Investment Opportunity of the Year
El Reg reports that Microsoft claims to be sticking to its timetable for shutting down XP.
No fewer than three people told me yesterday, “This means I have to buy that Mac Book Pro this year. They can’t be alone. I have several co-workers running Vista running on laptops, and even without the overhead of a VM, it’s slow.
Thus, an investing opportunity presents itself — buy a number of copies of XP this year, and then resell them at a profit. There are, of course, many risks in this strategy too obvious to name, but hey, money is risk.
If during the holiday shopping season, you see a run on copies of XP, take note.
Actually, money is supposed to be unrisky, albeit not the the risk-free rate of return 🙂
No, no, the risks aren’t about money. This risks are about value. Let’s suppose that I go buy N copies of Windows on December 29, planning to resell them at a premium after they’re not available. If Microsoft decides on December 30 that they’ll continue selling XP for another six months, then I have a problem. Worse, Microsoft might decide to resume XP production in March because of the success of my own secondary market.
Forgive me more pedantry, but I think you mean cash, not money. Money is risk. Cash is a way of reducing risk in money by lowering rate of return, which is exactly my point. Essentially hoarding a product that can be produced at small marginal cost, is a very risky strategy.