Qashqarian

Microsoft today launched a promotion that discounts Windows 7 upgrades as much as 58% when customers also buy a new Windows 7 PC.

The deal, which was available Thursday from the likes of Amazon.com and Staples, applies when consumers purchase a new computer equipped with Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate.

Staples, for instance, will sell a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49.99, a 58% savings compared to the $119.99 list price, when buyers also purchase a new Windows 7 PC. Amazon, on the other hand, dropped the price of Home Premium Upgrade to $59.95, a savings of $60, or 50%. Under the promotion, Amazon also cut the price of Professional Upgrade to $115.99, an $85 savings (42% off) and Ultimate Upgrade to $139.99, an $80 savings (36% off) when customers ordered a new Windows 7 notebook or desktop at the same time.

Stephen Baker, an analyst with the NPD Group, which specializes in tracking retail sales, called the promotion "brilliant" in a blog post this morning. "It gives incentive to some of that huge XP installed base to do the right thing and upgrade into a new PC, while offering them a way to cost-effectively upgrade that companion notebook they have bought in the last two and one-half years. which is running Vista," Baker said.

"Windows 7 is even greater the more PCs that you have that run it," Baker said in a follow-up interview. "People aren't likely to go out today and buy multiple new PCs, but this is a great way to drive the value of Windows 7."

Baker called out Home Group, a new feature in Windows 7 that simplifies the task of setting up file-, printer-, photo- and music-sharing between Windows 7-equipped PCs on a home network, as one reason to upgrade as many home computers as possible to the new operating system.

According to Microsoft, one discounted copy of Windows 7 Upgrade can be bought per new PC, with the discount applicable to the same version as that which powers the PC. In other words, buyers of a new PC running Windows 7 Home Premium can purchase an upgrade copy of Home Premium at the discounted price, while consumers who buy a PC with Windows 7 Professional can get an upgrade copy of that edition at the reduced price.

Amazon, however, appears to be offering buyers of any Home Premium-, Professional- or Ultimate-equipped PC the discount for any of the three editions' upgrades. Buyers can order a notebook running Home Premium, for example, but buy an upgrade to Professional.

Some buyers are ineligible for the deal, however. New machines running the entry-level version of Windows 7, dubbed Starter, don't qualify, essentially preventing most purchasers of netbooks -- which are dominated by Windows 7 Starter -- from taking advantage of the promotion.

The discounted upgrade deal expires Jan. 2, 2010, and applies to consumers in the U.S. and U.K, as well as those in Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland and Slovakia. . Microsoft and its retail partners also started selling the $149.99 Windows 7 Family Pack today. The package lets buyers upgrade as many as three PCs from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium.

College students are eligible for a separate offer that prices Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade at $29.99.

Users are most concerned about Windows 7's migration and application compatibility issues, according to a sweeping survey of online forums, Web sites and social networking services, a support firm said today.

iYogi, a New York-based tech support company pushing Windows 7 upgrade services, said that it tracked tens of thousands of online conversations during the past week about Windows 7 to come up with the top 10 user worries about Microsoft's new operating system.

The company monitored 10 major forums, including MSDN, TechNet, Yahoo Answers and Google Groups; 25 sites posting user reviews, such as Amazon.com, CNET and Epinions.com; and social sources including Facebook and the micro-blogging service Twitter.

At the top of the iYogi list was concern about Windows 7's application compatibility and migration from earlier editions to the new OS. One sample question iYogi logged: "Do I need to re-install Microsoft Office when I upgrade to Windows 7?" (Answer: Yes, if upgrading from Windows XP.)

Microsoft has directly addressed compatibility concerns with the Windows 7 Compatibility Center, a site that launched yesterday, which lets users root through a massive database of hardware and software to find which peripherals and programs are up to snuff.

On the upgrade front, Microsoft has posted a several-step tutorial to guide Windows XP users through the process. (For more on upgrading from XP, see Computerworld's "FAQ: How to prep for an XP-to-Windows 7 upgrade.")

Second on iYogi's list were worries about Windows 7's new features -- how different the new OS is from the familiar XP -- while in third place were questions about its performance. "Is Windows 7 faster than XP or Vista?" asked one user, said iYogi. (Computerworld's Windows 7 expect, Preston Gralla, says yes.)

Other concerns ranged from getting ready for Windows 7 (No. 4) and the operating system's user interface (No. 5) to how much time it will take to install Windows 7 (No. 8) and whether its price will ever drop (No. 9).

Not surprisingly, iYogi also touted polls it conducted that claim nearly 70% of Windows users aren't "entirely comfortable" that they would be able to move their favorite applications to Windows 7.

Microsoft has built a Windows 7 help and support site that includes how-to videos, links to company-sponsored user-to-user forums, and answers to what it considers the top user-submitted questions.

Microsoft will host a New York City launch event tomorrow at 11 a.m. ET, when CEO Steve Ballmer will kick off a coming-out party.

Microsoft will put Windows 7 on store shelves and computer makers will have systems ready to sell with Vista's successor on Oct. 22, the company confirmed today.

Microsoft will also offer discounted or free upgrades to Windows 7 to users who buy PCs in the months leading up to the operating system's launch in a program dubbed "Windows Upgrade Option," a company spokeswoman said Tuesday. Although the name is new, the program had been reported as early as January, when a usually-reliable Web site leaked information about the deal, including its July 1 kick-off.

Until today, Microsoft had been coy about naming a release date for Windows 7, although it edged toward a timetable last month. Both Bill Veghte, the senior vice president who runs the Windows Business unit, and Steven Sinofsky, the senior vice president of the Windows engineering group, said then that Windows 7 was on track for the holiday selling season, and would make the final milestone -- called "release to manufacturing," or RTM -- in mid-August. Today, however, other company spokespersons said Microsoft is shooting for RTM by the end of July.

Details on the Windows Upgrade Option were not immediately available, but analysts have assumed that it would resemble Vista Express Upgrade, a program that gave people who purchased Windows XP PCs between Oct. 26, 2006, and March 15, 2007, free or inexpensive upgrades to Vista.

Vendors were allowed to set the price, if any, of the XP-to-Vista upgrades, and it's believed that they will have the same flexibility for Windows 7.

This isn't the first time that October has been named as the likely ship date for Microsoft's new OS. In an interview last month, an Acer executive based in the U.K. said "October 23 is the date that Windows 7 will be available." The executive, Bobby Watkins, the managing director of Acer's U.K. operations, also confirmed that customers who bought a Vista-powered computer from the company in the 30 days leading up to Oct. 23 would receive a free upgrade to Windows 7.

Also last month, Computerworld used Sinofsky's mid-August RTM date to predict that Windows 7 would go on sale sometime between Oct. 11 and Nov. 4, based on the actual timetables of Windows XP and Vista, respectively.