Microsoft has pulled the plug on its Windows 7 Family Pack, whereby customers could pick up three licenses to Windows 7 Home Premium edition upgrade licenses for $150. The Family Pack was announced with the rest of Windows 7 pricing in July 2009, and Microsoft touted it as a limited offer that would run while “supplies last;” however, the company’s move to cancel the bundled offering right in the middle of the end-of-year holiday buying season has some consumers accusing Microsoft of a money grab.
Microsoft has not commented on why it cancelled the Family Pack, noting only that the Family Pack was a limited offer to encourage upgrades in selected market regions. Although some copies of the Family Pack are still available through retailers (some of whom are raising the prices on their remaining units), Microsoft is now recommending customers who wish to upgrade to Windows 7 purchase individual upgrade licenses. The Windows 7 Family Pack went on sale with Windows 7 itself on October 22, meaning its lifetime in the marketplace was just over six weeks.
It’s possible Microsoft’s timing could be worse…but not by much. Microsoft and most of its channel partners acknowledge that most consumers upgrade to a new version of Windows only when they buy a new PC; given that new systems will be holiday purchases for a significant number of consumers, those purchases would seem to be the most opportune time to offer the Family Pack to upgrade additional PCs already in consumers’ homes. Now, faced with an option of only full-priced upgrades for every machine, most consumers buying a new PC will skip out on upgrading those systems to Windows 7 at all.
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