I've *never* understood the "Upgrade" crap from Microsoft anyway. As far as
I can tell, the upgrade and non-upgrade versions don't differ in price (at
least I've never seen a difference with XP that I can remember)
On the contrary, the price difference is considerable.
What may be confusing you is that you are possible comparing the price
of an Upgrade version with an OEM version rather than with a Full
Retail version. That difference is usually slight.
However the OEM version comes with three disadvantages:
1. Its license ties it permanently to the first computer it's
installed on. It can never legally be moved to another computer, sold,
or given away. That means that if the computer it's installed on dies,
the license to use XP dies with it.
2. It can only do a clean installation, not an upgrade.
3. Microsoft provides no support for OEM versions. You can't call them
with a problem, but instead have to get any needed support from your
OEM; that support may range anywhere between good and non-existent. Or
you can get support elsewhere, such as in these newsgroups.
It's that first disadvantage that, as far as I'm concerned, makes an
OEM version a terrible deal. I almost always recommend the Upgrade
version instead.
but the
upgrade version is much more of a pain to install.
Why not just friggin sell the OS, preferably ONE version...and be done with
it?
I think giving a discount to previous Windows users makes sense and is
a good thing to do. But I wish there were no differentiation between
Retail and OEM versions. The public generally doesn't understand the
differences and are often very disappointed and upset to find out the
disadvantages after the fact.