Possible evidence of 3-PC Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack licensing

So now a family needing three copies has to guess whether the current $49 pricing times 3 is higher or lower than the unannounced family pack price. (For two, the promotion is clearly better; for 3, it's very likely better. And a planned new machine isn't part of the 3 in the package.) Fortunately, the copies ordered at the promotional price can be cancelled if desired..

Good...hopefully they move forward with the Family Pack licensing...and hopefully they announce pricing soon, so that the scenario that johnbaxter describes does not haunt too many people. --tayme

Oh, i hope this works on the pre-order software. After all, isn't it the same Windows 7 software as the regular pricing? If the pre-order is crippled, then why should we get it(besides the great price)?

If they offer it anywhere near the price ratios between "one vs 3-pack" as seen in similar Office offers - that would be great! Office "Home and Student" (Word, Excel, Ppt, OneNote) which can be installed on up to 3 computers is just around 80-85$ here in Croatia, while SBE (Word, Xls, Ppt, Publisher and Outlook) is whooping 420$, 5x the price... By that logic, if Win 7 Professional is 299$, tripple-family-pack of Windows 7 Home Premium should be just 60$ :) Ok, I'll be glad even if it is 199$, that's still just 65$ per computer, with Office, that would be under 100$ per computer. Now THAT would be an offer you can't refuse!

Even though this topic may potentially generate a lot of On Topic discussion, I have an off topic post I would like to make, because I'll probably never have another chance to share it: For those who have a problem with Bing looking like the Kayak site: http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=lindsay+lohan+world+music+awards&d=7626... Did Microsoft copy Googles format? Once again stealing a best practice for displaying relevent data, like they did in the Kayak/Microsoft malarky? No. Because it is best practice. Also, when I did this horrific search, Bing returned results for the recent news that Denise Richards replaced Lindsay Lohan at the World Music Awards. Google, however, returned news of Lindsay lohan being booed offstage from 2008 and other non-sense like her expected to host the awards in 2009. It wasn't until 5 hits down that the recent news, which I obviously wanted, was presented. Google even returned Youtube videos of Ms. Lohan from the 2008 awards. Google, after many years, has finally let me down. Or wait, did Google let me down thousands of times before and I didn't even know about it? I wonder...but nonetheless, I digress... When I finally decided to do a Bing search, it performed much better. And you know why I decided to do a Bing search? Because I saw a Microsoft Bing commercial an hour earlier. Marketing, such a tricky thing.

I tell you what... as much as I like Microsoft, they have really dropped the ball on this whole 'pricing' thing this time around. I'm still fuming over the fact that the only way I can take advantage of the special offer is to DOWNGRADE from Vista Ultimate to 7 Home Premium... And now the emerging details of the maybe we will/maybe we won't family pack vs The limited time deal! Aaaaagh!! Maybe I will just stick with Vista Ultimate (it's pretty much Win 7 anyways)

all, Such incentives are not new to Windows. In fact, Windows Vista Ultimate owners throughout the OS's lifecycle, could and can, purchase an additional copy of Windows Vista Home Premium at a greatly reduced rate. It was/is but one of the reasons for users to buy Vista Ultimate in the first place. As others have mentioned, MS Office Home and Student may be installed on up to three computers - as one could with Windows Live OneCare and finally and most often ignored, is the Zune subscription, which allows three separate users, devices and computers to share one account - three poeple and their devices for the price of one! This is nothing new to Microsoft's sales strategy.

@iSwallow "Looks like Microsoft is copying yet another Apple innovation." If a 'Family Pack' is what Mac users consider 'innovation' then they're really scrapping the bottom of the barrel here.

"The part of still laughing at is the "while supplies last" caveat. Supplies? Of what? They haven't even pressed the DVDs yet. Or, do we mean "supplies" of a download. Hilarious" Of Product Keys. Supply of product keys.

"Of Product Keys. Supply of product keys" Can't they pirate them like everyone else?

If I was running Ultimate I'd be pissed too. That said I got my upgrades for $39 and $89 respectively from Micro Center so the price is fine by me. A family pack for 3 is plenty enough for most households the price doesn't have to compare that closely to Apple since their upgrade model has you upgrading your OS every 2 years

@iSwallow: Are you just trying to shake things up and get people complaining back to you? I honestly can't imagine you or anyone truly believe what you said...It is to ridiculous. Beyond that, I was really surprised that my parents copy of Office'07 was good on 3 PCs! That was a great surprise! I remember buying student copies of Office and using one copy for all the PCs in my house. ^-^ They never needed to be activated or checked. On my old Gateway Solo the copy of XP pro had a 2 user key. I had used the copy of XP on another machine and was surprised one day to read the product key sticker to actually see it say a 2 user license. Go Gateway and Microsoft for that!! :D If this holds true, and I hope it does, it justifies the higher price for me. By buying the $120 upgrade I would just be paying about $40 per PC. :)

Well, Bal; What MS marketing was thinking was, "hey. if we do a really odd/strange/gross video then people will tell their friends about it and we get TONS of free viral marketing coverage." Thanks for helping out and hope you're enjoying both IE 8 and whatever you're hiding with IE 8's InPrivate Browsing features so the people in your life don't suffer from O.M.G.I.G.P.