Have You Pre-Ordered Windows 7 Yet?

Microsoft have allowed Windows 7 to be pre-ordered at a sizeable discount. Mayhem immediately ensued.

Customers were allowed to make advance payment for a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (around £44.99) of Professional (around £88.99) prior to the official launch on 22nd October. Those prices are approximate as some suppliers have discounted below that. Almost immediately the websites concerned (Microsoft included) were swamped to the point of being unable to cope with demand. That's heartening as it means there are many folk out there who believe (as I do) that this latest version of Windows is well worth migrating to.

Many suppliers have sold their pre-order quota by now. I waited for my favourite supplier, ebuyer to offer the deal and promptly discovered it had sold up before I even got there. I eventually ordered from Currys online, not out of choice (they are really hard to deal with in the High Street) but out of necessity - the Professional version will retail at around £212.00 after 22nd October, a price I would be grieved to pay.

I see that Comet still have the offer on their site, but as I write the Home Premium offer has been withdrawn.

I think this is fantastic. Win 7 is certainly the best Microsoft operating system to date. Obviously many others share my opinion. And it is being rolled out early after a thorough Beta testing period so it should be stable. The only downside I can see is that a clean install is required (just did that for the Release Candidate), though that should not be too much of a hassle using my backup drive and the program disks I keep to hand.

At least the junk and clutter will have gone.

Oh, one last thought. Make sure you download Internet Explorer 8 before you reformat and install - European customers will find themselves browserless otherwise. You can use it to download Firefox ;-)