We finally received the official word on Windows 7 pricing. For the most part, people itching to upgrade immediately or buy a new Win 7 machine are in luck.
Odds are, you won’t pay the official prices, so I’m telling you the launch specials first. If you play your cards right, you’ll either get it as a free upgrade for buying a PC, or you’ll pay $US50 for Win 7 Home Premium and $US100 for Win 7 Professional.
Free Upgrades
If you buy a PC starting Friday, June 26th, it should be covered under a free upgrade plan. (I say “should” because it depends on the manufacturer, but most of them are jumping on this with both feet.) Say you buy a computer with Vista Home Premium this weekend; you get a Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade on October 22, free. If you buy Vista Business, you’ll get Win 7 Professional, and if you buy Vista Ultimate, you’ll get Win 7 Ultimate. There’s no upgrade path for Home Basic (the reason is below) but as I understand it, the number of systems sold at retail with Home Basic on it are in the low single digits.
That should take care of most PC buyers.
The Half-Price Pre-Order Deal
People in the US, Canada or Japan who already own a PC running XP or Vista will be able to pre-order the upgrade disc at around half the price that they’ll eventually sell for. The pre-order deal also starts Friday, June 26th, and will run for a limited time.
As I said, Windows 7 Home Premium, usually $US120, will cost $US50, and Windows 7 Professional, usually $US200, will cost $US100. Windows 7 Ultimate is not part of this discount plan, but it might get its own incentive plan later on. (You could technically buy Home Premium upgrade, then pay to convert it to Ultimate, saving at least a little cash.) The pre-order deal will be visible at store.microsoft.com and at “most major retailers.”
What’s this about a limited time? Mike Ybarra, general manager of Windows Product Management, told me that the pre-order deal will go away when a certain undisclosed number of licenses is sold. “We have enough quantity,” he said, adding that the magic number was “equivalent to a year of Vista sales volume at retail.” (Ironically, those of you who want this upgrade offer to last have to hope that the Mojave Experiment worked, at least a little.) Some Microsoft materials suggest that July 11th might be the cutoff for the deal, but from what I understand, that’s an estimate—this is based on supply. Regardless, if you want Windows 7, pre-order the damn thing come Friday.
European Hijinks
Europe is getting kinda screwed in this deal, because of the European Commission’s banning of IE8 from any Windows installer media. Basically, starting July 15th in France, Germany and the UK, Microsoft will be selling full versions of Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional at the discounted upgrade prices, but that means there’s no way to upgrade directly from Vista.
Euros who buy Win 7 will be forced to perform a clean install, and migrate their data and apps over any way they know how. The logic is that, while the Windows team can do a clean install without IE8, there’s not enough quality assurance on what an upgrade install would be like without IE8, with assorted HTML rendering apps co-existing in the OS already. Could be messy, says Ybarra. “We don’t want to break anyone else’s software, we don’t want to break our own software, and we don’t want the customer on the phone with support.” That funky deal is supposed to run through December.
The Official Prices
So, now that we got the immediate realities out of the way, here are the “estimated retail prices” that we’ll eventually see in stores, for the people who aren’t yet moving on the upgrade offers:
Windows 7 Home Premium: $US120 for upgrade; $US200 for full version
Windows 7 Professional: $US200 for upgrade; $US300 for full version
Windows 7 Ultimate: $US220 for upgrade; $US320 for full version
To be clear, the term “upgrade” just means you already own and run a version of Windows on the PC you’re upgrading. It’s still a complete set of bits that you can clean install and even set up for dual booting. The “full” version is mostly for people who are building their own systems.
You may remember that there are other Win 7 SKUs such as Home Basic and Starter. Windows 7 Home Basic is not available in the United States or most of Europe though, along with residents of Burkina Faso and Vanuatu, Montenegrans will be able to buy it.
Windows 7 Starter will be offered to Dell, HP, Asus and other manufacturers to stick on netbooks. Just in case you were concerned, Windows XP will also be available, distributed and supported for 12 months after Windows 7 launches though limited to these same “small notebook PCs.” I think Microsoft—and quite a few non-vested-interests—are expecting netbooks to ditch XP for Win 7 pretty fast.
When You Actually Get It
As we’ve previously reported, October 22 is the day when almost everybody gets Windows 7. Anyone, anywhere in the world, in 35 different languages, will be able to buy a Windows 7 PC on October 22. The actual box of software will be available in most countries, covering 14 languages, on the 22nd, with the other 21 languages getting their retail boxes by October 31. It’s a damn fast rollout, especially given all of the terrain it’s going to cover.
Stay tuned, because we’re going to post more details on this pre-order business soon. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. Is this a good deal? Is it crap? And most importantly, are you going to pony up cash on Friday? [Windows Blog]
With Vista being such a piece of garbage Microsoft should compensate by giving Windows7 free as a replacement.There are Lemon Laws for motor vehicles Why not for computer operating systems, I am sick and tired of fixing all the problems Vista has created.
HERE HERE! Luckily i still have an XP machine i can run all the software that wont run on this Vista rubbish. What a dope i was for forking out good dollars for a piece of beta software - and not a good beta either!
I for one will be staying with Vista for at least a while; I don't want to pay premium price to be practically just a tester. Same thing happened when Vista came out; for a while it was unstable and difficult to use (so I waited), and when SP1 was released, I installed the x64 version on my machine, and it has been stable for 6 months (only turns off to install updates).
While Windows 7 is quite impressive, it's still simply "Vista++". All of the code is still very similar, with some extra content and optimization.
I'll wait and see what happens.
I know at least 4 people who are playing with the RC and they love it, no bugs, very stable and very fast, even on older hardware.
So much more than just Vista++.
Any deals for the testers out there with the Release Candidate already installed and running? I wouldn't mind a free copy for submitting feedback ;)
I am reading this post on gizmodo australia. umm rather than just quoting US stuff what about something for australia regarding win7?
There is: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/06/aussie-windows-7-pricing-announced/
Aussie pricing didn't come through at the same time as the US, it came through later.
I would love some info on running the Release Candidate and how I go about running the Full Version once it launches, if anyone has a website with details. I've heard about RC shutting down after a certain point, and I'm skipping Blista and going straight to 7. Not that there's anything wrong with XP, just won't play the next gen games anymore. Don't want this hardware going to waste.
Deals for beta testers... Todd don't hold you breath mate, this is Microsoft.
It's also alleged (in some press) that you can add another $50 Aus after conversion from US dollars to the full version price it will cost in Australia. Microsoft also appear to be discrimating against Aussies by not offering the pre-order deal to Australians (as of this date). I rang Microsoft Australia complaints section and asked why. The reply was predictable which boiled down to - "I cannot comment on Microsoft's policies" - Perhaps if more people complain and/or the press give it some air on how Australia gets shorted, they may change what appears to be at this stage a 'no pre-order for Australians Policy'.
Get a Mac instead, micro$oft is trying to play catch up with apple OSX. otherwise build yourself a hackingtosh and install OSX
i am so ppppp off that we cant preorder it in australia wake up microsoft
Don't know why most people criticise Vista. Maybe because some of the programs don't work well because the program writers made no effort to re-write or update them for the Vista OS. I have honestly; found Vista to be quite stable and more secure (strictly comparing to Windows XP). That itself is a big reason for most people who use, internet, word processing, music and games (make sure that the games you play and like are compatible with Vista ;-) ) to move away from Windows XP to Vista. Also, the number of systems (Windows XP) that have been infected with Malware and other rouge software because of normal moderate internet browsing and occasional downloads is far greater than the Vista systems. In fact the only Vista systems that I have seen infected are with Ad-ware that users have voluntarily or unknowingly installed. It is quite understandable the frustration of the users trying to work with Vista especially when it is quite different from Windows XP. There is a learning curve with Vista when you are moving from Windows XP. I find most of the users are frustrated with Vista because of this reason, where they cannot accomplish a simple task of attaching a Vista machine to a Wireless Network, or cannot easily share files, because Network Discovery is turned off and the user account is without a password. Like I said there is a learning curve. To be trash talking about an OS that is far secure and stable than Windows XP is quite unreasonable. I work as an IT Tech for a living.
In Australia we are in some case paying 100% more than US price, I don't want to go and buy a mac or another PC mine is more than cable of running Windows 7.
Australia USA
* Home Premium $199 $119
* Professional $399 $199
* Ultimate $429 $219
Microsoft blame the retailers.