“For Windows enthusiasts who are planning ahead, Microsoft is running a promotion that will offer a more than 50 percent discount on the premium and professional upgrade versions of the operating system.

From June 26 to July 11, consumers in the U.S. can pre-order the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade for $49.99 and the Windows 7 Professional upgrade for $99.99. The offer will be available online via retailers like Best Buy, Amazon.com, or the Microsoft Store.“

I find this insulting. Apple is doing something similar with their Mac OS X Snow Leopard operating system upgrade, except there’s only 1 version of Snow Leopard. That’s right, no “Pro,” “Home,” “Ultimate,” etc, just 1 version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. The price is $29 for Leopard users to upgrade (for users of non-Leopard versions, Mac OS X Snow Leopard will cost $129). In addition to that, as a Mac OS X Leopard owner I have the option to upgrade up to 5 Leopard-based Macs to Snow Leopard for $49, whereas with Microsoft $49.99 gets you one license for a crap version of Windows 7. So far I haven’t found a specific time frame to buy Snow Leopard to take advantage of the pricing, but Windows users have barely two weeks to take advantage of Microsoft’s pre-order pricing.

To put it in more simple terms: for $50 I can either upgrade 5 Macs with Mac OS X Leopard to Mac OS X Snow Leopard, or I can upgrade 1 computer with Vista to a low-end version of Windows 7 (… or I can upgrade all of my Macs and Windows computers free of charge to Linux Mint 7).

Let’s say that someone isn’t eligible for or falls outside of Microsoft’s window of opportunity. In that case Windows 7 Home Premium jumps to $119.99 for an upgrade and $199.99 for the retail version. Similarly, Mac OS X Snow Leopard will cost $129 across the board for Mac OS X Tiger users (with Intel-based Macs). For an additional $40 ($169 total) those Tiger users can buy the Mac Box Set that includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09 (if purchased individually, iLife and iWork cost $79 per suite).

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