Update – Windows 7 Special Pricing is Ending on July 11th!

If you’ve been thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 from Windows Vista or XP and you’ve been under a rock for a couple of weeks you are advised that the Windows 7 Upgrade pricing “deal” is ending on July 11th.  In fact, it may have ended at some retail outlets.  I checked at Sam’s Club on-line and the Home Premium version was sold out; at the time there were still Professional versions available.

So what is this all about? 

Windows 7, the new Microsoft operating system, will be released to the public on/about October 22, 2009.  Some retailers are offering pre-release pricing for purchase.  This is a limited time offer which expires on July 11, 2009.  I found the best pricing from Amazon.com because of their “no tax, free shipping” option.  You are limited to purchasing 3 copies (presumably from a single source).  The list price for the Home Premium upgrade is $49.99 and $99.99 for the Professional upgrade. 

After the July 11 cutoff date for the special deal, a Home Premium Upgrade version will cost $119.99 and a Professional Upgrade will be $199.99. The same pricing is expected after October 22 when Windows 7 will be available to everyone.  Standalone versions of Windows 7 Home Premium will cost $199.99, Professional Edition $299.99 and Ultimate Edition $319.99.

If you are thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 you might want to check out your computer using MS Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor software (you’ll have to download and install it on your computer).  I ran it on my primary desktop, which runs Windows XP, and also on my laptop running Windows Vista (Home Premium) and it seemed to do a pretty thorough job of assessing my hardware and software on both systems. 

If you are running Windows XP and planning on doing the upgrade you will have to do a completely new installation of Windows 7 and reinstall all of your software.  However, the discounted upgrade will allow you to do this, unlike previous MS Windows ‘upgrades’ which required an older version to be installed on your computer first (or at least so I understand).  There is a part of the process in upgrading from Windows XP that involves something called a “User State Migration Tool” that is supposed to migrate files and settings (through the use of an external hard drive) but not the applications software itself.  For me this is a daunting, very time-consuming task.  However, most ‘experts’ recommend that any new operating system installation be a new/clean install so as to preclude any problems from leftover bits of the old OS.  For technical details on migrating to Windows 7 see the MS Technet article on Windows 7 Upgrade and Migration.

Last thought – most of the very same ‘experts’ do not recommend installing a new operating system for the first few months it is released; some don’t recommend it until the first service pack is released.  Of course, if you are in the market for a new computer you can wait until October or wait until they are offering Vista computers with free upgrades to Windows 7; this is supposed to be later this summer.