Surely if Vista Attempt 2 is more than $29, it will be too expensive?

“In the short run, these [Windows] product releases impact PC growth rates very, very modestly,”

Not the sort of thing one expects to hear from MS. Especially as they normally kill the OS 2 full versions back. Since that would be XP, and the uptake for Vista has been modest (being generous), one would expect the sales for Windows 7 to be brisk as users replace systems that are no longer supported. Granted the economy is a bit soft at the moment, but still.

Something fishy is definitely going on.

Win 7 being just a revamp of vista (same kernel, new wiz-bangs), is just a "plus pack" or enhanced service pack, and it should be free to anyone who was sadled with buying Vista, any version.

Vista was so poorly done itself, it's prices should drop across the board su that Ultimate comes into the $129-149 range. Anyone who bought premium of Vista should get 7 ultimate for like $29 (equivalent to Snow Leapord upgrade, even though it's a poor comparrison). Upgrades from XP should not be over $99.

I run Vista EE 64 at home on one machine. I've gotten used to it's quirks and generally I appreciate it (especially it's backup functions) more than XP. However, short of DX10 support, it really has made no difference to me other than look and feel xs the XP box sitting next to it.

Will I upgrade to 7? Well, it will come in my action pack quarterly update for free, so I'l probably at least deploy it in a VM for a while and play with it, and if I can inline upgrade without issues I'll move it up to Ultimate, but its not on my to-do list... My wife's XP laptop, which btw is 64bit dual core, dedicated graphics, and 4GB of RAM, failed the compatability check even for Vista, so I'm betting 7 won't run on it...

Upgrading my 2 macs to 10.6 will happen the day it's out. If you think doubling performance for $29 isn't worth it for a "percentage of mac users" you need to go take some more statistics classes... Exchange support without needing to buy Office? Done. Quicktime X? Done. 6GB less disk space and faster boot times? Done. Overhauled iChat with both higher def AND lower bandwidth at the same time? Done. An AI for text selection in preview and PDFs? FINALLY! Expose in dock? NICE! Smarter data detection and correlation in e-mail, chat, and other sources? nice. Faster backup, quicker wake/sleep, faster file transfer, intelligent thread handling, fully multi-core-aware OS, plug-in memory isolation, all new 64 bit native code for over 1000 subprograms and apps, using the GPU for more than graphics being native to the entire OS, these may not mean much to users, but they'll NOTICE the difference. Win 7 is improving some aesthetics and makes things simpler to users while making them more complicated in the back end and changes everythgin the user knows. Snow Leapord provides significant real improvement, stability, anf functionality, not just a GUI overhaul...

Oh, XP support ends April 8th 2014... Mainstream support ended in April this year (may have been extended) but that just means you need to pay for support calls, which 9 out of 10 you ended up paying for anyway. Patches will still be free for 4 more years and it will be continually supported by microsoft, just no new "featuers" will be added, only fixes and updates.

Makes sense they'd say that. If shipments *are* slow, they can say "Yup, told you so." If sales are anything better than slow they can be "Surprised at the great response consumers are showing to the fantastic new Windows 7."

I somehow doubt these adjectives will really apply. A certain film title springs to mind instead...

I'm not a Windows fan, but I expect rather swift sales -- even people that know NOTHING about computers tell me they know to avoid Vista, and both some of them AND people in the know (that are not already using Macs or Ubuntu) are ITCHING for Windows 7 to come out.

Do you really think this upgrade is going to double your macs performance?

Nice laugh I had there.

I have full XP mode right now, why on Earth should I want to shell out major cash for a new OS and use it to mimic what is already working fine ?

I didn't want Vista, so nothing that Vista has interests me (no, DX10 is not a requirement). Win 7 being just a Vista service pack, ergo it means that it has nothing more to interest me either.

I'll stay in XP mode for a while longer, I think.

Microsoft has to gouge on its software because it has nothing else. Apple doesn't need to gouge on its software because it's already done so on the hardware.

sorry , only been a regular Windows user since Win95 OSR2 on FAT32 ... however ...

I've never found a reason to call MS for support, their knowledge base is ok for troubleshooting ... many 3rd party sites and forums provide great *support* for WinXP ..

So why should I care about Vista or Win7 as long as there will be security patches till 2014 for XP ? perhaps some *critical* software I need/want won't be compatable with WinXP by 2012, but more likely this won't happen till 2014 either ..

building a new machine soon .. but it will have WinXP Pro .. I'll wait on Win7 for at least a year so all you millions of paying beta testers can sort things out .. ok ?

Sounds like a new racial slur

Microsoft are out there to make money....why should they ship other browsers with their software?!!! It's yet again political correctness gone mad! Apple are allowed to ship Safari, Itunes and Quicktime with their OS so why is it different for Microsoft?? It's just that the competition is too crap to put up a fight!!

It should be Microsoft's business what they put into Windows and no one elses, it is their product.

At doing what?

Starter = good at driving you mad

Premium = better at driving you mad

Professional = best at driving you mad