AfterDawn: News

New Vista PC buyers to get free upgrade to Windows 7

Microsoft has said today that new consumers who buy Vista PCs before the much anticipated Windows 7 operating system launches in October will get a free upgrade to the new OS.

To get added "buzz," the company said it will also be taking pre-orders for the operating system beginning June 26th, offering Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49 USD and Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for $99, about half off their suggested retail prices.



Beta testers and users of leaked 7 RCs say the new operating system runs much smoother then Vista does, as well as faster booting, and less UAC pop-ups.

Any consumer that purchases Vista Premium, Business or Ultimate beginning tomorrow will be given a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it becomes available on October 22nd. Vista Basic is not eligible, and Microsoft says the promotion will run until January 2010.

The pre-order sale will start tomorrow in the US, Canada and Japan and next month in the UK, France, and Germany. Microsoft expects to sell out within 2 weeks at the promotional prices.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 25 Jun 2009 23:54

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• 27 comments

• llongtheD

  How about free, for the upgrade as well.

  26.6.2009 00:14 #1

• DoomLight

  i never really looked at Windows 7. does it look any different?

  26.6.2009 00:21 #2

• llongtheD

  Its a little more polished, and a little faster. Basically a completed Vista. so we get to pay double, for the same operating system. Excuse me, we'll get a discount for the work they should have finished on vista.

  26.6.2009 00:33 #3

• arcanix

  My W7 RC1 crashes every time when I try to install ati drivers or start firefox.

  26.6.2009 03:25 #4

• gsebs

  Microsoft blowing off their own top, after the crap they put out with vista, wanting us to pay full price. There needs to be pressure put onto Microsoft to offer a Micro price, there is no real upgrade on vista it is the completion.

  26.6.2009 03:30 #5

• omegaman7

  I have had extremely few problems regarding windows 7 RC. Only one to speak of. Which could simply be due to incompatibility. Not sure on that one. A certain game spontaneously turns the volume down itself. I believe it has something to do with the volume mixer incorporated into windows 7. But last time I played it, the problem was gone. Ive heard that microsoft is dealing with few bugs there are, swiftly/quickly via auto updates. Provided my testing continues this way, I will be one of the first in line for the legitimate release.

  26.6.2009 03:40 #6

• XSilvenX

  LMAO when deals like this comes out it's always funny to think about the people who purchased Vista ONE single day before...you'd think they'd call up Microsoft and beg for the free upgrade, after all it is only ONE day and shouldn't really be set in stone right? Hehe.
  
  Ah well, Release Candidate is fine at the moment imo, it has weird issues with MPEGs I find but other than that it's a pretty solid OS.

  26.6.2009 04:09 #7

• kalboy

  well i hope they include australia in this .and lets hope its 'free'

  26.6.2009 04:40 #8

• keith1993

  WRONG Quote:users of leaked 7 RCs 7 RCs been official for months and months and months and in fact still is http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

  26.6.2009 06:35 #9

• Wanpa-Kun

  Quote:WRONG Quote:users of leaked 7 RCs 7 RCs been official for months and months and months and in fact still is " target="_blank">http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx
  
  If you had bothered to quote the whole sentence you would have seen that it says "Beta tester and users of leaked 7RCs ..." You are wrong.

  26.6.2009 09:34 #10

• keith1993

  WTF why am I wrong!
  Quote:Beta testers and users of leaked 7 RCs say the new operating system runs much smoother then Vista does, as well as faster booting, and less UAC pop-ups.The beta section has past (and was available officially). And why the hell would you get a leaked RC when there's the official one! The slightly newer versions that have been leaked offer only a few tiny tiny differences that have been added to build 7000 via update. Also what invisible information did quoting the whole sentence give?

  26.6.2009 10:31 #11

• vyze

  Quote:WTF why am I wrong!
  Quote:Beta testers and users of leaked 7 RCs say the new operating system runs much smoother then Vista does, as well as faster booting, and less UAC pop-ups.The beta section has past (and was available officially). And why the hell would you get a leaked RC when there's the official one! The slightly newer versions that have been leaked offer only a few tiny tiny differences that have been added to build 7000 via update. Also what invisible information did quoting the whole sentence give?The fact that it was leaked is what prompted Mircosoft to make it public. If one got the leaked version then the time limit of it was cracked and could interfere and prevent the need to purchase a final copy.
  
  I'm surprised that no one has noticed that what they are doing is, once again, a copy of what Apple does with their upgrades. Just Apple charges $29 for one copy and $49 for a family pack (up to 5) and Microsoft charges $49 or $99.

  26.6.2009 11:10 #12

• engage16

  After reading through the comments I'd like to clear a few things up...
  The RC was officially released to the public on May 5th if I'm not mistaken. It was leaked on P2P on May 29th when M$ released it to TechNET and MSDN subscribers... Other than a few MINOR incompatibility issues that are due to kernel bugs apparent in both 7 and Vista the RC is absolutely amazing. I've had no lockups, no BSODs, a few program crashes (due to issues between a driver and a game). I've found my laptop to be EXTREMELY more responsive and it boots in seconds and not minutes like with Vista... The more recent leaks have been from the .72xx builds which are the Pre-RTM builds, there have been many bug fixes and a few minor changes that are noticeable. Until you actually try the OS and run it for a while to adjust to the differences, please try not to pass judgement. Its the best OS M$ has come out with in, well ever...
  

  Custom built AMD XP 2200+, 80gb HDD, 200gb HDD, 764mb RAM, SONY CD-RW 52x CRX230E, SONY DVD-RW 16x DL DRU-800A, ATI Raedon 9600 128mb
  Laptop- AMD Athlon X2 64 @1.9ghz, 4gb ddr2 @667mhz, 120 gb hdd, nVidia GeForce 8200m, 8x DVD-DL Burner, 15.4" widescreen, Windows 7 RC
  V9 PS2 with clear blue fliptop& swapmagic 3.6
  iPhone 3G 8GB FW 2.2.1 w/ Jailbreak
  30gb Black Video iPod

  26.6.2009 12:23 #13

• ee2skater

  Ooooh bad news for my girlfriend, who just bought a brand new laptop with Vista... oh about 9 days ago. Had I known about this sooner I would've told her to hold off..

  26.6.2009 12:50 #14

• omegaman7

  I read somewhere that people buying vista, get a free upgrade. Im not sure if 9 days ago is in that window of opportunity though. But I would imagine, if you talk to the right people, you may just get lucky...

  26.6.2009 13:06 #15

• bomber991

  Originally posted by ee2skater: Ooooh bad news for my girlfriend, who just bought a brand new laptop with Vista... oh about 9 days ago. Had I known about this sooner I would've told her to hold off..Oh snap, same thing with my mom. My dad just bought her a brand new laptop 11 days ago. lol.
  
  I told his dumbass to get her a mac. He got her a giant-ass acer laptop. Thing weighs 10 pounds but it's got something like a 19in widescreen on it.
  
  Costs the same as a brand new macbook. Granted it was the lowest model one, but at least it's portable. He didn't want to get her the mac though because it was "slower" and had less hard drive storage. I told him mom's not gonna notice anyway.

  26.6.2009 17:12 #16

• ThePastor

  It's not exactly clear so I looked it up...
  The upgrade price applies to any Vista or XP owner...
  And it looks like it's for a limited time only, like it's only available if you pre-order.
  
  The upgrade price is not available for Win7 Ultimate.
  
  So, My XP Pro is about 7 years old or so... I guess $100 every 7 years is acceptable.
  
  Another good question would be: Does an upgrade cause the upgraded (old) software license to expire? It never did in the past.
  So, if I upgrade to Win7 I'll then have an XP Pro and a Win7 license.
  
  I've heard that Windows is really trying hard to faze out XP so they may use this as a tool to do that.
  
  And BTW: I've been using the Win7(RC) since it was officially released on an AMD 1.8Ghz with 1.5GB ram and it works great. I doubt Vista would even boot on that machine. It runs great. Minimal issues. I had to upgrade my Vid card (and got the ONLY AGP card I could find!) but now, no issues whatsoever.

  26.6.2009 17:18 #17

• OmriSama

  Will I get to upgrade if I bought Vista with an HP PC in September 2 years ago?

  26.6.2009 18:09 #18

• blueboy09

  Originally posted by DoomLight: i never really looked at Windows 7. does it look any different? Not really, just some modifications visually, and some alterations in the UI, but it's the performance is where it really shines at. With a smaller memory and storage footprint, this will help out Win7 dramatically, especially since sources have already stated that it's possible for the OS to run on even a Pentium II system, only much slower with a loadup time at around 17 min, YIKES!!! All aside, this OS is much better than Vista, and runs on par with XP, IMO. - BLUEBOY

  26.6.2009 20:24 #19

• DVDBack23

  I just pre-ordered Win 7 Premium "upgrade" for $50 USD and will clean install it on a new desktop I am building. Thanks for the discount Microsoft, $50 for Win 7 is more than reasonable, IMHO.

  26.6.2009 21:04 #20

• rvinkebob

  Originally posted by DVDBack23: I just pre-ordered Win 7 Premium "upgrade" for $50 USD and will clean install it on a new desktop I am building. Thanks for the discount Microsoft, $50 for Win 7 is more than reasonable, IMHO.So I got an e-mail from Microsoft that pretty much says "you've been using Windows 7 for a while now" (RC1 I assume, cause I'm using it daily), "so we're offering you Windows 7 at a great introductory price of $64.99 for Home Premium and Professional for $124.99".
  
  So I want to get two things straight. First off, they're actually giving me Windows 7 "Final" for only $64.99/$124.99 just because I've been using RC1? And second, did you or anyone else get a similar e-mail?
  
  If this is true and there is no catch to it, I'm pre-ordering as soon as I can! Considering I never bought Windows Vista, $65 is a great price for a new Windows OS upgrade since XP especially when it's much more robust than Vista.
  

  
  

  27.6.2009 01:38 #21

• xnonsuchx

  Originally posted by arcanix: My W7 RC1 crashes every time when I try to install ati drivers or start firefox.You may have a piece of hardware W7 doesn't like. Even memory DIMMs can cause flakey behavior in W7 that doesn't occur under XP, but would likely exhibit the same behavior under Vista (or Server 2003 even).
  
  W7 is considerably better than Vista (aka "W7 alpha"), but still has some not-so-great things about it. One thing is the Program Compatibility Assistant Service, which appears to disable software that works perfectly fine (with NO explanation of the supposed incompatibility), so has to be disabled to use some older programs. One of these programs is MS's Virtual PC 2007...which is apparently disabled because they want to offer only a newer Virtual PC for W7 Business & Ultimate users (that also requires a CPU less than ~2 years old).
  
  Personally, I think they should offer it as a free upgrade to ALL Vista users since Vista was the Windows Me-like kludging together of a new OS just to have a new OS out.

  27.6.2009 03:02 #22

• xnonsuchx

  Originally posted by ee2skater: Ooooh bad news for my girlfriend, who just bought a brand new laptop with Vista... oh about 9 days ago. Had I known about this sooner I would've told her to hold off..Still within a 14-30 day return period! Maybe the retailer would even play along and let her return it and re-buy it just to have an updated receipt.

  27.6.2009 03:14 #23

• omegaman7

  There you go buddy :D If the Retailer is bestbuy, I suspect they wont give you any trouble LOL! Their return policy is excellent, much like walmart.

  27.6.2009 03:17 #24

• Xplorer4

  Originally posted by omegaman7: There you go buddy :D If the Retailer is bestbuy, I suspect they wont give you any trouble LOL! Their return policy is excellent, much like walmart.
  HA, tell that to my dad. He once bought an IBM PC at BB back in the day. Well I cant recall the problem but long story short he spent several hours on the phone with IBM for about 2-3 days in a row. They had him digging around inside the PC doing all sorts of things like checking connections and so on and so forth. Well finally they told him, it was screwed. They said take it back to BB. Well since IBM told my dad to open the case, they wouldnt honor the warranty. Then dont even get me started on the horrible geek squad reviews all over the net. I talked to one once and he was complete idiot.
  
  As for the upgrade, I think I am going to take advantage of it. I have only used Win 7 a little bit but my girls lap top runs Win7 primarily because Vista refuses to accept drivers for her WNIC. I dont think I will upgrade right away. Although it seems great, I think I will give it a month or two and see how Win 7 Final runs for others before taking the leap.

  27.6.2009 21:28 #25

• omegaman7

  LOL! Ive dealt with incompetent people at bestbuy :) Most have been pretty young people ive dealt with (over confident, and arrogant). Although, my experience with them has been ok. Sorry to hear about your dads experience. I actually haven't been in their store in well over a year. I buy most of my stuff through Newegg :D and haven't had to do an Rma before. Though, im now dealing with an MSI board (1yr old), that i'll have to deal with MSI to get it taken care of.
  
  Sorry about off topic.

  27.6.2009 21:34 #26

• borhan9

  I think this is a great idea to have a free upgrade for new consumers of vista.
  
  I may upgrade this laptop i am using now to Windows 7 64bit.
  
  Not all upgrades are going to be free due to Microsoft wanting to make money however they see possible just normal business practice moral or otherwise.

  28.6.2009 18:35 #27