Just ordered mine from Amazon for £45. Seeing as I have been...er...trialing vista for 6 months I feel its only right I buy this. Used the RC for a month and it only needs a few niggles fixed before it could be my main OS. looking forward to it
They're priced right, for a change, so no surprise they're flying off the shelves. as the article says I'm installing it on a notebook I bought last year with vista installed instead of building a new computer. can't see me building a new computer for a while yet as what I have is adequate for my uses at the moment. it would take a phenomenal game for me to upgrade now, unlikely to happen as last computer was built for battlefield 2.
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I agree with everyone, £50 is the right price for a Home centric operating system, £80-£100 is just right for a professional OS. I just hope Microsoft realises this when the pre-order finishes, HP price returns to £145 and sales plummet, Microsoft tries the £45 price again just to be sure and sales rocket again...
The huge sales are not a "oooo pre-order, me please me please gimme gimme!" it's a "wow, that price is just right, I'll buy this before it sells out and/or tripples in price!"
@Keldon - you're going to hit the 16GB RAM limit? Why Keldon Why? There's no tangible benefit at this stage and no consumer motherboard that would support it!
Yeah I pre-ordered the home premium from play, they have been going in and out of stock all day from all the stores, bit ridiculous.
That price is the absolute limit for me to buy an OS, if it was more I wouldn't bother and just wait for a new computer. An OS isn't a "fun" thing which they always try to sell it as, it's a component of a computer which you need. If you've already got one, you don't "need" another so all Microsoft can sell is reliability and speed. People will pay for both but can cope without them, so the "value" of Windows isn't anywhere near £150, that's crazy money.
@Gordon - I agree no need at the minute and would need a 1366 triple channel board to exceed it but remember when people thought 32bit was enough? :p
I dont see windows 7 being replaced for a while and when XP came out 1GB RAM was like having a Gold Toilet, now I have 8GB and tbh thats a bit much but in the next 8 years alot could change!
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"There's no tangible benefit at this stage and no consumer motherboard that would support it!"
Hey just about every top end consumer X58 Mother board supports up to 24GB's RAM. I'd stick 24GB in my build if the 4GB chips weren't so expensive! I have no doubt I will upgrade over time ;)
I was unaware that MS had imposed limits on the RAM on it various OS's...that's pretty lame, but I {i}suppose{/i} I can cope with 12GB's for the time being :)
The timing, marketing and even the name 'Windows 7' are going to prove to be an unbeatable formula for Microsoft over the next few months.
I bought my allotted 3 copies from PC world who will mail them to me for a total cost of LESS THAN 140 quid!
Having run RC on 3 computers for a while (including an Acer netbook) I can relax about my shares in this company too... (Up over 4% today!)
XP very quickly seems 'old hat' after using this and Vista victims finally have something to celebrate!
(PS... in the UK this new operating system does NOT come with an internet browser so download one and put it on a disc/card/stick BEFORE you upgrade or you'll be a bit buggered trying to check your email, etc.) Bloody interfering Euro idiots trying to save the world by trashing it first!
I doubt whether Microsoft will really allow stocks of this 'promotion' to really run out but just in case - get yours TODAY!
@Keldon - I think the key with Windows 7 is it won't be around for 8 years like XP. Think Microsoft will move to a more incremental, dare I say it, OS X model in future.
Just curious, but I always thought that in the UK for a price to be advertised as a "reduction" the goods had to have been previously offered at the higher price.
I believe MS still have time to decide the implementation of the 'e' version. The 'no browser at all' possibility has been thrown about, and seems backwards, but this is still to be confirmed.
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@Gordon: You say "OS X Model" and I read "start charging for service packs"
@Martin Daler: To advertise as a reduction, it has to be lower than the RRP and/or MSRP. In this case, the MSRP is £150 for Home Premium, reduced to £50 for the pre-order period.
@ Greg - er, no, this is the price the manufacturer is offering also. The so called "reduction" is an illusion, based on a comparison against a fictitious price which has never pevailed.
This is from the OFT:
"The judgment clarified that for a trader's higher price to be genuine the goods must be offered for sale at that price in significant quantities and for a sufficient length of time for potential customers to be aware that the goods are for sale, to consider whether to purchase them and for such transactions to have taken place"
Clearly Windows 7 has never been offered or sold at the higher price. And yet traders are advertising "70% reduction".
I don't see MS adopting an OSX model, they're probably just go back to the way they did things before XP, releasing a new OS every few years.
Ordered mine from Amazon yesterday morning. I'm really hoping that in the next 3 months, the "no browser/no upgrade" packaging of the E version changes - though I suspect it won't. Clean installs are clearly best anyway, but it's only 14 months since I completed the build of my Vista system on home brew hardware, and although it's fairly straightforward to plan a refresh in detail (I'm very systematic about keeping records of product keys, etc), it's a long winded process installing and updating all the drivers and software again, changing iTunes computer registrations, etc. My inclination is to partition the HD and build a parallel system then cut over. Actually it could be fun :-)
>"My inclination is to partition the HD and build a parallel system then cut over. Actually it could be fun :-)"
Freak. ;)
Seriously, if you're worried about leaving something behind when you do a clean install, just get a new hard disk to install 7 on. They're so cheap these days, it will save you a lot of hassle and it's safer than resizing partitions, which I've occasionally found to be a hit-and-miss practice.
Regarding the internet browser that won't be bundled with Windows 7, surely Microsoft can offer it as an optional update for those that need some sort of internet browser, even if just to download another browser?
Yeah, thats me, loadsa fun mucking around with computer hardware and software for the sake of it, used to be my career , now its a hobby lol.
And yeah, I did have at the back of my mind filling the second hard drive slot in my newish PC with another 500GB drive, installing W7 on that, then after eventual cutover, turning it into a RAID setup..
@darkspark88: You'd think so. As much as people berate Microsoft (often rightly so), they're not idiots. I can't imagine that they'll supply an OS without some means of downloading a web browser. I couldn't tell you what their solution is (even Microsoft might not know yet), but I think they will make it very simple for the user.
> "then after eventual cutover, turning it into a RAID setup."
Sounds like a plan, but that's RAID 1 I hope. If you're planning on RAID 0 or 5 then you should ideally have identical drives with identical firmware, which is difficult to achieve if you didn't procure the drives at the same time. Building the RAID array might also wipe your existing data, so you would need to image the drive first. All very boring, but that probably sounds like fun to you... ;)
@Chris - we've already covered that Microsoft will send separate CDs with IE8 on them to suppliers who can bundle them with Windows 7 E if they want to. Of course other browser rivals may well do the same.
@Gordon: That may end up being their only (rather limp-wristed) solution, but I can see Microsoft providing an additional mechanism for downloading a browser. For example, Amazon gives instructions on how to download a browser from another PC, but they also say:
'We will update these pages periodically with further information on how you may access the internet with Windows 7 as we receive it.'
I wouldn't be surprised if MS provide some some sort of mechanism for downloading a browser from within the OS, but right now it seems nobody knows.
Thanks for the reminder. Got a Pro on order for main PC (I need the virtual XP), a Home for the laptop, a Home for a future kid's PC/project and a Pro for my father's business PC.
I have found Win 7 great in RC guise as my main OS. 1st thing I have preferred to XP and so much better than the waste-of-cash Vista which is sat on my shelf.
<i>"but I can see Microsoft providing an additional mechanism for downloading a browser..."</i>
Well that remains to be seen. Right now the half wits in the EU are scared to death of anything that makes money so Microsoft are essentially handcuffed into putting out inadequate software just to keep these Nazis happy.
You'd think that, these days, an essential component of any operating system would be a means of connecting to the internet... but evidently the EU don't think so!
...and apparently the European version with no browser requires a clean install, whereas the US version allows an upgrade install from Vista....
I'd do a clean install myself anyway - but not everyone would if they had the choice to upgrade and keep their existing setup. As far as "protecting the consumer goes" the EU has really made a good effort at making our lives more awkward.
As for the whole browser monopoly argument - who cares? Non tech-savvy folks just want access to the net...they don't care what browser they use. And for those of us that choose to run a different browser (I use Firefox), we know where to check out reviews, comparisons and where to download alternatives from. I don't need the EU to "help" me!
Also, if PC manufacturers start to charge the browser companies to be the exclusive browser on their machines, Opera (who brought the complaint about IE to the EU) will lose out big time against the financial clout of MS and Google.
Well so much for amazon offering HP for £50 until 9/08/2009 its already upto £75. They are just cashing in on hte hype imho. I certainly will not be ordering from amazon.
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