Microsoft pulls cheap Windows 7 after just two days on sale
The vastly discounted pre-orders for Windows 7 went on sale on July 15 in the U.K. In the space of eight hours, Windows 7 pre-orders had overtaken the total number of Vista pre-orders from 17-weeks on sale. Now, Microsoft has upped the price after just two days. Did all the cheap stock really sell out or is Microsoft pulling a fast one?
The buzz surrounding the release of Windows 7 is astounding. Right from the moment the first beta version of the new operating system was released, most people have been confident that Windows 7 is everything Vista was not when it first launched.
After a successful pre-sale in the United States and Japan, it was Europe’s turn. The discounts saw Windows 7 Home Premium priced at £49.99, 67 percent off the list price of £149.99, and Windows 7 Professional priced at £99.99, 55 percent off the list price of £219.99. But these prices lasted just two days, when they were supposed to run until August 14 (or until stocks run out). Can it be that’s already happened?
According to PC Advisor, after a first day on sale which saw Vista’s totals decimated and Microsoft’s European online store crash under the weight of traffic, Microsoft has pulled the extravagant discounts and pushed up the prices to £79.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium and £189.99 for Windows 7 Professional. Which are still reasonable prices but not nearly as good as the original discounts.
Most of the high street retailers participating in the offer are still listing the lower prices on their Web sites. So either their allocation hasn’t yet run out or they just haven’t updated their home pages with the new information yet. Amazon has already done so, and issued a statement concerning the move.
Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional became available for pre-order yesterday at a special introductory price while stocks lasted. We encountered an exceptionally high demand for these products and sold more copies of Windows 7 in its first eight hours of availability than we did copies of Windows Vista throughout its entire 17-week pre-order period. As a result, we have sold out of our allocation of copies of Windows 7 at the special introductory price and are now selling at a pre-order price of £74.97 for the Window 7 Home Premium and £179.97 for Windows 7 Professional.
Conspiracy theorists are already putting forward the idea that Microsoft engineered the Web site crash in order to get away with selling as few copies of Windows 7 at the rock bottom price as possible. While that seems unlikely, this move is unlikely to please consumers who thought they had at least a few weeks to decide whether to buy at that price. They will now have to hand over more cash in order to jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon.
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July 19th, 2009
This is absolutely atrocious from Microsoft. On the back of what was positive PR at the low price, this is going to cause lots of annoyance to consumers. People who paid for Vista deserve a cheap upgrade, not limited to time, to Windows 7. It is disrespectful stuff from Microsoft to try and milk money from Windows 7 in this manner. The amount they charge for OSs is ridiculous, and I question how many people are now going to upgrade at a higher/full price – people will be reluctant to spend out a lot of money at the minute.
In contrast, you can get a 5 licence pack of OSX for £130ish at all times or one license for £85ish. Upgrades will be at $30 to the next OS. Microsoft should take a little bit of a lesson and charge more reasonably.
I used that as an example of competitor’s prices. Of course, Linux is a free alternative, and when you take into account these prices, Microsoft’s solution to a rubbish OS is ridiculously overpriced. They should be giving it away as compensation to early adopters of Vista in particular.
July 19th, 2009
You’ve been watching too many Mac/PC commercials.
Microsoft neither builds, markets or receives any of the fat margins on hardware, it is not limited to only going on a small slice of hardware with closed drivers and support .
Call Apple and ask them to support a Hackintosh, because that’s the only thing that makes your analogy work.
Linux Distros don’t offer anything besides self support unless you pay a separate support fee like Mandriva or Red Hat.
For a rubbish OS it still pulls the overwhelmingly majority of the load. It’s not in the best interests of Microsoft to sell retail Windows.
That’s why they give OEM pricing to put the hardware vendors in the same position as Apple, selling the entire package and support.
It’s also why most people upgrade the OS and hardware together. The difference is they have other Vendors competing for the same money.
They gave everyone basically a free year of 7 Ultimate with a three machine license
What’s atrocious is your analogy, you aren’t comparing the same things.
July 20th, 2009
So what if Microsoft did pull “a fast one”. As long as they can get the few rubes to buy their OS a full price, I’d say that’s fair enough. They got early suckers to buy Vista and it’s likely Windows 7 is certainly better than Vista. Look, do you realize how much revenue Microsoft is losing because you people didn’t go and upgrade your computers with Vista a couple of years back?
Microsoft depends on regular upgrades from the ignorant masses every few years to keep the cash flowing and you people are sitting around still using Windows XP after eight years. You’re killing Microsoft by trying to stretch XP’s use to a full decade and then you get upset if Microsoft tries to make up their losses by shortening the low-cost upgrade period.
Can you imagine how many disks and boxes of Vista DVDs Microsoft had to dump into landfills when you decided not to upgrade? They really need to make that money back and you people are going to pay through the nose. Microsoft is going fishing for suckers and you’ll be reeled in sooner or later.
Most of you had already gotten that monkey off your back by continuing to use Windows XP for years and years since it was good enough. Now Microsoft is in a hurry to make sure you get another “fix”. It’s called Windows 7 and you’re going to pay dearly for it.