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LISA NAPOLI: If all you want for Christmas is the new operating system from Microsoft, you’re out of luck. Jason Paur looks at what the house of Gates is doing to salvage the season.
JASON PAUR: With the new Vista operating system missing the holiday season, both Microsoft and its partners are worried about the loss of sales.
The company hopes that incentives for consumers such as a free upgrade to Vista when it does arrive will encourage sales when people’s checkbooks are open at the end of the year.
But analyst Joe Wilcox of Jupiter Research says, that might be a risk for the PC makers.
JOE WILCOX: One way to look at it is if you offer an incentive, people might just choose not to buy at all, might push that sale into the next quarter and then if they buy a big screen TV or whatever during the holidays they might not buy at all.
Wilcox says PC makers may just see the holidays as a lost opportunity.
Instead, they might just count on the customers who will be buying a new computer regardless of whether or not it has the new operating system.
In Seattle, I’m Jason Paur for Marketplace.