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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..

I so hope they do this

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

This may just be the "regular" package price after Windows 7 gets GA.

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)?

"Fortunately, the copies ordered at the promotional price can be cancelled if desired.."

Exactly. I don't know why people created such a big fuss, because they can go in and cancel the order anyway. People just like to complain, I guess.

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!

"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."

More likely than not, lower. If I were to make a decision, I would go for the promotional offer and cancel it if the family license turned out to be cheaper.

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:

cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx

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.

Looks like Microsoft is copying yet another Apple innovation. As usual its not quite right as it's priced higher for an inferior product.

Paul and Leo should be happy otherwise seeing that they brought up this lapse many times during their podcast.

"Obviously, this is a big deal if true"

Bigger than XP mode that is for sure.  

iSwallow what a troll comment.  MS has offered multi-packs on Office so its not exactly new to them.  I would bet that MS does not do this on the OS side because there wont be many taking advantage of it.  Retail sales of Windows are something like 1% of sales, as the average PC user upgrades hardware faster than the average Mac user and they get their new OS with a new PC.  IT/geeks that want to be legal will tear this up, outside of that I just dont see a Joe User house hould with 3 Windows PC's buying this and upgrading all of them.

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)

"Looks like Microsoft is copying yet another Apple innovation."

What, quantity discounts are an Apple innovation now?  You guys really grasp for straws sometimes...

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.

@johnbaxtor

You are just complaining. Yup, it might be so that the family pack offers a very good price. If you buy retail, over the next few years you will probably appreciate it. Otherwise, as is pointed, you can cancel the early bargain.

@iswallow

Offering a "3-pack" is hardly an Apple innovation. Nor is offering a 'family pack' nor 'family size' nor 'jumbo size' nor 'two-for-one'. Geesh. Why do Apple guys always seem so desparate? Furthermore, Microsoft does offers Student pricing on many products, and offers MSDN and Technet subscriptions for professionals etc. etc.

And they've yet ever to charge for a service pack.

@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.

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"And now the emerging details of the maybe we will/maybe we won't family pack vs The limited time deal! Aaaaagh!! "

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.

I do hope they have a family pack deal. It would only seem fair to customers willing to have -several- PCs in their homes....

"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.

Shark,

Microsoft is running out of product keys ;). Who knew.

I do understand that Microsoft may want to limit the number of sales at that price, and also try to create a sales spike with that language to create a PR buzz; I just find the phrasing odd.

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"Of Product Keys. Supply of product keys"

Can't they pirate them like everyone else?

Pingback from  Possible evidence of 3-PC Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack licensing | Windows Seven 7

As Paul said this is big and hopefully it comes to fruition as a 3-PC Family Pack License with the right pricing would have wide spread support.

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

Just not getting why people jump on Ultimate like they got ripped off. You did get the combination of business features (complete PC backup, BitLocker, etc) and home premium features (Media Center), right?

That's what you were paying for.

If anybody really bought Vista Ultimate for the Ultimate Extras, that was a very dumb decision.

@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. :)

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I apologize in advance if Paul has discussed this already:

www.youtube.com/watch

What in the world was MS marketing thinking?

______________________________

"It’s hardware that makes a machine fast.  It’s software that makes a fast machine slow.” ~ Craig Bruce

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.

I like you mike, you’ve got a rather sharp sense of humor. Although I was wondering what purpose (if any) IE8 and FF3.5 privacy mode serves? My activities are camouflaged under hacked universities proxy servers and occasionally torproject.org all running in a virtual environment.  These methods are far more covert guarantying anonymity. In a pinch, piggybacking off my neighbor’s wifi will do just fine.

Say, I’m terribly curious if Paul has downloaded my Win7 permanent activation crack ... he said something on Leo’s show about using torrent sites to stay current with recent builds for his forthcoming book.

Microsoft private browsing built upon DRM glued together by GUID.

________________ “Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.” ~ Dave Barry