maybe, and just maybe because the Retail (non upgrade) version of windows is way out of reach for an average consumer. to get a copy of Win 8 and qualify for the quoted $40 upgrade, one would still need to shell out $200~$280 for a copy of windows 7. that's a whopping $250~$300 price tag for just one computer license. consider XP is no longer on the market for sale. I would say realistically, $250~$300 is more in line with what would pay for a new copy. and I wonder why more and more people are ditching PC altogether for a Macbook pro, which btw is selling like hotcakes. a stand alone version of the OS along is like what $25~$50 (if I can recall), and that's not even for the upgrade. I guess if one really wants, you can go hunt down an old copy of XP from some relative somewhere and install it on your machine, and purchase the upgrade, and install the upgrade and, but then everytime you reinstall your PC you'll have to go through the same process. see the problem there.
Whoever is paying $200-300 for win 7 is a sucker. You can get oem or during sales for about $100-120 here in the US.
By purchasing your MB pro, you already given Apple plenty of $$ from their markup on hardware.
I can easily argue that for the price different in hardware, I get a sturdier, better material, better designed hardware. and for the record, no one is talking about OEM copies of windows. you can't migrate the OS from one machine to another with OEM copies, hence why OEM is much cheaper. I was talking about a stand alone Retail windows. and if there is one for $100 or cheaper, please by all means point it out to all of us and problem will be solved.