PC World recently posted in interesting analysis of the sorta-announced-but-not-really pricing for Windows Vista. Specifically, this piece compares Vista prices to those for XP when it was announced in 2001. The numbers aren't really surprising: Vista is expensive, but so was XP.

The big news is that Vista comes in so many flavors and editions that pricing is difficult to compare directly. But the addition of an "Ultimate" edition, at a whopping $400 new, is considerably more than any version of XP has ever been.

I won't waste time regurgitating PC World's work, but I will express disappointment with Microsoft over not just the ridiculous prices, but also the nickel-and-diming us over additional features like fax support and Remote Desktop, a very useful tool that I've written about in the past. Even if you want to add something as simple as search to your OS, it'll cost an extra $40 over the $200 "Home Basic" edition, a version which is so stripped down I can't imagine anyone will actually pay for it, unless it comes preloaded on a new computer.

How much is appropriate to pay for an OS? Compared to the XP of old, most versions of Vista don't actually look that expensive. But the PC world is a different place now than it was five years ago. Free alternatives to Windows abound, and even MacOS doesn't cost this much. Does Microsoft really think people are going to willingly hand over an extra $100 for the luxury of having hard drive encryption, a standard feature on just about every other commercial OS on the planet? And don't get me started on the absurd "upgrade" pricing: Upgrading from XP to Vista Ultimate gets you a whopping $40 discount.

Now that the beast has a price tag on it, are you more or less interested in jumping to Vista?