Silicon Shecky

It seems that the whole limited time offer for the Windows 7 Family Pack was real limited. Microsoft has announced that the pack is no longer available, at least from them. Some resellers still have copies of it, and are now inflating the price for it since it is a rare item.

Why write up a blog about this, you might ask. Simple, it was a stroke of marketing genius for the family pack to come about, but not only that, its now stupid to take it away. The thought process goes like this:

1) Make Family pack available for a limited time. People will buy more Windows 7 increasing market share and adoption

2) Cut it off after X amount have been sold so we don’t loose too much in profits.

The problem is in this economy, the Family Pack was a spur to make the change over from XP or Vista in households that have more than 1 computer. Considering that more than 1 computer in a house is more the norm than the exception, why cut it off. At $149 it was a steal of a deal for those that got it. Great for the tough economic times. What Microsoft should have done though was continue the family pack at say $250 to $300 since it still would be a savings compared to purchasing the individual licenses, yet not cut into the profits the way that $149 for a 3 pack. A value still, and value is what is needed to spur on the economy.

Instead, what happens now is that adoption slows down to new PCs sold for the home. Unfortunately for Microsoft, XP still just works fine for most people, and right now most consumers would rather drive their current hardware into the ground than purchase a new PC. The money for that new PC goes towards food or clothing instead.

Windows 7 will run nicely on most current hardware from the past 3 years. Maybe you need a little more memory, or a new hard drive, but that is really about it depending on space and resources. Hard Drives and Memory are inexpensive upgrades.

Also, now you give people more of a reason to try and pirate Windows 7. They had the taste of lower cost for Windows, and once you open that box, you can’t quite close it.

Microsoft has not said that they won’t do something like the Family Pack again, but they haven’t said they would either. Guess only time will tell if doing it this way was the smart move.