'Free' Windows 7 Upgrades Still Cost Money

I would gladly pay 20$ shipping fee instead of pay 200$.

$20 bucks or $200 bucks.... hmmm........

BTW, shipping is not free. Go ask UPS to deliver your product for free and watch them laugh at you.

It sucks that the "free" upgrade isn't free for some but it's Windows 7, I'd pay the $11 or whatever to get away from Vista.

I don't like the idea of being charged a handling fee but two things:
- it sure beats paying full price for the upgrade.
- given the economy and slow PC sales, I can understand taht the makers are trying to look for ways to cut costs.

I'm sure you would be equally as happy to pay $20 when you were promised a FREE upgrade when you purchased the machine. Right?

Free != $20.

Your missing the point, it's advertised as a 'Free Upgrade' when your purchase the PC, the manufacturer shouldn't then be able to charge you an extra $20 to get your 'Free' upgrade. It's false advertising and it's wrong.
If the manufacturer wanted to use the 'Free Upgrade' as a selling point on it's product it should eat the cost and make it a free upgrade instead of lying.

The company listed only needs to put a small subscript next the the phrase. The subscript reading "not including shipping and handling." I'd bet you 10 thumbs up votes such language is used by the people who will charge shipping and handling.

$20 for just for shipping a DVD (which probably costs

$20 for just for shipping a DVD (which probably costs less than $1 to make) sounds a bit steep.

The FREE upgrade is still applicable, dont understand why this is being titled as it is. For eg, you go to a shop, buy a crisp packet and told you will get a bigger pack for free, would you expect them to deliver it to your door for free? No, I didnt think so,

Tbh, MS has done alotta crap in the past and still do with most or their products and services, hey they will in the future too, but compared to any other major players, who is there? Apple? The worst of the bunch has to be Apple, so tbh Toms, you should be giving credit where/when due.

Anyhow, the "upgrade is still free", if you want it delivered, you are actually just paying the P&P charges, in 90% of the cases I bet its MS are not even charging packaging, its just the postage cost, dictated by whomever will they have as their supplier, UPS? who cares

Download the CD from some kind of web source, and use license, and there you go.

Just to clarify what I meant by saying the "upgrade is still free", the upgrade from Vista to Win 7 is aimed to be over the network/internet. MS did not specify that you will get a free CD/DVD as part of the upgrade, so why should you get extra Freebe's?

Meh, I got it from my college for $8, license and all.

Shipping does not add towards Windows 7. Shipping is entirely different product from Windows 7, even by accounting standards. So the upgrade is still free. It is not false advertising.

But it was a tool to get you to buy the product before it is ready. It was sold so you could buy now and get 7 free when it's available. Not to help you, but to convince you to buy it now.

Otherwise people would have waited for 7 to release and buy it for "free" in the shop. The prices won't go up now that you buy a pc with 7 already on it, actually, if you bought it earlier it's 20 dollar more expansive.

Sure, 20 dollar is nothing compared to having to buy it and some people really couldn't wait to buy a new computer, for them the 20 dollar wouldn't be a problem. But I agree with that it was advertised a bit misleading.

You can mail a DVD for less than a dollar. This is not costing the manufacturers- they advertised free upgrades so they could sell computers and make money, the cost of mailing out the DVD's is part of the cost of them doing business in order to increase their sales.

If the manufacturers want to save money then they could offer the download for free and the consumer can burn their own DVD.

Paying anywhere from $11-17 is not really that big of a deal for shipping and handling. This really wasn't really worthy of an article. You are basically paying up to $17 for Win7 which is still agreat deal given I got it for the pre-order price of $99 which was a great deal also but $17 is much better.

That's pretty shady, but still better than paying full price. Especially given how grossly overpriced Windows 7 is.

LOL, for all of you who don't mind paying the hidden fee, the machine you bought will undoutedly be sold with Win 7 without the fee after the 22nd.

what people don't understand is that it's not the matter of price but the matter of principle. If I promise someone something for free, I wouldn't go and ask for 10 dollars when the time comes. How the world has changed...

what the hell?? isn't this why God gave us the internet? they've been distributing the beta disk images over the net for free for ages, can't they do the same for this?

The download is STILL FREE, u have an option to either use the vista setup to upgrade during setup, which will mean a temp file is created, or download an iso image, use any free iso image creaters, to either create a virtual drive or burn to dvd. Wtf, som ppl cry no matter what freebe's their given! Let me know a company gives its retail selling product for free plus all the extras like delivery. You cant buy a $1 item from ebay without paying p&p.

I get the principle behind it, as free should mean free. But then again, it sure beats having to pay $200. I got the student discount deal and chose to order the disk for $13, again a heck of a lot better than $200.

In Canada it's so far only Toshiba and MSI charging shipping fees:

http://www.futureshop.ca/popup/windows7_lightbox02.asp

instead of always looking at things in a negative way, try to see the bright side.
1. you are still paying very little for Win7
2. you can sell/or give away your vista key/cd
3. you are still better off than people that bought pcs just days before this offer was out and didnt get win7

I remember lookign at a vendor recently... they offered WinVista and WinVista+Win7(upgrade)... the one with the upgrade option cost more... I want meh fucking free!

I've been using W7 for about a week now(Pro Version) and all I have to say that its worth every penny.

i'm not disappointed at all. i like it when they lie to me.

But you have to pay for the internet connection as well, so technically it isn't free.

Paying the courier to deliver a physical copy is the same principle as having to pay your ISP to get a digital copy. At the end of the day you ended up paying money to get your goods.

Yeah, in fact, it's probably cheaper to pay the S&H than the monthly internet fee!

I bought a Dell laptop over the summer and qualified for this program, I live in Canada (Nova Scotia specifically), does anyone know how much i should expect to pay?