By LG Nilsson
26 Jun, 2009 2:02 am
Microsoft has announced its pricing for Windows 7 and the most important piece of advice we can give is this, pre-order. If you’re going to be splashing out on a copy of Windows 7, the best deal will be to pre-order the upgrades, as Microsoft is going to be offering some very special pricing, albeit, this will differ from country to country.
In the US the pre order pricing will be $49.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium and $99.99 for Windows 7 Professional, both are upgrade versions which require you to have Windows Vista installed. The pre-order scheme starts as of tomorrow in the US, Canada and Japan and end on the 11th of July in the US and Canada, and on July the 5th in Japan.
For those in the UK, Germany and France, the pre-order scheme starts on the 15th of July and will end on the 14th of August. The UK pricing is £49.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium and £79.99 for Windows 7 Professional. We don’t have the pricing for the other countries as yet.
So what about those that don’t pre-order and Vista Ultimate users? Well, it’s going to be a lot more expensive for them to upgrade, that’s for sure and we can see Apple stealing away a fair few customers to OS X with the pricing Microsoft is planning for Windows 7.
Let’s break down the pricing first
- Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99
- Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99
- Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99
- Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
- Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
- Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99
Now that’s anything but cheap, especially for those that can’t take advantage of one of the upgrade packages. It seems like Microsoft is just getting greedier and greedier by every year that passes. By lowering its prices, Microsoft could easily sell more software and the open source community would most likely be even less of a threat, but instead it seems like Microsoft wants people to move away from using Windows by pricing it out of reach for most people.
If you’re buying a new computer from the 26th of July, then you’ll get a free upgrade to Windows 7 on Microsoft. You get a like for like upgrade, but it’s only good for Vista to Windows 7, so if you get a system with Windows XP, you won’t be getting a free upgrade to Windows 7.
It’s worth noting that the US is likely to have the lowest pricing for the new OS and Windows 7 will be more expensive in Europe. As previously stated, Windows 7 will launch on the 22nd of October, although some language versions won’t launch until the 31st of October.
Here’s a short video from Microsoft with some more details about the Windows 7 pricing and upgrade options and you can find more details here. The US pre-order page can be found here
Announcing the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program & Windows 7 Pricing
