Windows 7 Pricing

[Ian]

Engadged have released a leaked Best Buy memo which appears to reveal the Windows 7 pricing structure and when free upgrades start:

Moving on, the note also makes clear that any PC sold with Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate between June 26th and the Windows 7 launch day (October 22nd) will be eligible for a free upgrade to Win7. Better still, the individual OSes also qualify for the update, and starting on June 26th, Best Buy will begin "pre-selling" the Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade ($49.99) and the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade ($99.99). Have a look at the full letter below, and if you've come here for advice, here's the best we've got: don't buy a PC at Best Buy until June 26th.

You can read the full story at Engadget here.

 

[spearace]

I'm happy if the Pro Upgrade costs $99! (£60). That is about the maximum I would pay for that version.

Will I need to install Vista first and then upgrade, or will it just ask me for my Vista CD Key to run a fresh W7 install?

 

[Thrax]

If it's anything like past upgrades, it should just require the key. You may even be able to use the parallel install trick to use the upgrade disc as a full DVD as you could with Vista.

 

[Ian]

I'm surprised that a home premium upgrade might be only $50, that's not bad at all for a quick upgrade.

 

[thedrunk]

Cant some one buy the full version of W7 or am I having to buy a vista then a upgrade?
Sorry I dont want vista touching my hardware, I built a 1500$ gamming rig with vista ready componetes and it fried after reboot............

 

[clifford_cooley]

Cant some one buy the full version of W7 or am I having to buy a vista then a upgrade?

If you want the full version - It will be out soon enough - You will have to wait just like the rest of the world

 

[BetaMan]

I'm surprised that a home premium upgrade might be only $50, that's not bad at all for a quick upgrade.

True, but after using Ultimate, I'm skeptical.

 

[olg207]

Im just happy aboout the general pricing, that is pretty good value for money. Price in GBP?

 

[Ian]

Price in GBP?

$100 is approx. £60
$50 is approx. £30

 

[olg207]

Thats an amazing price, id say these prices are more worth while, compared to vista anyway!

 

[sexytool]

First OS or software component M$ have released in 9 years that's worth buying.
Not that we had a choice on the others... hehe.

I'll be buying W7 i think, as long as i'm sure the network dropout bug is gone.
And the "Icons Dissapearing off the system tray" bug.
And the "Drivers not working properly and getting poor performance in some games" bug.
And that about sums it up.

 

[cdoublejj]

I hopethey don't make it so we have to wipe the drive and upgrade the rc. there is no way i'm gonna wipe now.

 

[Ian]

I hopethey don't make it so we have to wipe the drive and upgrade the rc. there is no way i'm gonna wipe now.

That's exactly what you'll have to do get a proper install You can use the easy transfer wizard to make things simple, or you can try to perform an upgrade install (but that really isn't recommended).

 

[cdoublejj]

yeah programs won't work without the old registry so what good does that do? i'd rather upgrade than reinstall and spend a moth down loading.

 

[sexytool]

I took me about 3 months to finally get XP SP2 how i liked it.
It's taken me about 1 to get W7 how i like it, since with the uncluttered task bar and it supporting windows hotkeys i don't need litestep as much.

Especially of note is being able to right click the explorer icon and open recently visited locations - even pin them down as favourites.

Very useful for my main PC. W7 has brought along alot of innovations that i like and i will feel that every penny spent will be worth it.

Even if the price floated around the 600 aussie dollar mark.
It has a few interface bugs and needs to be restarted after an update but in general i'm almost as happy with W7 as i was with Windows 2000.

XP just pales in comparison to either, but considering i didn't really have a choice if i wanted security updates and product support, i've used it since win2k offically had support withdrawn by MS.

 

[Thrax]

As a random aside, I used Windows Easy Transfer and some pre-staged drivers/installers to fully reformat and get my PC back to 100% functionality in 33 minutes last night.

Store my profile with WET, reformat the PC, reinstall Windows, load into the desktop. Install Flash, AIR, FFDShow, Firefox, Launchy, WinRAR, March 2009 JRE, March 2009 DX9 Redist, my G15 keyboard software and Foxit PDF reader. Install NVIDIA drivers, install AHCI drivers. Reboot once an done.

 

[sexytool]

no W7 windows update?

 

[Ian]

Store my profile with WET, reformat the PC, reinstall Windows, load into the desktop. Install Flash, AIR, FFDShow, Firefox, Launchy, WinRAR, March 2009 JRE, March 2009 DX9 Redist, my G15 keyboard software and Foxit PDF reader. Install NVIDIA drivers, install AHCI drivers. Reboot once an done.

Just done pretty much the exact same thing with my new hard drive and it took about the same amount of time. Windows Easy Transfer makes things so simple

Windows Update seemed to get everything it needed in one go, but I'm installing Office 2007 now which needs another reboot to get SP2 working. After just over an hour I'm back to using almost the exact same PC that I left

 

[thedrunk]

Ok so a upgrade price is for RC testers or if you have vista?

And im building a friends comp around the W7 and gaming, and I lost 4 screw drivers for the build soo he will jsut have ot wait till his ram arives.... mine should be around oct hopefully it will be out then

 

[cdoublejj]

i play a lot of games, some with out a cd cause of steam of course i like no cd patching most of my games if possible it's a pain to dig for cds.