Re: Price of Professional Edition

I think $150 is a pretty good price, especially considering what is
*included* with it - all the extra RPMs, support, etc.  While your
comparison to WinXP isn't entirely unfair, I think you need to realize
that when you buy a Linux distro, you are typically getting almost all
the software you need to have a *complete* system, not just the OS. 
Windows XP just has, well.. Windows.  While Microsoft has begun to
include more application software with Windows, like Internet Explorer,
Outlook, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, their movie editing
software, etc, it's still nowhere even CLOSE to the *wealth* of
applications that come with a Linux distro like Red Hat 8.  So $150 is
the price of the OS, a TON of application software, support services,
printed manuals, RHN service, and some nice goodies, like stickers. 
Again, compare with Windows where you get.... Windows.  That's it.  So
it seems like a decent price to me.  Personally, I'm just glad they
dropped the price of Personal edition back down to $40.  I hope it pays
off for them in the number of boxed set sales they win because of it. 

Speaking of those manuals, though, those things are worth the price of
the Professional edition alone!  I have to admit that I had yet to read
a single word of Red Hat's included documentation until a month ago,
when I was setting up NFS for the first time (yeah, yeah, so I'm still
a newbie in some ways, give a guy a break!), and their documentation on
the subject was really excellent.  Then I started checking out more and
more of the manuals, and they were consistently realy great!  I was
also searching for a good RHCE book a month or two ago as well, having
been disappointed by the Sybex one I bought.  After sifting through the
other 5 official Red Hat books from RH 7.3, I've come to the conclusion
that while Red Hat seems very careful to not officially endorse any
particular publisher's material on the RHCE, some of the best study
material for the course is Red Hat's very own manuals!  Of course, I've
yet to *take* the exam, so I suppose I'm not completely qualified to
comment on the subject, but they seem to cover about the same material
as the Sybex book, only RH does a better and more thorough job of it.

 -jck


--- Ed <[email protected]> wrote:
> $150 for the Professional edition seems expensive the more I think
> about
> it.  I make sure to purchase from Red Hat because I want to support
> Linux, but these days I can buy a whole computer for $400.  Adding
> $150
> for the operating system is a 37% increase.  That's only $50 less
> than
> Win XP Pro.  
> 
> I would be curious about how much research Red Hat does in pricing
> this-- particularly because I would expect most of us to continue
> using
> 7.x server installs for the near future.
> 
> On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 17:33, Ted Clark wrote:
> > Thomas Dodd wrote:
> > 
> > > I just saw that Linux Central lists RHL-8 as shipping.
> > >
> > > <http://linuxcentral.com/catalog/index.php3?prod_code=D000-183>
> > > <http://linuxcentral.com/catalog/index.php3?prod_code=D000-184>
> > >
> > > Still no details as to what's in each though :( 
> > 
> > 
> > The price went down, so my best guess is that the personal edition 
> > consists of 6 discs (5 binary/source and 1 documentation), a
> getting 
> > started guide, and 30 days of RHN.
> > 
> > Oh, and those Red Hat stickers. :-)
> > 
> > TC
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Limbo-list mailing list
> > [email protected]
> > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/limbo-list
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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=====
"Outlook not so good."  Wow, that magic 8-ball knows everything!  I'll ask about Exchange Server next...

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