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Why are past Windows editions so expensive?

Arnox

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I have a small hobby of collecting Windows keys and I have a retail (i.e. not OEM) key for every Windows OS up to XP Pro and a retail key for Windows 10 Education (Windows 10 Enterprise pretty much). So I still need retail keys for Vista, 7, and 8.1. Look online though and people want upwards of $40 just for Windows Vista Home Premium! Nobody even uses Vista anymore! What the hell is this?
 

Battousai

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Supply and demand, Microsoft does not sell those outdated products anymore, they have made it clear they intend for everyone to switch to Win 10 . Hence the lower availability of the products increases the demand for them which in turn increases the price.
 

Arnox

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Supply and demand, Microsoft does not sell those outdated products anymore, they have made it clear they intend for everyone to switch to Win 10 . Hence the lower availability of the products increases the demand for them which in turn increases the price.
Yeah but that's the thing. Demand for 7, I can probably see. 8.1, sure. Vista? Give me a break. I think the only reason to use Vista is nostalgia. Well... That and it actually looks the best IMO of all the Windows editions. I think there's also a couple little things that were removed in 7.
 

gaijinkaiju

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Supply and demand, Microsoft does not sell those outdated products anymore, they have made it clear they intend for everyone to switch to Win 10 . Hence the lower availability of the products increases the demand for them which in turn increases the price.
Even still why would you willingly buy and use vista. My experience with it was miserable at best, but they may have been in-part due to hardware issues too

Speaking of windows editions, was there ever a 9 or did they just skip it and go straight to 10?
 

Arnox

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Even still why would you willingly buy and use vista. My experience with it was miserable at best, but they may have been in-part due to hardware issues too

Speaking of windows editions, was there ever a 9 or did they just skip it and go straight to 10?
There was not. The reason for this is actually due to legacy concerns. Sometimes, lazy programmers would write an installer to where, when detecting the OS during the program install, it would just look for "Windows 9" instead of explicitly Windows 95 or 98. Hence, they just went straight to 10.

As to Vista, yeah, it did suck a lot at first, but they did at least fix it, so it's actually very passable now. Problem was, by the time it was all fixed, Windows 7 was out the door and it just made Vista almost entirely redundant.
 

Battousai

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Yeah but that's the thing. Demand for 7, I can probably see. 8.1, sure. Vista? Give me a break. I think the only reason to use Vista is nostalgia. Well... That and it actually looks the best IMO of all the Windows editions. I think there's also a couple little things that were removed in 7.
Well that's a whole other issue they can use to increase the price right there, nostalgia. If people are that eager to buy Windows Vista for old times sake or something of the sort, they might be willing to pay higher prices. Anyone selling could try a high price first and see if someone buys it, there are probably a few people who would definitely do it.
 
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