nowhere near nice enough to justify the price differential over a Linux Mint system.

$199.99 does not convert to €199.99 at an exchange rate of $1.3908 to €1 and no doubt if we ever see the sterling prices they'll be the same with £ in front of them.

Suspect there could be be a lot of grey imports again.

If the 'Pro' version kicks in around the US pricing on preorder (i.e. about 60 quid, or just under), then maybe MS have hit the right pricing point.

Maybe they've found the right carrot this time; could certainly make them more competitive (over staying with XP and never upgrading, as cash is tight and XP just works).

Maybe the lessons of history with Vista were learned!

a £49 upgrade for me it is then, which doesn't seem to steep for microsoft (until you compare it to the $49 upgrade the USA get), combine that with the £29 Leopard upgrade and it looks like I'll upgrade all my OS' this summer

I'm a bit confused. At the start of the article you mention that full versions of Windows 7 (I presume FULL Retail Boxed versions which can be transferred to another PC) will cost the same as a Windows upgrade?

But then at the end of the article you list the upgrade prices.

So am I right in thinking I could go out and buy a FULL COPY of Windows 7 without IE8 in a retail boxed version for exactly the same price as a retail boxed UPGRADE COPY?

If so, I may possibly be tempted. As much as I am a Linux fanboy, my Media Centre PC currently runs Vista Home Premium (I'm checking out the XBOX 360 MCE Extender before deciding if I should stick with Windows or replace it with Mythbuntu) and if it's not going to cost that much for the retail boxed full version which could be transferred to another PC (i.e. if I replace the motherboard and CPU) then I may well go for it.

Rob

"It's likely regulators will take a dim view of Microsoft's decision to pump out Windows 7 ahead of its final ruling on what Microsoft should do on making rivals' browsers available in Windows. "

So it's now up to faceless 'crats to decide when businesses can release new software? So competitors decide on a rivals business plan (i.e Opera will no doubt go 'snot fair) and it will drag on for months.

I'm unlikely to buy 7 for a long time (if at all), but it souldn't be donw to a f**king browser maker to decide that for me.

A full (not upgrade) Wndows 7 Pro for £99 (even ex VAT) would have me interested now, that said Windows 7 Ultimate for less that £200 would have me reaching for the credit card.

Actually, on second thoughts, even an IE-less full Win7 Pro for £99 would mean I'd be content to flash the plastic.

Let's hope that MS don't screw it up by launching umpteen different variants at whatever prices. Don't forget we've already got the Moron edition (netbooks), Basic, Pro, Ultimate and whatever EU-friendly versions.

(Penguin icon because although I have some liking for Win7, my main systems will still be Ubuntu)

Here's one for ya: exactly HOW do you actually access the internet to , ummm, i dunno, DOWNLOAD a bloody browser without the bloody browser? Or is it me and the "no-IE8" actually means that they just haven't put the shortcut on the desktop? I suppose I could use the classic telnet client tricks for something like "Lynx" emulation, or just try to input the address to the "address bar" of the "Windows Explorer".

It's about time they offered their products at the correct price instead of this ripoff 1 to 1 rubbish...

Using xe.com for currency conversions...

Full Price

$199.99 = £122.79

$199.99 = €143.44

Upgrade

$119.99 = £73.67

$119.99 = €86.05

How the hell am I meant to download Firefox?

This is obviously a conspiracy to keep down competitors' market share.

So when did the EU become the people we'd all trust to design our software?

The most beauraucratic, hide-bound, red-tape laden, innefficient organisation on the planet being cheered on by the pingu hippy anarchists - way to stick to your high-minded principles there people.

People don't want Ubuntu on their desktop, so stop the qq.

When are they going to learn that $199 does NOT equate to €199 and certainly not to £199. Up your shaft, Microsoft, I'll stick with BSD.

"So it's now up to faceless 'crats to decide when businesses can release new software?"

Umm, no.

It's up to them to decide when and how *multiply convicted monopolists* can continue to take part in the market.

This is not anti-MS, euro-centric nonsense, this is a company that have been shown time and again in multiple markets to have abused their monopoly status. As a result you shouldn't be surprised the courts and bureaucrats get involved in new releases.

BBC says no upgrades for EU, which means no free upgrades and that means we are going to have to shell out the full amount?

It seems they got fined and now are charging us more for Win 7 to reclaim the money.

Fine them again I reckon.

If the price for this upgrade were circa £30, like Snow Leopard, then it might have been worthwhile. As it is its WAY overpriced for what is practically a service pack. As a result microsoft gets no money from me and I make alternative arrangements.

They really do need to get more of a clue.

"Microsoft is going into promotional overdrive with Windows 7 .. give you "free" upgrades .. if you sign up to get Windows ahead of the October 22 launch"

Except in Europe as the big bad EU commission will only allow European users a clean installation, which will wipe out all their old settings and files. Curious as I thought that the EU only required the absence of 'Internet Explorer'. It's almost as if MS is penalizing EU users under the pretext of complying with the ruling.

http://windows.microsoft.com/upgrade-windows-E

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/buy/offers/upgrade.aspx

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/25/announcing-the-windows-7-upgrade-option-program-amp-windows-7-pricing-bring-on-ga.aspx

Just a thought, if your going to be paying €199 for Windows 7 Pro or whatever the conversion to £'s will be then why don't you just purchase a Technet Direct subscription, is about £180/year (cheaper if you can find a 40% discount code).

It will give you access to Windows 7 as well as Office 2007 and plenty of other applications / OS's that you'll probably never use...

Now using CentOS, Puppy and Ubuntu, have been on and off with GNU/Linux since Slackware in 1994. Last two years pretty much full time with Linux. The so-called "free" OS is actually worth paying serious money for,...if I had a SOHO that was critical to my income, I'd willingly pay one of the major commercial distro's (Redhat, Canonical, CentOS) for support and remote maintenance. Also GNU/Linux these days is LOADED with quality applications software, some of pretty powerful stuff.....sure the interfaces are a little rougher and lack some of the "polish" of commercial apps, but the underlying quality is often superior to the shrink-wrapped stuff. With Win& with its likely legacy of driver issues, mal-ware issues, expensive applications issues, I'd want Microsoft to pay ME to use such a limited system and suffer it's problems.

a) open a command prompt and use FTP *,

b) use another machine and copy the installer across,

c) Use Windows Update to deploy IE, and use that to go get another browser, and then "uninstall" IE.

Sheesh!

* cue Ipswitch complaint that MS bundling an FTP client is "anti-competitive"

Thanks for making life so much more pleasant for the rest of us here in lovely old Europe, your distance from a real-world understanding of technology makes me want to have your babies.

Also, the plural of OS is OSes or OSs. Look at the icon I used with this post. I am right.

"...buy a full or upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium. Microsoft has nailed the recommended retail price for this SKU today at $119.99 and $199.99 respectively"

So the full version is $119.99 and the upgrade version is $199.99? Invoice is in the mail, I don't do this subbing for free y'know :)

It would be so nice to have an entirely UK-orientated article which stated what was available in the UK and when and at what price, including retail editions and upgrades from recently-purchased Vista PCs and laptops.

All the other stuff about pricing and availability in the US and Europe is mostly irrelevant (except for ranting and point-scoring purposes)...

For people who are supposedly literate in the IT world the question of how to surf the internet without the IE browser is fairly rediculous. Simply download the browser of your choice to a thumb drive or SD card prior to putting in Windows 7. After the installation you can then add the downloaded browser to the new installation.

I'm also confused - was trying to figure it out from the BBC article too.

"So am I right in thinking I could go out and buy a FULL COPY of Windows 7 without IE8 in a retail boxed version for exactly the same price as a retail boxed UPGRADE COPY?"

If my understanding is right, not quite. There are different prices for full and upgrade. Except due to the EU, the upgrade product is actually a full one. I think. So assuming there's no difference between upgrade and full apart from the price, will anyone actually buy the full product? Is there some check that you actually do have a previous version?

Steve.

Just to let you know I have Steam running happily on my Gentoo box at home thanks to wine and due to those lovely Penguinistas I can even start it from the command line with this command

Steam.exe

So scrub that one of the Linux is crap list

I expect that the first time you do something that would normally use IE8 (like run windows update first thing after the install) it will pop up with something like "IE8 required, would you like to install it now?"

culled from technet

"BRAD BROOKS: Yeah. You know, that is the best thing about what's happening with Windows 7 is all the excitement that's going on. I'm still humbled by the amount of customers that have participated in this process. We have literally had millions of customers downloading, using, and giving feedback on our beta and RC product, more than any other version of an operating system that we've done in the history of Microsoft.

We have also got a lot of enthusiastic customers that have been following every day all the news coming from Windows 7.

For those customers I've got something special, which is for customers in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, starting tomorrow on June 26th, is they will be able to pick up a copy or they'll be able to pre-order, excuse me, a copy of Windows 7 for delivery on October 22nd of either Home Premium or Windows 7 Pro versions. Home Premium in the U.S., example pricing will be 49.99, and the Pro version will be for 99.99."

For me?

I get to hand over £199 (lets face it.. no matter what it will be 199 quid no matter the conversion rate) for an OS that has not got all the security holes and issues of Windows Xp.

It has a whole new bunch of them that wont be fixed until SP1 is released and just like Xp wont become a decent OS untl SP2 is released (vista on the other hand is a dog and always will be)

The hardware requirements means win7 will run happily enough on this AMD dual core thing, but I suspect will run better on some quad core thing with 4 gig of ram and a Nvidia SLI gfx system.

But I cant see the point.

Everything works in windows Xp, my steam games and software tools etc and its not going to wear out like my car would over the next 10 years.

But I think the killer is, This box is a dual boot and runs in fedora linux all the time I'm not playing games.....

Open command prompt and:

ftp ftp.mozilla.org

ftp ftp.opera.com

login "anonymous" on both and away you go.

My, wasn't that hard.

Yes, I do see the irony of needing a command line on the supposedly command-line-free Windows. ;o)

Both are apropos. Another sad tale of MS missing the boat on pricing, features, availability, and no upgrade from XP. Insert head in posterior. Done now? Ok, you're ready for MS upper management.

Well for a change looks like M$ are going the right way and putting their priceing at a point where their OS is actually realistic for the average home user as well as the enthuseast where as vista was just way to expensive initially so was hardly taken up in reality.

Win7 ultimate for me when its out as I do like it and have been using the RC since it was released.

I've been using it from Beta1, now on RC ... works like a charm. $50 for Windows upgrade? I'm IN for sure... it's the same price as few 12packs of Corona

I might actually get it for both of my computers - old ACER tower and new laptop. This is really cheap.

You know what? I am tired of playing pricing games with MS. I bought my copy of Windows Vista Home Premium OEM, and also "obtained" a copy of Business (not pirate; it was a pressed Dell DVD for my Dell laptop with legit key, from some other Dell laptop through some school's [not mine] deal with Dell. Got it for $50 so it was a bargain for a full Business DVD. Only prob is that it is usable with Dell laptops, but that's OK since it's being junked in a few months anyway).

However, back to the point. I think a Technet Direct download-only subscription with one of those coupons floating around the net works out much cheaper than buying multiple licenses for my computers. Besides, with that subscription, I get to "evaluate" Windows Server 2k8 on my main PC, and get Windows 7 Pro for my laptop, and Windows 7 Ultimate for another computer. All much cheaper than buying those licenses retail or OEM and I get loads of other MS software to "evaluate". Since I don't run a business with any of these pc's (being a college student), that all works out. Why is it that not many other people do this?

Who'd pay 200 (be it dollars, sterling, or euros) for an OS? Sounds ridiculous to me... specially in an age where a pretty good desktop can be bought for $300-400. What, you have no choice but to pay whatever they ask? Awww...

"a) open a command prompt and use FTP *,"

lets see, open a command prompt, startup an ftp client (it's built into explorer so yay!) and type... what? Well I suppose you could look up details of an ftp site on the net... oh wait.

"b) use another machine and copy the installer across"

Good idea, but may be an issue if you only happen to have one pc. Or you may have 2 and be upgrading them both at the same time . Work pc's? For security reasons they usually frown on you copying stuff off the machines to a usb stick and block it (government employees can feel safe in the knowledge that this option is clearly available to them). I suppose you could get someone to email it to you, but then windows mail isn't included either. Oh well, you could always use webmail i suppose...

"c) Use Windows Update to deploy IE, and use that to go get another browser, and then "uninstall" IE."

I suspect this is actually what everyone will do, but rather than go and find another browser then uninstall it, they will just stick with IE as if it was installed all along.

"Sheesh!"

My sentiments exactly, I can't really see my mum managing to do any of those. Unless windows update automatically installs it as a critical update, the average user won't be able to get online at all. I suspect there will just end up being an IE icon on the desktop that kicks off a one-click install process.

Although you did miss d) boot from an ubuntu live cd and use that to download a browser. Which surprised me as it seemed almost a given for a story like this :)