By Jin Nan Goto
Microsoft released information on Windows 7 pricing. Essentially Windows 7 will be made available for the same price as Windows Vista with the exception of Home Premium which will get a price cut of $10 for the upgrade and $40 for the retail version.
From June 26-July 11 Microsoft and retailers such as Best Buy and Amazon will offer pre-orders for Windows 7 with a special upgrade price of $49.99 for Home Premium and $99.99 for Professional.
As with the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft will offer free upgrades to Windows 7 for all computers running Windows Vista Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. Although as with Vista details of the free upgrade (particularly regarding extras fees) will be left up to the OEMs. a
All the OEMs will be able to ship Windows 7 for all languages by the Oct 22 launch. All languages will be made available for the retail version by the end of October. In Europe, The full version of Windows 7E (created in response to the Anti-trust investigation in the EU) will be offered at the upgrade price until December 31st when upgrade versions are expected to be made available.
So here are the Prices:
Windows 7 Home Premium (upgrade version) – $119.99
Windows 7 Home Premium (full) – $199.99
Windows 7 Professional (upgrade version) – $199.99
Windows 7 Professional (full) – $299.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (upgrade) – $219.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (full) – $319.99
Prices and details about the expected Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade where you can go from one version of Windows 7 to another higher version have not been released yet. Also no word on any type of Family Plan or multiple license discount, but keep your fingers crossed.
My Thoughts:
Overall I’m not surprised at the prices, although I had hoped that Microsoft be more aggressive with the price cutting. I didn’t expect them to cut prices as drastically as Apple did with Snow Leopard ($129 was cut to $29) but a 10% discount across the board in this economy would have been nice. Still the special offer for preordering Windows 7 gives pretty substantial savings so I suggest that people take advantage of that deal.
By Jin Nan Goto
If you downloaded the official Windows 7 Beta back in January (build 7000 if you’re keeping track of these things), it’s license expires on July 1st and Windows will start automatically shutting down every two hours. So now is a very good time to move on from the beta to the Release Candidate(build 7100). Unlike the beta the RC will continue to function. You can download the RC until August 15 and it will stay valid until march 2010.
You can download the RC from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx. If you are so inclined you can try and get the latest build of Windows 7. Although these are not released by Microsoft and are really only available from somewhat questionable sources **cough—bittorrent. If you go for these later builds, be sure to check the MD5 checksum of these downloads to makes sure that you are not downloading and installing spyware and other unwanted additions. You can get a free md5 hashing tool from http://www.winmd5.com/.
By Jin Nan Goto
Back in November Microsoft announced that it will no longer sell Microsoft Live OneCare on June 30 and that the anti-virus aspect of OneCare will be replaced with a free Antivirus product codenamed “Morro”. Today a beta version of Morro has been released by Microsoft as Microsoft Security Essentials. The beta was released in 4 countries United states, Israel, Brazil and China.
I installed it on a couple of my machines and it seems to follow Microsoft’s claim that this is a leaner Antivirus with a low memory and processor footprint. The interface is very clean and simple as opposed to other anti-virus software. Overall it seems like a very good solution for a free anti-virus.
Screenshots
Installation went very smoothly. Although there were a lot more prompts than I would have liked.
Microsoft Security Essentials will only on validated Windows machines so it makes you pass validation before you can install it. This is pretty common for Microsoft’s downloads so I’m not going to complain too much about it.
Here’s the EULA
A reminder that you should only have one anti-virus software installed or else you will potentially have conflicts between the different AV products. In fact installing MSE will also disable Windows Defender (Vista’s built in Antispyware software).
Once you get though all the prompts the installation breezed through very quickly.
Installation is complete and you are prompted to download the latest Definitions and run a scan.
The interface is very clean and Changing the time and frequency for the weekly scans is very easy.
Not being willing to download an actual real virus to my computer just to get a screenshot, I downloaded the Eicar Test Virus and MSE immediately flagged it as possible malicious code.
It removed the test virus and everything turned back to a calming green.
By Jin Nan Goto
A download page for the Windows 7 Release Candidate was mistakenly posted on Microsoft TechNet. The leaked download page was taken down shortly and now is directed to the Beta download page. Interestingly, the RC download page was dated May 2009. It’s a very clear sign that we are going to a final release of Windows 7 later this year, just in time for Back to school sales and the holiday.
You can see a copy of the RC download page at ArsTechnica.
By Jin Nan Goto
Microsoft announced today that it will discontinue the sale of it’s Windows Live OneCare suite on June 30, 2009. Live OneCare is a commercial all-in-one anti-malware/security/backup/network management/kitchen sink application, and it will be replaced by a free downloadable anti-virus application code-named “Morro”.
Code-named “Morro,” this streamlined solution will be available in the second half of 2009 and will provide comprehensive protection from malware including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. This new solution, to be offered at no charge to consumers, will be architected for a smaller footprint that will use fewer computing resources, making it ideal for low-bandwidth scenarios or less powerful PCs. As part of Microsoft’s move to focus on this simplified offering, the company also announced today that it will discontinue retail sales of its Windows Live OneCare subscription service effective June 30, 2009.
Morro essentially branches off the anti-virus and anti-spyware portions of OneCare into a separate but free product. From the press release it’s not clear what the future relationship Morro will have with Microsoft’s other anti-malware program, Windows Defender. Will they ship as two separate applications or will the be combined. Also OneCare had other features other than Anti-malware and it’s not clear how those features will be replaced. While Microsoft hasn’t said so publicly, there is another Microsoft product that is also expected in the second half of 2009. That product is Windows 7. Coincidence?
This move seems to fit with Microsoft’s plans to move a lot of bundled applications off Windows 7 and into the Windows Live Suite. Bloggers have for years pointed to Windows Movie Maker as evidence of how bloated Windows had become. In Windows 7 Movie Maker will no longer be bundled with Windows and will be offered as a free downloadable program. Offering Morro as a free download rather than bundling it with Windows also has the advantage that it makes it much less likely that Microsoft will face the same kind of legal issues from the US Justice Department and the EU than it faced with its bundling of Internet Explorer and Window Media Player.
Links:
Microsoft Press Release
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/nov08/11-18NoCostSecurityPR.mspx
OneCare Blog Entry
http://windowsonecare.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C29701F38A601141!10418.entry
