Friday, July 10, 2009

windows 7 pre-order offer

Today and tomorrow - July 10 and 11 are your last days to pre-order Windows 7 at Microsoft's special price of $49 for Home Premium Upgrade and $99 for Professional Upgrade. You order today or tomorrow but don't pay until the operating system is shipped on October 22.
You can find even better prices from some of the participating retailers like Costco.

Microsoft is also offering free upgrades to Windows 7 from Windows Vista for any new PC you buy from now until October.
You'll probably still be able to get cheaper licenses from Tech Soup for your library computers after Windows 7 is shipped. But this is a good opportunity to upgrade your home computers. I bought a copy for my Acer netbook.

The system requirements are not as high as for Windows Vista. It reportedly runs great on netbooks. But you still might want to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to make sure your PC will be able to run the new OS.
And if you prefer to try before you buy, Microsoft is offering Windows 7 Release Candidate free for download until the end of July 2009. You can use it until June 2010 before it expires and you have to buy a copy.
I've heard that the Release Candidate is very stable but you're generally advised not to try on your only PC and/or on any computer that is absolutely vital to your operations. And for library use, it's a pretty good idea to wait a bit on new software and operating systems and let someone else work the bugs out for you.

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