Windows 7 OEM price even cheaper if you get Vista Upgrade first
| Windows 7 SKU | Full retail MSRP 3 | OEM full install MSRP | Comparable Vista SKU | Full retail MSRP | OEM full install MSRP |
| Home Premium | $199.99 | $99.99 1 | Home Premium | $224.99 | $89.99 2 |
| Professional | $299.99 | $134.99 1 | Business | $278.99 | $149.99 2 |
| Ultimate | $319.99 | $174.99 1 | Ultimate | $289.99 | $179.99 (32-bit) / $189.99 (64-bit) 2 |
1 Limited offer, expected to end October 20.
2 Comes with free Tech Guarantee Windows 7 upgrade coupon.
3 MSRP from Microsoft for sale October 22, pre-order prices may be lower.
As quoted by Newegg.com, September 29, 2009, 11:30 am EDT
A little over three weeks until global availability (GA) day for Windows 7, major software retailers have heavily discounted pre-orders for the OEM full-installation editions (minimal packaging), with Newegg offering the Home Premium SKU at $99.99. That's half the price of the MSRP for the full retail edition, and four cents more than a retail upgrade package.
But that's still not the least expensive option. For an indeterminate period of time, Newegg has slashed $20 off the OEM price of the Vista Home Premium SKU, marking it down to $89.99 and leaving the free Windows 7 Tech Guarantee upgrade coupon attached. It's a little less convenient, you're stuck with a copy of Vista you may never use, and your Windows 7 version is an upgrade rather than a full install, but you save ten bucks. In fact, the version without the Tech Guarantee coupon is $10 more; you would actually spend more money not to get the Win7 upgrade coupon.
Newegg today is also offering deals on the Professional and Ultimate SKUs, though for them, it's cheaper to go with the Windows 7 full-install OEM than with the comparable Vista version with upgrade coupon. A single license for the Win7 Professional SKU saves as much as $15 over the comparable Vista version, and Win7 Ultimate OEM will save you $5 over the comparable 32-bit edition, $15 over the 64-bit.
Curiously, the deals for single-license packages are better than for multiples today, as a three-pack Win7 Ultimate OEM runs $549.99, a three-pack Win7 Professional runs $409.99, and a three-pack Win7 Home Premium is priced at $349.99.
As we've mentioned here in Betanews before, a migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 is not altogether impossible, though it requires migrating through Vista first. There are definitely headaches involved, and many professionals suggest that those headaches can be avoided by either cleanly installing Windows 7 with a full install version, or create multiple boot partitions and place a clean Win7 in a new one alongside the older XP partition. As of now, the price for avoiding these headaches and reclaiming several lost hours -- at least for Home Premium installers -- is merely ten bucks.