Upgrading to Vista will increase PC components costs with 20 percent
Sunday, December 17th, 2006Consumers know that the price to upgrade from Windows Xp to Windows Vista Business is 199 dollars (for software only), but maybe they don’t know that Vista also requires a hardware upgrade.
According to iSuppli, an average desktop PC that runs Windows Xp contains components worth a little over 500 dollars. For an average PC that runs Vista, the cost will raise to a little over 600 dollars, which means 20% cost increase. Because this is the cost of components and not the final price of the PC, users will pay significantly more than 600 dollars to acquire a Vista-ready system.
A big part of the additional cost is the memory. Although Microsoft stated that 512 Dram memory will be enough to run Vista, iSuppli thinks that at least 1Gb will be necessary to run it in optimal conditions. That means doubling the memory costs, according to iSuppli.
There are a series of hard choices to be made before migrating to Windows Vista, according to iSuppli. Acquiring a new computer with pre-installed Vista might solve the headaches, justifying the price of a new computer.