0 to click and download a file (Score:5, Informative)
See here for costs on the current generation network:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html [thinkbroadband.com]
At absolute best (which no ISP ever manages to achieve), it costs them 52p per gigabyte of data, so around £1.56 to allow you to download Windows 7. Realistically, if you check somewhere like PlusNet their out of allowance charges are £1.74 per 2gb of data, so around £2.61 to download Windows 7 for an end user at retail.
Oh and er, a 1st class stamp in the UK costs only 36p, envelopes cost next to nothing in bulk, so around 40p so far, call it 50p once you've printed the labels and posted and that's ignoring Royal Mail's bulk discounts and such.
21cn costs are here, but this isn't rolled out to most of the UK:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html [thinkbroadband.com]
However, it's still well over the 36p price.
The reason you don't know the first thing about bandwidth costs is because you probably use consumer ADSL or similar and don't actually use that much bandwidth. If you do then you're likely being subsidised as that's how many ISPs work, low end users don't use anywhere near their bandwidth limits so are paying to subsidise other users.
Still, at the end of the day my point stands, it's much cheaper to just post the discs first class than it is to setup an infrastructure (which costs on top of the bandwidth costs) for downloading. The above of course is just the costs for the consumer also, chances are you'll have your own bandwidth charges on top at the server side. If you provide a download then, the consumer may be paying 3 to 5 times as much as if you post it and charge them for the stamp and envelope etc.
Re:Digital distribution has been needed for a whil (Score:4, Informative)
Can't you just put $25 from your checking account in savings and use the credit card to buy groceries? I hate the MIR dance as much as anyone does, but you win if you get the rebate.
Re:Digital distribution has been needed for a whil (Score:4, Informative)
That's actually how MS does its student offers, at least in the UK. They sell you a licence key for £30, disks for about £10 if you want them, and give you a link to a .iso file or an installer.
Re:Digital distribution has been needed for a whil (Score:2, Informative)
>>>Can't you just put $25 from your checking account in savings and use the credit card to buy groceries?
Well obviously that's what I have to do, but by using their $25 prepaid card instead of my own private card, I lose $1.25 in cashback rebates. Not a big deal but as you said - it's annoying.
Re:Digital distribution has been needed for a whil (Score:5, Informative)
Re:similar to Snow Leopard (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it is DEFINITELY implied. Windows 7 is a Microsoft product, and probably a registered (TM) of Microsoft Corporation or one of its subsidiaries.
It isn't Pella Windows 7, it is Microsoft Windows 7 (TM).
Re:Digital distribution has been needed for a whil (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)