According to Microsoft it is considering to ship Windows 7 on USB
flash drives
to allow netbook owners to more easily upgrade their machines:

The move, which is still under consideration, is one of several things Microsoft has looked at to try to make it convenient to upgrade machines that don’t come with a CD or DVD drives.

Microsoft executives have said that they recognize that upgrading Netbooks poses a challenge and are exploring ways that the company can make it easier. In an interview on Thursday, Senior Vice President Bill Veghte said that Microsoft had nothing to announce on that front.

Although a USB flash drive could offer the simplest way to move a Netbook to Windows 7, there are other options. Buyers with an external drive could hook up that to their Netbook, while another option would be an upgrade through a service such as Best Buy’s Geek Squad. Microsoft also sells a downloadable version of Windows today, so, in theory it could do the same with Windows 7, allowing buyers to put the OS on their own thumb drive.

Matt Bonin, a merchant director at Best Buy, said this week that the company is aiming to work with Geek Squad to develop services to streamline Windows 7 upgrades. As for Netbooks, he said the company recognizes the challenge they present and said the store already offers services to load other types of software, such as antivirus programs.

via. Guru3D

A leaked internal memo from Best Buy reveals how much it is going to cost you to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7. For example, a Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade will set you back $49.99 and the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade $99.99, according to the memo. Compared to current upgrade prices to Vista (Vista Home Premium SP1 Upgrade for $122.99 at Newegg, for example) these Windows 7 upgrades are quite cheap. The only catch is: “this will be available for 16 days through July 11, 2009″, thus limiting it to those mentioned 16 days only.

Besides that, the memo states: “any PC sold with Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate between June 26th and the Windows 7 launch day (October 22nd) will be eligible for a free upgrade to Win7.”

via. Guru3D.com

Microsoft has set the launch date for its new Windows 7 operating system.

Bill Veghte, SVP of the Windows business, is quoted as saying: “We feel confident that we will deliver Windows 7 with our partners on Oct. 22.”

Gizmodo reports that this date has been confirmed by Microsoft. It seems as though this will be the General Availability (GA) date when consumers can actually purchase the software and PCs with the software preinstalled.

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Earlier on we reported that Microsoft would be enforcing a three-application limit on Windows 7 Starter edition. This particular limitation would hinder the user running more than three applications at once.

Microsoft seems to really want to do it right with Windows 7 and Via the Windows 7 Team Blog, Microsoft today has confirmed that the limit will not exist in the final version of the operating system:

There of course will also be Windows 7 Starter edition, but based on the feedback we’ve received from partners and customers asking us to enable a richer small notebook PC experience with Windows 7 Starter, we’ve decided to make some changes compared to previous Starter editions. For the first time, we will be making Windows 7 Starter available worldwide on small notebook PCs. We are also going to enable Windows 7 Starter customers the ability to run as many applications simultaneously as they would like, instead of being constricted to the 3 application limit that the previous Starter editions included.

This is good news for future netbook customers who want Windows 7. Now if Microsoft plays their cards right and will make pricing interesting as well, they might have something special in their hands.

I’ve been fooling around with Windows 7 for a while now, and though I do feel it’s very similar to Vista, it works really well, and the overall experience is just so much better than Windows Vista.

I’ve been installing the last release candidate on a SSD as well, just to see if I’d notice and performance differences, and good news there as well. It’s a lot faster, so the overall experience we here at Guru3D is going to be great. Now let’s hope we see some DX11 games at launch time as well

via. Guru3D

Some new details about Windows 7 pricing have emerged from Dell, via CNET’s Brooke Crothers, it indicates that Windows 7 license prices will be much higher than with Vista.

Windows 7 pricing is potentially an obstacle to Windows 7 adoption for some users, though in just about every other aspect the operating system is beating Vista, according to a Dell marketing executive. “If there’s one thing that may influence adoption, make things slower or cause customers to pause, it’s that generally the ASPs (average selling price) of the operating systems are higher than they were for Vista and XP,” Darrel Ward, director of product management for Dell’s business client product group, said in a phone interview, referring to the various versions of the Windows 7 operating system that are expected to appear.

Ward continued. “In tough economic times, I think it’s naive to believe that you can increase your prices on average and then still see a stronger swell than if you held prices flat or even lowered them. I can tell you that the licensing tiers at retail are more expensive than they were for Vista.” In the business market, Windows 7 Professional is expected to be more expensive than Windows Vista Business, the version that Professional is replacing, he said. Some schools and smaller businesses may not be early adopters due to price. “Schools and government agencies may not be able to afford (the additional cost). Some of the smaller businesses may not be able to enjoy the software as soon as they’d like,” Ward said.

Much like the Vista ready propaganda, a new logo logo popped up for fow Windows 7 compatible hardware.

This “Compatible with Windows 7″ logo was apparently leaked to some members of the press. Obviously it makes sense that this logo can be slapped on computer hardware and software, compatible with Windows 7. Obviously you’d need to get your hardware of software certified by Microsoft and spend some serious cash to be able to use the logo, but yeah .. that’s Microsoft.

Okay you guys ready ..? *drum-roll*

The Windows 7 Release Candidate is available for download by MSDN or TechNet members now and will be available for others to download on May 5th, according to the Microsoft Partner Site.

We are pleased to announce that Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is available. Windows 7 RC is the prerelease version of Windows 7. Since this is not the final release, your PC will gather and send information to Microsoft engineers to help them check the fixes and changes made based on testing of Windows 7 Beta.

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