I can answer that ID---> GRATIS

With having to deal with the agony of win ME and now fighting with Vista half the time over control of my PC, I think they owe me one.

But I would settle for it being reasonably priced rather than the few hundred dollars they typically put on an OS.

The bastards charged me over one thousand dollars for two copies of Ultimate Vista. The next version of that type had better be far cheaper. As far as I'm concerned I have not gotten my monies worth. M$ should give me a free copy of W7.

Day one early adopter - gouged on price; always...

You're fault for getting it.  It's only worth the cost if you really need it.

But yes, vista probably sold enough to make up the production cost and than some - since windows 7 is largely based off vista, it should be a bit cheaper. 

Besides, our economy isn't doing too well, edging near 'suicical' if you want everyone to upgrade again and costing them several hundred $$

It should be a service pack for Vista but I doubt that would happen.

I would think the price would be alot less than Vista. Microsoft needs a large volumn of sales to help them through the recession. 

If you have'nt heard, Microsoft layed off 5000 employees today.

I would love to see a full license upgrade* for VU users for less than $100. That would make things alright in my mind between me and M$.

* I want to be able to install W7 cherry from the disk with ONLY the UV key and the W7 key needed. I cant stand the "install the old system first then install the upgrade" crap they have going now. This is especially irking when the entire system is on the disk in the first place.

My preference would be:

*Exisiting Vista users- smaller upgrade cost, maybe $50 or so;  this would help to redeem Microsoft in the light of how poor of a job they did releasing Vista

*XP users- a much higher cost, since 7 will be a much more improved OS, having the good things of Vista combined with the improvements in 7, too.  Maybe no real migration path here, or not much different than an outright purchase?

My hope would also be that there aren't tons of different flavors.  Vista Home Basic is a joke, and does there really need to be a difference between Enterprise and Business?  I also wish they wouldn't release a 32-bit version, as any machines that would realistically run 7 would be 64-bit capable anyway.

Gratis would be great, TG- from your keyboard right to G-d's ear. I'd take that one in a N.Y. second. Spartan- I feel your pain...especially since Vista had so many problems...so I side on that part of it with HG_E.

Realistically though Lord Reliant is probably closer to the mark...but as for "much higher"...dunno. Folks hold onto computers a while especially in these times, so I'd expect a smaller jump on that one. As for 32 vs. 64 bit? I'll leave to you guys who are more savvy than I.

I'm a formal opponent of (c) for software, but I'm also a pragmatist and something of a student of Microsoft license 'offerings.'

I agree that Vista rhetorically deserves a reduced upgrade cost, but doing that for real would put an unfair burden on people who don't know or care much about version histories and are still running XP with no idea it has more name after Windows. If you know enough to gripe in detail about Vista, you're in a pretty small minority of the total IT market.

That stuff aside, I believe that given the current economy plus the kerfuffles associated with Vista, something along the lines of a modest price cut would be good both for business and for customers.

In particular, I agree that the plain-folks license bundle is long overdue. 3 for $150 is a tidy place to start, but I'd also like to see something like 3 for $150 + $30 for each additional (up to say 10?) shipped to the same residential address. I'd accept the idea that workplace SKUs (Windows 7 Business) might need a slightly higher sticker, but even massive organizations are suffering in this economy, so an across-the-board modest price reduction might provide some real stimulus to new PC sales for all market segments.

As much as I use PCs and to the extent that each revision is better than the last I think that $200 is reasonable for a single license.

I think though, that license packs are the way to go for mass adoption.  Provide a steep discount for a 5-pack and sales will go up and volume will make up the difference.

I'd go 20 bucks..

maybe.

Well let's see...

I am a student with an MSDN account, soI can use whatever OS want to through MSDN. This includes everything up to Vista Ultimate. So the price is, to me, irrelevant

What would I pay for an OS? Let's say I'd consider anything up to 100$, but not more than that. XP x64 works so well that it's just pointless to pay to upgrade to anything else in the Windows family. Even if I wanted to upgrade to something newer, I guess Vista Ultimate with SP 1 would provide adequade entertainment until 7 is up for grabs on MSDN.