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Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system launches July 29th, and while the software is available as a free upgrade for anyone running a legitimately licensed version of Windows 7 or later, you’ll also be able to buy a Windows 10 license for installation on a new PC.
Prices will start at $110 for an OEM version of Windows 10 or $120 for a full version. Want to save some money? Just buy a copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8 now and you’ll be able to upgrade for free in July.
You can find stores selling the older versions of Windows for as little as $65, which means you could save about half the price of Windows 10 license. As an added bonus, if you don’t want to use Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7 has at least one feature that won’t be included in Windows 10: Windows Media Center.
Here are some of the day’s best deals.
Windows
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM for $65 – Amazon
- Windows 8.1 Home Premium 64-bit OEM for $80 – Newegg (coupon:Â EMCATKW92)
- Windows 7 64-bit Pro OEM for $70 – Amazon
- Windows 8.1 64-bit full version for $99 – Amazon
- Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit OEM for $120 – Newegg (coupon:Â EMCATKW93)
Computers
- Asus X200MA 11.6″ touchscreen Windows laptop for $230 – Best Buy
- Asus Zenbook UX305 13″ ultrabook w/Core M for $599 – Microsoft Store (coupon: PCGRAD15)
- HP Pavilion x360 11″ convertible notebook w/Pentium N3520 for $250 – Woot
- Asus Chromebox w/Core i3 Haswell for $229 – Amazon
Smartphones and wearables
- Motorola Moto G (2nd gen) smartphone for $140 – Amazon
- Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S6 for $530 – 232tech (via eBay)
- Refurb Samsung Gear S smartwatch (and AT&T phone) for $180 – Woot
- Jawbone Up24 wristbands for $50 each – Best Buy
Other hardware
- Anker 10,000 mAh external battery with flashlight and car starter for $60 – Amazon
- Crucial 960GB SATA III 2.5″ SSD for $280 – TigerDirect
- Patriot 64GB microSDXC card for $20 – Newegg (coupon:Â EMCATKW35)
Digital goods
- Name your price for $300+ worth of educational eBooks – Humble Bundle
- Pay $5 or more for a bundle of Dynamite digital comics – StoryBundle
- Marvel Unlimited 1-year subscription for $55 – Marvel (coupon: HERO)
- Save 10% on iTunes gift cards – Best Buy
You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.
Unless something has changed, you can buy a WMC add-on to Win8.1 for a relatively small amount of money, and that would give you access to things like the Netflix Metro app.
$100 is a small amount of money? ‘Cause that’s what the Windows 8 Pro Pack costs, and that’s the only way to get WMC for the vast, VAST majority of Win8 users.
Thanks for the heads-up on the Win7 sale, Brad. I’ll be grabbing at least one spare license (heavy WMC user here due to my CableCard tuner).
I’m pretty sure Artinvent is correct. And for a time Microsoft was giving it away for free.
It’s a $10 upgrade from Windows 8 PRO, which no one uses. It costs $100 for the standard edition. And their “freebie” also only applied to Windows 8 Pro. The product code couldn’t be used with regular Windows 8. I’m speaking from personal experience.
I use Pro–I think it was one of the cheap upgrades when Win8 launched.
I was for a long time under the mistaken assumption that you have to buy the Pro Pack for 8.1 to get Media Center which is $100. However you are correct, the MC pack is separate and only $10.
I am wondering if this will be disabled if you upgrade from 8.1 to 10. Since 10 is not going to have it. Anyone know?
Nope. The only way you can get Media Center for $10 is if you have Windows 8.1 *PRO*, which is a rare beast indeed. For the 99.9% of us who run Windows 8.1 Plebe Edition, we have to buy the Pro Pack, and that’s $100.
The evil genius at Microsoft who came up with the “$10 upgrade” half-truth really needs to get into politics. That zombie lie will absolutely not freaking die.
Windows 10 won’t support WMC… So you need a earlier Windows version to run it, but if you already have a copy of Windows 7 then you could opt to just run it in a VM on Windows 10 if you want best of both worlds or dual boot…
If you don’t have Windows 8.1 Pro then it does require upgrading to Pro first before getting WMC… and that’ll cost more…
So opting for a copy of Windows 7 may be a cheaper option… it’ll still be supported until 2020 as well… Only up side to getting W8.1 Pro is that a possible deciding factor is the free upgrade to Windows 10 is to the same version you have… So if you have Pro then you upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and that may bring enough extras to mitigate the extra cost…
Alternatively, if you have a XBox One… MS is basically moving all the HTPC functionality to the XBox One and adding it to the device ecosystem by streaming to any Windows 10 device…
Though, MS has stated that if you already have WMC then they’ll give you the DVD codec for Windows 10 to still be able to play DVD’s natively… So also depends what aspect of WMC you really want to keep…
Always so simple with microsoft
They have to buy codecs to play DVDs and such, and didn’t want to do that for every copy of Windows, so they created an add-on for people who want that functionality.