Small Business Vista Support Deal Extended

Microsoft is extending an offer giving free support to small businesses that upgrade to Vista. The deal will now run to the end of the year, with support offered until 31 January.

The offer, marketed as Small Business Assurance, was originally set to expire at the end of September. It’s not clear why Microsoft is extending the deal; in the FAQ section on its website about the offer, it appears to have simply changed the date in the question about why there’s a time limit in the first place. The answer still doesn’t get particularly specific:

Windows Vista Small Business Assurance is designed to help our small business customers make the transition to Windows Vista today. As Windows XP availability begins to wind down, we want small businesses to know we’re behind them to provide special support during this transition period.

The scope of the deal remains unchanged: it’s still limited to US companies with a maximum of 25 PCs or 50 employees, and is still telephone support only.

Most significantly, the deal still only applies to the Business and Ultimate editions of Vista. As we reported last week, while three-quarters of home users have opted for the Premium edition, a surprising 57% of ‘low-end business PCs’ are now running the Home Basic edition.

From Microsoft’s perspective, these aren’t buyers who need to be talked into buying Vista; instead the key to increased revenue is making sure they opt for the more expensive flavors. Keeping the support deal exclusive to the upscale editions could theoretically sway the smallest of businesses.

The problem with this logic is that there’s a good chance businesses running Home Basic do so because they want to keep both hardware and software costs down, so simply don’t have the computing power to reap any benefits from the small business or Ultimate editions. And in any case, there’s still the risk that making free support seem such an important bonus simply draws attention to the problems buyers perceive they might get in running Vista.

Source:vista.blorge.com/2008/10/13/small-business-vista-support-deal-extended/