also @ TechSpot: Onion Pi transforms Raspberry Pi into anonymous Wi-Fi hotspot

› ›

Munich sticks to old licenses to avoid Vista costs

By Justin Mann

On January 2, 2007, 8:04 PM

With the prohibitive costs of rolling out to a new operating system and Microsoft's draconian stipulations on licensing of old software, it's no surprise at all that some companies, and in fact, some Governments, are purchase used licenses for older vesions of Windows. Munich, in Germany, is purchasing 2000 copies of Windows 2000, and saving quite a bit of money in doing so. While the software itself hasn't changed a bit, the value goes down considerably, especially now that Vista is here:

That's not surprising: for instance, 218 licenses of Windows Office XP will cost €70,000 (£47,000) in Germany, but when used, the price drops to €32,000. 400 licenses of mySAP Business Suite will set you back at €1.5 million, but 400 second hand licenses will sell for €750.000.

For companies that don't rely on Microsoft as a support company and don't require the added functionality Vista brings, it's entirely logical for them to purchase older software. Interesting stuff.

No tags on this story

2 comments

User Comments: 2

Got something to say? Post a comment
  1. January 3, 2007 11:25 AM
    Mictlantecuhtli said:
    I remember when they were planning to switch to Linux. Apparently they won't reconsider that anymore.
    Reply
  2. January 4, 2007 1:54 PM
    ThomasNews said:
    I've recently suggested at my new job that we switch to OpenOffice; we use Microsoft Office 2000 currently. With 6500 or so staff we'd save €2.5 million or so assuming we received a 50% discount on Office 2003 @ current prices in Ireland.
    Reply

Recently commented stories

Add New Comment

TechSpot Members
Login or sign up for free,
it takes about 30 seconds.
You may also...
Get complete access to the TechSpot community. Join thousands of technology enthusiasts that contribute and share knowledge in our forum. Get a private inbox, upload your own photo gallery and more.
TechSpot on:

Most Popular

Trending Featured
More Trending Topics

Downloads and Drivers

Downloads   Drivers  

FeedDemon 4.5

LibreOffice Productivity Suite 4.0.4

Free File Camouflage 1.10

WinRAR 5.0 Beta 6

AIDA64 Extreme Edition 3.00.2500

More Downloads

From the Forums

How to limit the bandwidth for each computer on a wireless network? 12 replies on Storage and Networking

Banned by administrator from Windows 7 & 8 forums 32 replies on General Discussion

Quad 7970's How much Power? 16 replies on Audio and Video

PC Building Assistance 26 replies on Other Hardware

Scrambled PC Screen 14 replies on Audio and Video

More Recent Discussion

Subscribe to TechSpot

Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news.