Microsoft has officially announced the price information for its upcoming well apraised operating system windows 7. windows 7 prices are going to be cheaper then windows vista when it was released.

Windows 7 will be release in 6 flavours (as of I know) as Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. Compare the versions here. Prices for Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate are,

Even though the prices are lesser then windows vista, people are disappointed in price tag as they were expecting more cheap copies. Thankfully, retail pricing is typically used as a starting point; most users will not be buying retail versions anyway. Retail sales account for less than 5 percent of Windows sales, the rest of sales are via OEM. Some consumers will either grab an OEM copy via an online or in-store purchase, but most will be getting a copy of Windows 7 with the next purchase of their PC.

Windows XP users will have to perform a clean installation of windows 7 even if they buy full or upgrade version. There is no upgrade available for window xp users which ever edition they are currently using.

Windows Vista users can upgrade their existing vista operating system to windows 7 system. If the user is moving to lower windows 7 edition from current higher vista edition then they have to do the clean installation. and if the user is moving to higher windows 7 edition from lower windows vista edition then they can perform the upgrade.

Microsoft had offered to give windows Home premium and Proffessional edition in very low price in its Pre-Order program. Home Premium was availble at 50$ and Professional was available at 100$. People who are commited to buy windows 7 could have avail this offer and get the benifit. This reduced priced pre-order was only available to US and Canada. This offer is now ENDED. Pre-order offer for UK, Germany and france will last from 15th July to 14th August.

Microsoft has also revealed another interesting aspect of the launch of Windows 7 in Europe. You may have heard that Microsoft is going to offer Windows 7 without internet explorer in Europe. Windows 7 E will be sold exclusively in Europe and one of the side-effects is that Europeans will not be able to upgrade to Windows 7. That’s right, no Windows 7 upgrades will be sold in Europe. But that’s good news apparently as Microsoft has made the decision to sell Windows 7 full versions with the upgrade price tag in Europe.

Still the price is yet to be release for India. Hope microsoft will take wise move by cheaper pricing otherwise piracy will increase . But dont give stupid edition like starter edition in cheaper rate ..