New software options from Dell
I was putting together a quote for a client today and saw that Dell computers have some new bundled software options.
1) New computers ordered with Windows XP Professional now include a free upgrade for adding Windows Vista Business next year. Windows XP Home purchasers can get an upgrade to Windows Vista Home Basic for $45. Confused about the differences between versions of Windows Vista? So is everyone else. Here’s Microsoft’s explanation. You’ll be hearing a LOT more about Vista over the next 6 months.
2) For years, Dell has bundled Adobe Acrobat Standard in with purchases of Microsoft Office. (Acrobat Standard has a retail price of about $300, and lets you create PDF documents, as opposed to the free Acrobat Reader.) I thought it was a little curious that Dell was still throwing in copies of Acrobat Standard 6.0, when Adobe is now selling version 8.0. I guess Dell must have bought a few million too many Acrobat CDs and was just waiting for their supply to run out. Because now Dell is offering “Nuance PDF Creator Pro 4″ instead of Adobe Acrobat. (As you can see from the screen shot, though, the Dell webmaster hasn’t completely caught up with the change — read the fine print under “Productivity Software.”)
Interestingly, there’s no such thing as Nuance PDF Creator Pro 4, at least not from Nuance directly. There’s Create! 4, Converter 4, and Converter Professional 4. Either they’ve come up with a new product just for Dell or Dell hasn’t got the nomenclature quite right yet.
Getting some additional software to create PDFs is nice, but next year it won’t be as big a deal. Office 2007 products will have the ability to save as PDF without the purchase of any Adobe or other products. However, because of some legal-licensing wrangling, Office 2007 users will have to download an extra file to make this work. What I’m not sure of yet is how fully featured this ability will be. Software from Nuance, Adobe, NitroPDF, and other vendors may have advantages in terms of editing and security that the free PDF creator tool in Office 2007 doesn’t.
Just minutes after I posted this, I got the following in an e-mail from Sony:
“Don’t wait until the new Microsoft Windows® Vistaâ„¢ operating system comes out to enjoy all the benefits and features of a new Sony VAIO® notebook. When you buy an eligible Sony notebook between 10/26/06 and 03/15/07, you’ll receive a free upgrade from Windows XP MCE and XP Professional to the equivalent versions of Windows Vista. Or, you can receive a 50% discount off the normal price for an upgrade from Windows XP Home Edition to either Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, in addition to upgrades for your applications and utilities.”
Perhaps today was the day that all the hardware manufacturers were allowed to make this announcement.
For more on the Vista upgrade program, read this AP story.