One of the big news items of yesterday was an Associated Press article which did an extremely barebones comparison of the price of Windows Vista vs Windows 95. For only having 114 words, it had a very small inaccuracy that make the comparison WAY off base.
I'll quote the article in its entirety, then point out the problems.
Some numbers behind Microsoft Corp.'s evolution from Windows 95 to this month's consumer release of Windows Vista:
Common retail price for Windows 95: $89.95. For Vista: Depends on user configuration. Upgrading a PC from Windows XP would cost as little as $99 for Vista Home Basic edition, up to $259 for Vista Ultimate. Suggested retail prices for those versions range from $199 to $399.
Number of lines of code in Windows 95: 11.2 million. In Vista: 50 million is a commonly cited figure, but Microsoft refuses to confirm that officially.
Approximate number of Windows 95 programmers: 200. For Vista: More than 2,000, according to one Microsoft developer's blog, but Microsoft also won't confirm that.
First off, Windows 95 Full retailed for $209, while the Upgrade version retailed for $109. I don't know where they got their numbers from, but I got mine from the original press releases. $20 is a big difference if a consumer is going to compare the upgrade price of 95 to the upgrade price of Vista. Second, why would you mention the full version prices if you didn't mention them for Windows 95?
Maybe it's because the AP doesn't want Vista to sell well, as I suggested a couple days ago. They're more interested in the Steve Jobs circle-jerk. Well, instead of half-assed reporting like the Associated Press, I've gone the extra mile for Windows consumers out there, and put together an in-depth comparison of the cost of Windows over the last two decades. I've been working on it for about a month now, and I hope to have the first part online by this evening.
So stay tuned :). It will change the way you think about Windows.
(PS: I'm pretty sure more than 2,000 developers worked on Vista, since that's only 3% of their workforce... but who am I to split hairs?)