Re: Is it worth it?
If the past is any indication, then the actual price will very depending on which version one needs to get:
- full retail
- education discounted
- upgrade (say from winXP for instance)
- OEM version
- Perhaps other possibilities, such as corporate, home, workstation/professional, server, etc...with different options (aka upgrade from server 2003 or new, etc...)
Each of those tend to very a bit, with I've seen in the past the upgrade version a bit over half the retail version, and an OEM version (if one can qualify for one) being less... I'm not sure what the current price is, but when winNT 4.0 full version was like $220 or something like that, the education discounted version I got was like $140, which was == upgrade. They didn't have the upgrade available at the discount then, however....
win2k and winXP I got from MSDN subscription I had back then, so never did bother really pricing them, though I think the full was like $200, but the upgrade, wasn't it about $100 or $120? Not remembering the upgrade for those 2 very well...
BTW, beyond looking at past prices, it would be hard for any of us to give the future cost, before the product has even left beta yet. Until Microsoft announces some stuff and has themself decided, we're not likely to know...
What is "worth it" is a subjective matter. I'll probably get it myself, but whether this means you might think it's worth it could be a diffeent story. Eventually, there might be software released that might require Vista to run... However the first service pack might be out before then, and I could well see some businesses waiting until SP1 before upgrading. Again looking at some of what has occured in the past, and what decisions some businesses have tended to make previous.