Microsoft announced Windows 7 prices. This post summarizes the most important facts. I also share my opinion at the end of the article. The video at the end of the article shows the interview about the announcement with Brad Brooks, Corporate VP for Windows Consumer Marketing.
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Upgrade prices
- Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99
- Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99
- Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99
Prices for the full license
- Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
- Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
- Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99
Important notes
- The full licenses of Home Premium is $40 cheaper, the upgrade license costs $10 less; the other prices didn't change
- The Windows 7 update option program starts on June 26 and ends January 31, 2010; if you buy Vista now, you will get the corresponding Windows 7 edition for free once it is released
- If you preorder Windows 7 (U.S., Canada and Japan only for now), you can save more than 50 percent; this offer is only available for a few days
- Windows 7 will be publicly available on October 22, 2009
- Members of the European Union won't be able to install Windows 7 as an upgrade; however they can buy an upgrade license
Comments
It is great that Microsoft didn't raise prices as many expected. I suppose that means that volume prices won't be changed either. They even reduced prices significantly for the most popular home edition. I guess, it has something to do with the Linux competition in the netbook market. I just don't understand why Windows 7 Pro doesn't cost $300 instead of $299.99. Does it really look cheaper to you this way with the all these 9s? I always feel that someone tries to cheat on me when I see such an odd price.
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The fact that we in the EU can't install Windows 7 as an upgrade is a bizarre consequence of the dispute between Microsoft and the European Commission. Usually, a clean install is the best way to deploy a new OS version. However, this might be different with Windows 7 considering that the difference to Vista is not that big. I am not sure if this means that User State Migration won't work with Windows 7 E. If so, then Europe will face a severe competitive disadvantage thanks to our European bureaucrats in Brussels. Check out my rant against the European Commission, if you haven't read it yet.
Listing it as $299.99 versus $300.00 is all part of psychological pricing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing
It’s an annoying practice that’s been around forever. I just mentally round up when I’m thinking about it.
Thanks for the link. It seems my brain works differently. I know about the psychological trick and so I feel annoyed. Sometimes I don’t buy at all then. But I guess it will be different with Windows 7. Not much of a choice here. 😉
Given that you can use USMT for many scenarios where inplace upgrades don’t work (XP->7, x32->x64), i’d guess that USMT will work with Windows 7.
Now, i’ve never used Update installs productively and always gone the route of migrating user profiles, but maybe there are people out there that will really miss the upgrade option – i sure won’t.
Internally, we will not deploy x32 versions anymore, and move all our laptops and desktops to an x64 OS. As such, upgrading from Vista to 7 was never an option for us.
Lukuas, I just wonder how USMT will behave if there is no Internet Explorer available on the new machine. I think the fact alone that we have two different Windows strains now will cause troubles of its own.
Yeah. This is probably going to be a support nightmare, with most US-released software never tested and validated on Windows 7 E editions. Which is going to be especially interesting a few years down the line, when calling support
“Yeah, $critical_business_app is broken since update $foo”
“Oh, you’re running Windows 7 E? Sorry, that’s not a supported platform, we can’t help you.”
The best thing is that Microsoft decided it would be best to include innocent countries in this bullshit like Switzerland on the list which get the EU-Edition of Windows 7, which is what i’m especially angry at.
We will see. I hope that we’ll be able to get our hands on Windows 7 E quickly, in order to run testing. We’ve spent a lot of testing our software on Windows 7, which was kinda wasted time.
I also think that many Vendors will choose to only support their software on Windows 7 E with Internet Explorer installed, which also means we’ll have every piece of software coming bundled with IE – just like in the old days.
Yeah, sorry for the rant. But this topic is really annoying the hell out of me.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know that other European countries are also affected by this nonsense.
And you are right, the support issue is probably the biggest problem. I still can’t believe that this is really happening. Obviously, this will cost a lot of money for European companies. I just hope that heads will roll in the EC after this mess.
Yeah. We will see. I’m still hoping that MS/EU may backpedal on this, but it’s extremely unlikely as of now.
You can preorder the W7 Home upgrade for 49 and the Pro upgrade for 99 right now on amazon. this is for a “very limited time”
Thanks Fred. I just checked what “very limited time” means: