Windows 7 Half Price Offer

I upgraded to Windows7 from Windows Vista beta about six months Nd moved to the RC (Release Candidate) version, the one that's being installed by manufaturers on new machines, about two months ago. The difference in performance was obvious. Windows 7 feels likes it's running twice as fast as Vista (I haven't measured it), but EVERY program I use from Office2007 to Corel Draw 12 to MovieMaker just opens and runs pretty much instantly.

I'm running on a Toshiba laptop with a COre 2 Duo Centrino1.83 Ghz processor and 3 G of RAM that is not rated particulary fast, and I couldn't be happier. I have a desktop with similar processing capability running Vista and the difference is obvious. Do upgrade to 7.

Why would M$ extend the same offer to people using XP AND Vista??? First, the economics. Vista was a complete and utter flop. They need to offer a discount to the suckers (me included) who acutally paid for that bloated, resource-hogging junk. My Vista box has sat unused (with that equally unusable Office 2007) for months.

OTOH, I've been happily using Windows 7 for 4 months. It runs on most anything - quickly AND reliably. Oh, and without nagging me every 5 minutes.

So why would M$ offer the SAME discount to XP users (of which I am one as well)? If they offer 1/2 off to XP users, they should upgrade Vista users for free.

Does anyone know what the license will be for these half price versions. I will need a 3 PC license. Thank you, jim

On end user (you and I) operating systems, the MS license is always for 1 machine. It is the other products such as Office that have 3 machine licenses

Looks like we Ultimate users get screwed once again.
Just read an article that you can't upgrade to a version of Windows 7 that is lower than what you currently use for Vista.

I went from Vista to XP and then Win 7 RC. In order to upgrade to Win 7 paid release version, will it be a simply a matter of putting in the new serial number, or will I have to run an upgrade program? Or even wors since I had XP previously will I have to do a clean install?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The RC will stop working in March. I don't know if you'll be able to enter a license code and keep using it. My guess is no. You *might* be able to install the final (paid) copy of W7 on top of the RC. If you installed W7RC on top of Vista, and there's no rollback, then you may be stuck with a clean (reformat) install.

Nice posting on the pre-order offer on July 11. One problem. When you click on the link to the Microsoft site, you will see that the pre-order reduced price has ended. However, when you click the pre-order link, it still says the price is 49.99. Now I'm unsure if I should proceed with the purchase! ANy help?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'd go for it. Some stores may have them still in stock. The price should be clear at checkout time.

Hey, guess what - the pre-order offer has ended already. Now M$ wants $119 for Premium, $199 for Pro and $219 for Ultimate. And that is the updgrade price!

I have an older machine- was XP, but have been running Windows7 RC - quite happily I might add- my question is this, the machine never had a disk- the "restore" was on the hard drive. When I installed W7 that was all wiped out. Will I be able to use the "upgrade" version when the RC expires? Since I have no "proof" that it was originally XP, will I be able to just run over the RC? (I installed an "upgrade" Vista on a "clean" drive by running it twice)

EDITOR'S NOTE: I think when the RC expires, and you have no other OS on the hard drive, you will not be able to upgrade. But that would have been the case if you had XP anyway.

I ordered 7 2 weeks ago and I was to get it in 3 days and I don't have it so far. Can you help me? Jackie Evans

EDITOR'S NOTE: The product will not be available until October 22. What you did was place a PRE-order...