Jeff, I think you’ve got a couple of things messed up here.
First of all, there’s a reason I (and many others) hate Microsoft and Windows, and it’s not just because Windows is a buggy bloated hyperglandular program loader with delusions. It’s also because, as you’re noting here, Microsoft’s business practices, from stealing patents (remember Stac?) to predatory pricing, suck. in a word.
You’re confusing yourself looking at or comparing 37 Signals and your pricing with theirs, though. When you buy a Plus plan over a Basic plan, you’re actually getting more stuff. It’s not “are you rich or not?” it’s “do you need two pounds of computing, or five?”
That’s not true of Microsoft. The code load of Windows that will use 48GB of memory doesn’t cost them more to produce — in fact, it’s the opposite, they’re having to spend money on code to make sure that the Standard Edition is limited. It’s purely a profit-making mechanism that’s only feasible for them because they still feel they have a monopoly.
As such, here’s a prediction: I’m willing to bet there’s no version that has all the features and all the limits at maximum. If there were, they would have a possibility of someone buying a zillion copies and expecting a bigger discount; without it, people must buy smaller numbers of multiple versions. I’m willing to bet there’s no inexpensive upgrade path either.
MS server software is for clueless small business guys and overweight government agencies ready to be price-raped. Run linux (or others) if you’re serious about servers
As somebody who’s spent the last week trying to work around the fact that a tech accidentally speced a server with Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition, which only uses SQL Server Express and not SQL Server Standard or Enterprise, I concur. I was just thinking about all the usability problems MS licensing causes and was wondering why they didn’t see this. I now understand why it’s done, but still think they risk loosing customers if they don’t quit let marketing screw up their products.
Jeff,
You are discussing about pricing policies of a monopoly provider, trying to find some rational. Unfortunately microsoft, being the monopoly, only want to maximize the profit using the “best” pricing scheme.
Look at any other unregulated monopolies and you will find same or worse pricing practices.
regarding comparison to FOSS, the issues are much more fundamental than pricing vs. free. the issues with FOSS is about the option to choose, to choose the solution, the origin and the quality. at the end, FOSS provides a richer solution albeit needing more tinkering.
It works the other way as well. Microsoft’s pricing of (the artificially limited) Windows Netbook edition means hardware manufactures are forced to limit the max spec of their hardware.
As many people have pointed out one of the benefits of FLOSS software is not having to worry about arbitrary limits, just technical ones.
Jeff, you could save everyone a lot of time if you followed Raymond Chen’s example and posted pre-emptive snarky comments. The following two gems could serve as a template:
Serves you right. Can you please stop giving Microsoft money!
Just don’t use Windows… Oops sorry, I forgot, you’re dumb!
I agree with other statements leave Microsoft behind and use linux for your server needs. Only reason to use a Windows Server is running ASP.NET and who would want to do that…
This type of stuff has been going on for a long time.
Windows XP home is a good example. Turns out that that it is fully capable of 1) joining a domain 2) running a RDP server (even includes the necessary dlls), 3) running IIS, and many other things.
These arbitrary limits, are however, usually easy to bypass. For example, I have, right now, a XP home machine that reports as XP Pro, can join domains, and even runs a RDP server with unlimited concurrent sessions (with a local user at the same time as a remote user). Total mods: a few registry settings, a reboot, and 1 modified dll.
If I were you, I would start testing my app on Mono. You can keep using your existing .NET development tools, but deploy and test onto a platform with less onerous licensing.
Back in the 80s DEC used to sell computers to universities at a heavy “educational discount”, and they differed from the non-discounted computers only in that they had fewer expansion slots, but…
But actually, they had the same number of expansion slots, with glue poured into the unused ones to inhibit their use. Doh!
The sysadmin at my university wanted both the expandability and the lower prices, so he first bought the crippled computers (saving thousands of dollars each), then ordered a $200 backplane replacement, which would arrive glue-free.
1.) It actually DOES cost Microsoft more money to support that much memory. I’m sure every server admin would appreciate it if your OS vendor that certified it to 48GB actually bought the ram and tested it?
buying that RAM(and hw to support it) didn’t just magically appear one day, and it certainly was more than $5 to code/validate it.
Microsoft could sell it at the same price, but only guarantee it to 32GB, after that “you’re on your own”… personally I would choose to pay the extra cash.
Tony your just plain wrong if it’s a 32 bit system fair enough past 4GB is trickery and does cause microsoft work but for 64 bit systems the address space for memory is much much larger it doesn’t matter if it’s 8 GB 64 GB or 2 TB as long as it can be addressed their is no difference. Do you really think they tested a 2TB single system.
"Already, I’m confused. Which one of these versions allows me to use all 48 GB of my server’s memory? … Just try to make sense of it all. I dare you. No, I double dog dare you! "
