too high! what about $25, $25, $25 and a handwritten apology by bill gates never to release another product like bob.

I'm so confused by the zillion editions now. It just makes no sense whatsoever. There should only be two versions, Windows 7 and Windows 7 Server (multiple server versions differing only in max number of clients allowed is ok though). Upgrade versions for both too. That should be it. It should also be priced at about a maximum of $150.
The same goes for Office. Office should only come in one flavour with all the apps and should be max $100.

There hasn't been just 2 eidtions of windows for a long time =p even the fan boy lovers xp came in many flavors of the month. Although granted is was less.

im confused about all these upgrades and editions. if i want a copy of windows 7 that will erase my harddrive and give me a clean fresh start what should i buy. right now i have xp media center thats been upgraded to vista home premium. i want a version. that'll let me reformat w/o requiring me to install the previous OS's to install it.

heh....another guy who just wants to get something for nothing

Don't we all?
Upgrading to ultimate will be damned expensive.

So it will definitely be more money to buy low and upgrade than to just start off at the higher level. While I suppose that's fair, it will leave a bad taste in consumer's mouths when they have to ask if the features warrant the price. Moving from Starter Edition to a real version might be, but Ultimate doesn't have enough benefit over Home Premium to justify $140 for most people, since they already have Win7 at that point.

@duckmanx88: you can do a fresh install with an upgrade. All it will do is ask you to insert the CD for the version you're upgrading from during the install.

who needs ultimate? home premium should be enough and if not get the business edition.

Get the upgrade version you want. Boot your existing windows up. Insert CD. Click Upgrade. You system will reboot, and you will come to a screen with two options, Upgrade and Custom. Select Custom. Then format your drive, and boom, you have a clean install. Vista and 7 do not ask for a previous version disk like XP did. They verify that when you go to activate, not before you install. You can also do the same with a full version, but why pay more.

@FlayerSlayer... The anytime upgrade is intended for people to buy one version then upgrade to a higher one. It is intended for those who buy a PC that already has windows 7 installed and need a higher version. Take for example notebooks. Most will come with Home Premium. Say you find one that has exactly the hardware you want, with HomeP, but you need Pro to connect to a domain at work. Instead of paying the full Upgrade Price for Pro ($199), you can pay 1/2 that since Home P is already on the machine. This is usually the cheaper route since most manufacturers charge a premium to custom build a machine or you are stuck with the hardware they specify for that edition.

Hey heres an idea, why don't the two of you get together and start your own software company. After all, writing an OS is so cheap and easy, MS is obviously just full of retards.

So is the upgrade more expensive than the OEM price? By the way what is the OEM Price and what price is Dell and the other big OEM's paying for their OEM Copies.

Of course if you purchase a new computer today you can get a free upgrade. The cost of that could pay for half the price of a low-end Computer (Give us a break!). I figure Home Premium, which is actually the lowest option you can get; so why do they call it premium?, should cost around $99 - $120 or so for OEM. Actually compared to how much the price of soda has gone up, this is probably a good deal with the weak dollar. All I have to do is convince my boss to give me a raise.

Every Edition has its own purpose...for non-techy people go for Home, for somewhat like biz-minded people go for Business, for IT pros gor Ultimate...that's why every Edition has its added features.

If u don't understand some added features for the business or ultimate edition then don't buy it, it's that simple... When you look and Buy OS Editions make sure you look at its features and if thats good enough then buy it...Don't buy ultimate if you don't really need the added features... Cmon people, common sense please?

Microsoft can release any number of editions as far as I'm concerned. I'd buy an OEM Home Basic or a Starter myself. Indeed, if Starter allows for a solid black background as opposed to the default win7 background (as it supposedly won't allow changing to another backdrop entirely).

I'd even pay _more_ for it that I would for Basic/Premium/Professional/Ultimate as it contains less redundant services and resource hogs.

The only thing that bothers me is that you get no options on installation, is it too much to ask for advanced options that would allow you to leave out specific services and tools?

I guess it is, though win7 at least make a - very minor - step in the right direction.

Is it possible to upgrade to a Windows7 64bit if what I have currently installed is Windows Vista 32bit? Or, would I have to buy win7 64 bit seperately for that?

Bah nevermind, found a thread on that topic on the forum >_>

Think anytime upgrades will work on the RC?

awesome ty so much! guess i'll preorder 7 than. i can only get home premium than right?

Other OS writers don't seem to have the problem Microsoft does. I'd mention one but I'll get flamed in an instant. Yes, Microsoft has to support a lot more hardware profiles than the one I'd mention but then that shouldn't be a problem since they sell so many more copies and thus make much bigger profits and so can spend more on R&D to support all those hardware profiles.

Ah what the heck, just wait for the ULTIMATE VALID-FREE PIRATE VERSION...hehehe... download from major file hosts like rapidshare, megaupload, filefactory, zshare, etc... and the peer sharing ToRReNt!~

Okay, so I have a question. If you have a pre-built computer, like my Gateway FX, it does not come with an O/S Disc. Instead, it's on a hidden partion on the HDD. It is windows VISTA x64 BTW. Can I do a clean upgrade to win7 (ie reformat etc) with just my Vista Product Key or must I have the actually Vista Disc or have it already installed on the HDD to do this? Thanks.

.... OR how about free? Yeah thats right microsoft im not paying you sh1t for windows 7 im getting it free.

to all the people complaining about vista, win7 or both....they are built off the same kernel, win7 incorperates all those features that microsoft had to drop from vista because the majority of existing Intel hardware at the release of vista wouldn't have been able to run it, as well as taking into account all the customer feedback people complained about in the MS forums.
Intel IGP's didn't qualify as supporting DX10 because well....they didn't have an igp that could even do dx9 half way decently,
UVD was supposed to be built into Vista,
offloading the shiny desktop GUI to the GPU (which it now does in win7)
Tesselation which was supported by the HD2900xt cuts GPU texture and model footprints from 95-115 megabytes down to less then one-half a megabyte, which was how the GUI was supposed to be rendered as well as allowing for DX10 IGP's to render 1080p video confrencing across 384 K/B DSL connections on single core 32bit OS's

In fact, upon installing Win7 ultimate onto an old AMD socket a system, with a 1.8ghz semperon that had only a 256K L2 cache the built in performance benchmark gave the cpu a rating of 4.2 out of 7.9. Considering the chip is 6 or 7 years old, that's pretty impressive.

Vista ultimate still costs $400, and was over $700 when it first launched, paying $130 to from the 9 year old XP, or 3 year old Vista, really isn't an obscene amount, or even surprising, actually i'd think most would consider it to be far less of what a new OS that will support DX10 as well as Dx11 when launched would be priced at.

Oh and buying a "new" computer from an OEM that costs $500-$800, and contains hardware worth $200-$400 one could order and assemble themselves to avoid paying $130 to upgrade an old OS and install on their existing hardware....is just stupid.

I'm just glad there's plenty of margin in there to keep the grey market people going. I was worried for them, but they appear to be in fine shape.

Although Anytime Upgrade prices have not yet been confirmed it is thought that it will cost around $85, this figure seems extremely high when compared to the retail price of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade.

http://www.pupuweb.com/blog/window [...] de-prices/

As i've said wait for Windows 7P, it'll take only your wallet and run as fast as 2 meters per second... :")



I hope you people will buy pirate version. So that all of us can be communists. hehe