Leaked memo offers glimpse at Windows 7 Update pricing

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Two days ago we found out Windows 7 would be shipping October 22, now we may have an “unofficial” peek at the pricing that’s to come. It would seem that a leaked Best Buy memo details the company’s “plan for the Windows 7 launch.” In addition to information regarding Microsoft’s latest operating system, comically, the memo recognizes Vista’s shortcomings by saying that 7 isn’t just a “Vista that works.”

The memo says that Best Buy wants to aid users during the coming transition, ensuring the success of the switch. To meet this aspiration, starting June 26 the company will guarantee a free copy of Windows 7 to customers who purchase a PC with Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate. Those who purchase individual discs of Windows Vista will also qualify for the promotion.

Additionally, from June 26 until July 11, select editions of Windows 7 will be available for preorder on BestBuy.com. Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade and Professional Upgrade will be listed at $49.99 and $99.99. This compares to Vista’s Home Premium and Business Upgrade editions pricing at $129.95 and $199.95. So, the obvious question is: will you be flooding BestBuy’s servers June 26?

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https://www.techspot.com/news/34991-leaked-memo-offers-glimpse-at-windows-7-update-pricing.html

 

[Guest]

Heck I feel that Microsoft should give me 2 copies for FREE since they broke their promises by advertisting those who purchased Vista Ultimate would get EXTRAS by purchasing the Ultimate version. Well I purchase 2 copies of Vista Ultimate one in 32 bit and the other in 64 bit version.

Hey STEVE what about your promises????? Take responsibility and do the RIGHT THING!!!

Dyreck O'Neal

 

[Julio Franco]

I'm totally with you, Vista Ultimate users should get a really good deal for upgrading to 7. Perhaps not free but a compelling incentive for those who supported and keep supporting the company efforts.

 

[nazartp]

I'm planning a new build for my son in the fall and will be installing Windows 7 on it.

 

[tengeta]

No, 7 is basically Vista's new interface.

You people on the internet just bashed Vista into the wall before even giving it a chance, THE ONLY difference is the interface. I've been using Vista for two years, and Seven since the RC. The stability? the same. The hardware use? the same. The difference? Its not the "holy evil" as declared on the internet like Vista was. That really is all, people just forced Microsoft to repackage and make it prettier. Show me dumb graphs and nerds in youtube videos ranting on, I have real life daily use to compare to and thats far more realistic than that crap.

 

[Aolish]

I'm one of the ppl that have NEVER used Vista before. I am using the 7RC beta right now. With so many bloat, app, driver related issues on vista, I decided to skip vista all together and wait for the next MS OS. So far 7 seems to be performing very well. This is basically Vista done right. Many articles and videos do say that 7 is a bit snappier then Vista. I still haven't decided if I'm actually going to move over to 7, but if I do I'll probably wait for 7 SP2 since we all know there are bound to be bugs that will crop up after release. Was vista just another WinME?

 

[SNGX1275]

Vista wasn't like ME, as tengeta says it is fine and stable. ME wasn't stable.

 

[Tekkaraiden]

Wasn't staple and it was in pastels.

 

[Wendig0]

Vista... stable... lol, that's a good one xD. I think I'm gonna tell the guys in my IT department that one on Monday

 

[windmill007]

@Tengeta Windows 7 is more than Vista's new interface. It runs a lot better on older hardware since a lot of the bloat has been removed. The only ones that think Vista is Awesome and Windows 7 is nothing new are the people who paid for the beta called Vista. Seriously.... Windows 7 runs so much better.... I knew the first day I tried Vista that it sucked... And I work on computers so I've used it many more times..... I can use it but I don't like it. Now windows 7... I really like... Since the first time I used it. Plus at our work we will upgrade to Windows 7 since it will work on our older hardware where as Vista we would of had to spend thousands buying new computers just to run it. I think many users and businesses skipped or will skip Vista. it will become a distant memoy like Windows ME did. I do like Vista in the fact it paved the way to the future.....but I don't like the fact people had to spend there hard earned money for a OS that clearly was released to early and not to give a discount to the "what vista whould of been OS" is an insult in my book. I hope these prices are real. I think people can actually afford those prices and there will be less pirating.

 

[raybay]

I see no reason why Microsoft cannot continue to sell and support Windows XP Professional while also selling and supporting Windows 7.

 

[SNGX1275]

Vista... stable... lol, that's a good one xD. I think I'm gonna tell the guys in my IT department that one on Monday

Tell your IT department they are doing something wrong or buying crap hardware. Run decent hardware and Vista is stable. I've never seen a BSOD and never had the OS freeze on me (and very rarely a program, less so than XP), and I've been running Vista since its release. Vista Home Premium 32bit, and I'm on the same installation as I had from the start, made it through 2 service pack upgrades too with no issues.
So bottom line, you look like an ***** for trying to make a joke out of its stability.

 

[captaincranky]

Why Can't We All Get Along..........???

SNGX, even Julio has complained about Vista "hard crash", while trying to burn a DVD. (I think it was a DVD) So, in his case I doubt it could be blamed on "crap hardware". Yet others such as yourself, sing it's praises. There,s probably a truth lurking somewhere in the middle of those extremes. Let's hope whatever was wrong, or perhaps perceived to be wrong with Vista, is corrected with Windows 7.

But, they can't fix everything now can they? 'Cause if they did, they wouldn't be able to sell you Windows 8 two years from now.

None of this explains why Intel stuck with XP throughout the Vista era.

 

[Guest]

I have been running vista from about 6 months into its release and have only had 2 blue screens. The people who say bad things about it don't sound like they have used it. They all get on the bandwagon of everyone else who hasn't used it that are saying its bad. I had a quick play with win7 and it annoyed me a little like vista did at the start with new ways of doing things and things in different places. But I wont get on the bandwagon and praise it as "vista done right" until I have used it for a while and only the final release not some beta. No OS from Microsoft is worth the price you pay for it, but Vista has been working well for me at home. I would like to support it in a working environment and see how it fares under those conditions.

 

[Guest]

i really hate this "vista sucks" stuff, i have been using it for about one and a half year and i wanna give my opinion. in the beginning it was really slow and unstable, but from time to time there was patches that made it somewhat better. today its really much faster and stable than before.

its a great operating system, but people dont realize it. (sorry for my english)

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

This is quite an argument...lets call it an opinion and leave it at that?

 

[Guest]

Simply put, avoid Vista like the plague, and enjoy Windows 7 when it comes =)

 

[Guest]

I've used Windows 7 for a while and frankly it didn't feel all that different from Vista 64 performance wise... maybe it's because I'm using a computer post 1999.
I've been lucky that my Vista 64 installation has worked flawlessly and I've never had any stability issues... in fact it has worked better for me than XP ever did, but then again, I've never tried Vista 32-bit so I won't comment on that.
What I did notice is that the GUI and driver installation is a lot better, I installed my video card drivers and I did not even need to restart.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Same here SNGX. I've been using Vista for a long time now and don't find it annoying or slow at all. It is quite decent as an OS, especially after SP1. SP2 has made it a bit snappier though.

 

[Guest]

@Windmill007
Actually the single biggest reason that Windows 7 runs better than vista is a rewrite of the graphic engine memory management, not because because of significantly less bloat. And Vista runs fine if you had the hardware to handle the less efficient graphics engine.

 

[Guest]

I have been running vista from about 6 months into its release and have only had 2 blue screens.

And I've been running it for 18 months and never had a blue screen. That's with various media creation software quite a few system tray utilities and a good amount of open source software. Generally (maybe always) a blue screen is caused by a bad driver, bad hardware, or in a few cases bad antivirus.

 

[Guest]

I've used Windows 7 for a while and frankly it didn't feel all that different from Vista 64 performance wise... maybe it's because I'm using a computer post 1999.
I've been lucky that my Vista 64 installation has worked flawlessly and I've never had any stability issues... in fact it has worked better for me than XP ever did, but then again, I've never tried Vista 32-bit so I won't comment on that.
What I did notice is that the GUI and driver installation is a lot better, I installed my video card drivers and I did not even need to restart.

I would like to confirm some of that. Vista x64 is a little bit more stable on my hardware. Plus in a few tests with some cross bit x64 vs x86 media software the 32 bit version was generating a bunch of page faults. I don't know if that us a direct result of the OS or the application, but given that x64 is more stable as a whole I would say it's the OS. Perhaps all these people with bad Vista experiences are all running x86 versions.

 

[SNGX1275]

SNGX, even Julio has complained about Vista "hard crash", while trying to burn a DVD. (I think it was a DVD) So, in his case I doubt it could be blamed on "crap hardware". Yet others such as yourself, sing it's praises. There,s probably a truth lurking somewhere in the middle of those extremes. Let's hope whatever was wrong, or perhaps perceived to be wrong with Vista, is corrected with Windows 7.

I've never heard of that, perhaps it exists, but not for me. Is that using the built in dvd burning abilities? I've never had any issues, but I use Nero. I can't imagine Vista regularly has dvd burning issues, and if it did, I would expect SP2 to have fixed it.. Can you even burn dvd's without 3rd party software in XP???

I don't know what there is left (although I never had problems from the start) to fix in Vista with 7 in how it runs, but you are right that they need to fix what is perceived as wrong, and I think they have succeeded in doing that. They succeeded because the Vista haters are practically blowing a load over Windows 7 RC and have been since the first public beta. It is a bit frustrating to see that because there is nothing other than hearsay on Vista being bad.

 

[red1776]

persona non vista

posted by SNGX1275 :

It is a bit frustrating to see that because there is nothing other than hearsay on Vista being bad.

yes indeed, i have not had any problems with Vista either, and while that is anecdotal, its amazing that there is a cottage industry by vista haters for vista haters to create programs that make XP run like,look like, and have the nifty features of vista. i have also noticed that the majority of comments i have read admonishing,impugning, and castigating Vista and its users, are from people who have admittedly not used it. I have been dual booting Vista/7 RC for a few weeks now and they seem remarkably similar. unless last nights SP2 install destroyed it, i still think Vista is great. I am curious though to hear from some folks who have used vista and don't like it and why, maybe im missing something.

 

[Guest]

SNGX1725 maybe you're lucky. Maybe you work for Microsoft. Maybe you're just blind or naive or close-minded. Whatever. Shut up and let the rest of us sound off. Your constant jumping in and defending Vista is annoying, enough so that I decided to chime in myself rather than have you think that you make a positive impression on any of the rest of us. Well, on me anyway. (I try to avoid over-generalization).

I frikkin' HATE Vista, chiefly due to what it's had to make me do to get it to work properly on the very dang machine it came pre-installed on. 8 Gigs of RAM and a QuadCore Core 2 CPU, and everything still runs slow. And the system has hung up so many times, I habitually hold down the power button to Shutdown now. But it's not my machine, so I thankfully don't have to do that all the time (but I do have to deal with Vista issues a lot more than I've ever had to with XP Pro, and also have to make more house calls).

(Incidentally, I got a laptop with Vista pre-SP1 on it a couple of years ago. Luckily I had paid for the extended warranty that covers "accidental damage")

Those of you who said Vista got better with SP2, or works well when the necessary patches are installed . . . Think about what you just said.

Most of us had to wait for Vista SP1 to come out before we started reading about it being (more) stable, and only then did a significant portion of the Windows user-base give Vista a chance before many went back to XP Pro.

I've been a tech for 20 years, working on DOS onward through every release of Windows. And in all my experience, I've gotta say that Vista is the NT-family version of ME. It may work well if you can find & afford just the right arrangement of hardware, but one shouldn't have to do that. If so, one may as well go with a Mac.

Vista needs 120-140 Gigs of HDD space and an estimated 256 Gigs of RAM just to run Notepad. Meanwhile (if you can find where it got placed off the Start menu), Windows 7 just needs 20 Gigs of drive space and 2 Gigs of RAM (on 64-bit machines anyway; for 32-bit, even less so: 10 and 1, IIRC). An OS designed for the masses (and I mean Windows, whatever version) shouldn't have to require everyone learning how to troubleshoot problems. And if you're one of those computer snobs who think/say "the masses" shouldn't be using computers, or should get a Netbook, slag off and go play with your Linux box.

This input provided courtesy of a computer running XP Pro.
OK then, time to get back to burning DVDs now...

- Billy Bob -