Microsoft's Windows 8 Pro upgrade discount will expire in about three weeks, at which point the company will triple or even quintuple the current price of the new operating system, according to several online retailers.
On Friday, Microsoft reminded customers that a different upgrade deal will expire Jan. 31 -- one that lets purchasers of new Windows 7 PCs acquire Windows 8 Pro for $14.99 -- but made no mention of the same deadline for an upgrade from Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 on older PCs.
[ Windows 8 is here, and InfoWorld covers Microsoft's new direction, the touch interface for tablet and desktop apps, the transition from Windows 7, and more in the Windows 8 Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay atop key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]
That discount, also set to end Jan. 31, prices a download upgrade to Windows 8 Pro at $39.99, or $69.99 for a DVD.
Microsoft announced both deals in mid-2012, and began selling the upgrades in October when Windows 8 debuted in retail.
According to online retailers, including Amazon, Newegg and TigerDirect, the DVD-based Windows 8 Pro upgrade carries a suggested list price of $199.99, or nearly triple the now-discounted price of $69.99.
Although Microsoft has repeatedly declined to comment on post-January pricing plans for Windows 8 Pro, its past pricing practices sync with the $199.99 list price: An upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, analogous to Windows 8 Pro, has always been priced at $199.99. Microsoft's e-store currently lists it at that price.
It's unknown whether Microsoft will continue to sell Windows 8 Pro as a download after the discount expires, and if it does, at what cost. If the price of a download is identical to the boxed copy -- Microsoft has priced downloads and DVDs identically in the past -- then the OS price will jump five-fold on Feb. 1.
The company has also declined to answer questions about Windows 8, the less-capable edition pre-installed on most new consumer PCs. But its silence has effectively confirmed that there will never be a Windows 8, as opposed to Windows 8 Pro, upgrade.
There is another, less-expensive, option after Jan. 31: Windows System Builder, the version for do-it-yourselfers who assemble their own machines, and who want to run Windows in a virtual machine or dual-boot configuration. While the new "Personal Use License" of System Builder bans using it as "an upgrade license for an existing underlying Windows operating system," there's nothing stopping customers from using it to do a "clean install," the term for installing an operating system on a reformatted hard drive.
