Windows 7 Pricing Confirmed: Good News

Microsoft has finally officially confirmed Windows 7 pricing.

If you plan to buy a new PC after tomorrow chances are that you will not need to pay for a Windows 7 Upgrade.

FREE Upgrades

Starting Friday June 26 if you buy a new PC you should be covered by a free Windows 7 upgrade program. If you buy a computer with Windows Vista Home Premium this weekend when Windows 7 comes out you’ll get Windows 7 Home Premium FREE. If you buy Vista Ultimate you will get 7 Ultimate and if you get Vista Business you’ll get 7 Professional. There is no free upgrades for buyers of Windows Vista Basic.

Half Price Deal

People in the US, Canada or Japan who already own a PC running XP or Vista will be able to upgrade to Windows 7 for half price as long as they pre-order. The offer begins Friday June 26 for a limited time only.

As I said, Windows 7 Home Premium, usually $120, will cost $50, and Windows 7 Professional, usually $200, will cost $100. 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."

Windows Product Management said that the half price deal will end when an undisclosed amount of licences are sold. "We have enough quantity," he said, adding that the magic number was "equivalent to a year of Vista sales volume at retail."

Europe

Europeans will not be getting any nice treatment from Microsoft due to the European Commissions banning of IE8 in Windows 7. Microsoft will be selling Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional but there is no way to upgrade from Windows Vista.

Europeans who purchase Windows 7 will be forced to do a clean install, and will have to migrate there data anyway they can. 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.

Official Prices

Here are the Windows 7 estimated retail prices, for the people who don't want to accept the upgrade offers.

Windows 7 Home Premium: $120 for upgrade; $200 for full version
Windows 7 Professional: $200 for upgrade; $300 for full version
Windows 7 Ultimate: $220 for upgrade; $320 for full version

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.