Pet Peeve #26

I didn’t get up early for shopping on Friday, but there were some really good deals (including percent off coupons) that helped buy even the basics. If you needed a big flat screen TV, a laptop, a GPS, or any other big ticket item then there were deals to be had. I talked to one guy who got to Best Buy slightly after 3AM (ouch).

I was looking at games (for the kids) and came across something that set me off a bit – enough to warrant a picture.

This is a sale tag from a local mass-market retailer that caught my eye for several reasons.

First, it isn’t a temporary sale tag (i.e. Friday-Saturday only) but a “price drop” which seems like a semi-permanent reduction.

Second (which should have been first) is that I don’t remember operating systems being sold at mass-market chains before, but I guess that isn’t too strange. Everyone should upgrade, right?!?

Third, this is the “Home Basic” version of Vista which lacks many of the coolest features of Vista including the “Aero” user interface, integrated search, etc. In fact I can’t think of a significant reason to go from Windows XP to Vista Home Basic – especially with Service Pack 3 for XP due out early next year (for stability an minor functionality enhancements).

Finally, the “elephant in the room” is obviously the math (see for yourself). I had heard about some of the math issues in Excel 2007 and early Pentium chips but …..