Upgrade Windows 7 Cheaply and Easily: Guide

Most of you must be looking to do away with the Windows 7 Starter on your netbooks, What if you had a short-cut to Windows 7 Home Premium or for that Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate. Frankly, the Windows 7 starter at best serves your primary needs like emailing and surfing needs, just enough for primary every-day work. Well, we’d like to share an easy and cheap way to upgrade your Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Home Premium to the Windows 7 Ultimate edition. Windows Anytime Upgrade (or WAU) makes it extremely easy to upgrade to higher edition of Windows 7 without burning a hole in your pocket.

Windows 7 starter to Windows 7 Home Premium

Upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium allows you to explore its advantageous features like Aero Peek and other improved functionality included in the Windows Taskbar of Windows 7 like Task Previews. Desktop themes are enabled and so is Remote Media Streaming.

Price: $79.99

Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional

Coming to the business professionals the Windows 7 Home Premium is not what you wanna have. Using WAU you can upgrade to Windows 7 Professional that allows you to join a domain and use Windows XP Mode to run older programs.

Price:$ 89.99

Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate

Still if you are looking for a more advanced and professional features, WAU allows you to move to Windows 7 Ultimate. Once you switch to the Ultimate edition, you have the features of all other editions. In addition, you get the BitLocker that keeps your USB devices encrypted and secure. For more, you can run your PC in any of 35 different languages (via Language Packs).

Price: $139.99

Now, where’s the edge - WAU reduces the price of moving from Home Premium to Ultimate to 12% in the US as compared to Vista pricing.

Other Prices for upgrade via WAU

• From Windows 7 Starter to Professional: $114.99
• From Windows 7 Starter to Ultimate: $164.99
• From Windows 7 Professional to Ultimate $129.99

How do you go about it?

Windows 7 is scheduled for release on October 22nd. After the release, WAU packages containing the upgrade key would be available at stores near you.

For those residing in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK or the US will be able to purchase the upgrade from Microsoft online directly within Windows 7.

Noticeably, WAU won’t test your patience, it’ll take take around ten minutes to upgrade whether you use WAU retail package or the online. This is due to the fact that, it requires only upgrade key (no media). Moreover, your current programs, files and settings would remain as it is.

Windows Anytime Upgrade  and Windows  Family Pack: Behind the Curtain

On Friday Microsoft declared details of two alternative ways to purchase Windows 7, Windows Anytime Upgrade and the Windows Family Pack. Like most of the other software giant’s Windows 7 pricing announcements was a combination of bad and good news.

Originally, Microsoft had created WAU for Windows Vista. In the primary version of the service customers could upgrade from Vista product editions (for instance, Windows Vista Basic) to others like (Windows Vista Home Premium). Now this was accompanied by a major shortcoming, Vista customers using WAU needed their original Vista Setup disc in order to perform the upgrade. Microsoft dropped the electronic upgrade option, requiring users to purchase WAU retail packages, which included Setup discs.

In Windows 7 WAU, Microsoft offers the electronic option. However, it’s a different story this time, as the upgrade would require no Setup disc. The entire software code required for the upgrade via WAU as been already installed on the hard drive. What’s most interesting - WAU pricing is somewhat less than similar upgrade options in Windows Vista ( depending on the products edition being upgraded).

All these prices are far less expensive than a full Windows 7 Upgrade package. Like for instance, Windows 7 Home Premium costs about $99.99, which $20 more than what would cost for an WAU upgrade from Starter to Home Premium.

Windows 7 family Pack

Although Microsoft has announced the Windows 7 Family Pack a few weeks ago, but there has been no specification on pricing or markets where the product would be launched. The news has a different face.

The Windows 7 Family Pack provides a Setup disc and three product keys for Windows 7 Home Premium. This would allow you to install the Home Pack in three PCs. It will cost just $149.99 in the US. This could be a significant saving, if you are looking to upgrade to three Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade boxes. Again, the story takes a twist here, as the Redmond company announced that it would only offer the Family Pack until the supplies last. So that makes it a temporary offer. Moreover the list of countries, where the Family Pack would be available has not been confirmed.

Well, it might turn out to be a Springboard story as it seems now, but with Windows sales dipping 29% in the most recent quarter, Steve Ballmer can always take his chances.