It’s time for an upgrade.. this upgrade will be for Windows Vista Business. Currently the company I work for is running Windows XP all around, which is fine, but the time has come for something newer and better (and there seems like no better time to get extra licenses, just in case). This means it’s time for a shopping comparison.

I compared pricing among several companies (online, retail-store locations, trusted current vendors). The not so extensive list included: Amazon.com, BestBuy, Buy.com, MVP Computers, Newegg.com, Shop.com, TigerDirect, and Wal*Mart.

Since I’m just trying to get the software at the best possible price, I went about my shopping based on the following requirement: Microsoft Vista Business, OEM or Full Version, license necessary but media optional. Here’s what I came up with:

(the prices above are only accurate as of 7/29/2007)

Now come the possible discounts. Of course, discounts! I found that Shop.com had one of the best deals I could find, with no apparent limitation to it. This provided me the best price by a large margin in comparison to other companies. The discount I used was to save $25 with a purchase of $250.00 or more! As you can see, the coupon has a nice quick and easy image as well. Now the question was whether I would be able to use the coupon code more than 1 time..

If used with purchases of $250 exact, this could give a 10% savings. In my case, I would order two copies at a time which came pretty close to the $250 mark.

$134.98 x 2 = $269.96
$269.96 - $25 = $244.96
$244.96 / 2 = $122.48

Though I found out a lot of useful information and some really odd things, I have decided to buy from Shop.com for the price. Since all of these are the same product, it makes the most sense at this point. Shop.com did have the oddest listing I found also. Buying one copy costs $134.98, buying it by a 30-pack cost $3,992.10 (which works out to $133.07 each), but the only 3-pack available cost over $1,000 (apparently someone is confusing OEM for retail).

Anyway… If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a question in the comments area and I will get back to you quickly.