Michael Brown wrote:
Okay, I stand corrected on that point. However, this begs the question of a reasonable errata/security fix update until EoL price. Since for support reasons (internal), a business is going to tend to stay frozen on a release for multiple years, WS is a pricier option than XP. If I am going to go at least two years between upgrades, I have the option of spending $179 once on XP or twice on WS in order to have access to errata and security updates.
RH needs to price this below M$ if they want to make a serious in road into the business environment.
It's still much cheaper than Solaris, or HP-UX. I still think they are more the target Red Hat is after. How does RHEL-WS compare with Solaris 8 or 9 feature wise? Cost wise?
In the same vein, $60 per year is fairly pricey for what they are no marketing as the throw away consumer version.
XP Home Upgrade = $98 <http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=20345068&loc=16801>
XP Home (full) = $190 <http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?loc=105&sku=20345074?
Both are single user liscenses. RHL9 has no per user liscense fees last I checked. I still think RHL9 is close to XP Pro though, at $190/$275 each.
So $40 for the RHL9 box. The $60 buys you nice access to RHN and soon priority download access. But for $40 you get a product on par with XP Pro. Updates are free, they are on ftp.redhat.com to download, get them through a Demo RHN account, or use some other tool, like yum.
What does it cost for priority access to Microsoft servers? Early access to new OS releases?
Any you could just download the woule OS instead of spending the $40 for the box set. Or buy the downloadable version on CD for a few bucks from someone else.
-Thomas
