Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 Upgrade Pricing

So as we all know, Microsoft announced the pricing details for Windows 7 yesterday, and some people are already waving the Snow Leopard 29.99 upgrade price around.

ZDNet Blogger Ed Bott had taken the time to read the fine print on the Apple upgrade offer and has come to an interesting conclusion.  Windows 7 is CHEAPER than Snow Leopard for the majority of the market.

You see, you can only actually get Snow Leopard for that 29.99 price if you’ve bought an Intel based Mac AFTER October 2007.  Anything before that will cost you $169 and anything before 2006, well you’re SOL, no upgrade for you.  Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it?  At the end of the day the Microsoft offer is actually pretty darn good, at least it’s cheaper than Vista right?

Here’s a chart Ed made that breaks things down nicely:

PC/Mac purchase date

Windows 7 upgrade cost

Snow Leopard upgrade cost
October 2001 – Jan 2006 $50 – $120 Not supported
Jan 2006 – Sep 2007 $50 – $120 $169 (Intel only)
Oct 2007 – Jun 2009 $50 – $120 $29
Jun 2009 or later $0 $0

Full Story: Ed Bott’s ZDNet Blog

Posted by: Chris123NT

Published on: June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 AM

Tagged with , , ,

Posted in General, Windows 7

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2 Responses to 'Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 Upgrade Pricing'

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  1. June 29, 2009 at 10:50 am

    Win7Nightmares:

    First, Bott is incorrect; full price for OS X Snow Leopqrd will be $129, NOT $169, so a full version of Snow Leopard will cost only $9 more than a normal upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium.

    But even Bott’s story doesn’t tell the whole story. Regardless of cost, there has never been a release of OS X that required a user to substantially upgrade older hardware to support the newer features (i.e. Aero). Microsoft has also had the luxury of ONLY developing for the Intel platform through the entire sordid history of Windows; Apple stopping development for the old PowerPC-based Macs is not surprising and most of those user will do just fine staying on Leopard (especially since, as Apple admits, Snow Leopard is not substantially different than Leopard, unlike the changes made between Tiger and Leopard. Likewise, unless a user of a Mac purchased in 2006-007 is still on Tiger (hopefully not) they will not lose too much by not upgrading and simply sticking with Leopard.

    Also, considering that OS X is more comparable to Windows 7 Ultimate, NOT Home Premium or Professional, comparing upgrade costs like this is unfair, since upgrading to Ultimate will cost $220, with a full version costing $320 (the $129 OS X is a full version). If you compare the feature set of OS X to Home Premium or Professional you’d find that people would need to add a bunch of software to match the functionality.

    Besides, many users will be thrilled to spend $129 on a well tested, stable platform like OS X where the beta testing process hasn’t been ompromised like the Windows 7 beta process has been.

  2. July 2, 2009 at 2:03 am

    Win7Nightmares:

    Just to clarify… the $169 prie quoted by Ed Bott is for the Snow Leopard Box Set, which includes Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09 (whih is usuay sold for $70 by itself).

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