Advance Orders Crash Microsoft as Windows 7 completely outsells Vista on Pre Orders

[JohnDotCom]

Microsoft began taking pre-orders for Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional on Wednesday as planned.
What wasn't planned was for Microsoft's servers to grind to a halt because of demand.
The two pre-order versions shot to the top of Amazon's chart, selling more copies in its first eight hours than Vista did in its entire 17 week pre-order period.

Windows 7 pre-order demand leaves Microsoft's servers begging for mercy 12:13PM, Wednesday 15th July 2009

Microsoft and its launch partners began taking pre-orders for Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional in the UK at midnight as expected, but demand for the 'limited' pre-order offer meant the company's servers ground to a halt this morning. The software giant is offering Windows 7 Home Premium for £49.99 and Windows 7 Professional for £99.99 until 10 August, but it said that "you'll have to be quick as prices are low, stocks are limited and it is first come first served."
Unfortunately, at the time of writing, servers for Microsoft's Online Store were unreachable - an apologetic message from Microsoft was all we could muster in our attempts to get to the site.
"Due to the eagerly anticipated Windows 7 pre-order offer we're experiencing a higher level of demand on our website than usual," the message read. "This means you can't access the site right now and we're sorry about that. We'll be back up and running as soon as we can so please try again soon to get your hands on a copy of Windows 7!"
It doesn't say much for Microsoft's ability to cope with demand, so we should be thankful that it has teamed up with a number of retail partners, who seem to be able to cope better with the demand than Microsoft itself. The partners include Amazon, Currys, Ebuyer, PC World and Play.
Ebuyer.com appears to be the cheapest if you're looking to buy Windows 7 Professional, but the site greets you with the message "Sorry, this product is currently out of stock" when you click the buy button. Amazon.co.uk, therefore, is the cheapest place to pre-order the two versions of Windows 7 currently on offer. Windows 7 Professional is priced at £89.97, while Windows Home Premium is £44.97 - two pence cheaper than it is on Ebuyer.
Just hours after release, Windows 7 raced to number one on the Amazon UK software chart and the retailer said that "Demand was so high that more copies of Windows 7 were pre-ordered in its first eight hours on site than Windows Vista achieved in its entire 17 week pre-order period."
That's pretty much the final nail in the coffin for Vista, we reckon.

In related news, Microsoft announced that businesses will be able to get hold of Windows 7 from September 1st.
This gives businesses an eight-week headstart over consumers, who will get Windows 7 on 22nd October.

[Raistlin]

I ordered mine from Comet.

I already had a £50 voucher left over from Christmas

It had better be as good as everybody says.

[JohnDotCom]

Its far, far better than any version of Vista and NT and Windows Server 2003 R2 etc.
and should even make XP users change eventually.

[e668ecp]

Office 2010 is quite good too!

Think I might even change to Windows 7 too

XP and NT are still the best though

[Jim75]

Originally Posted by Raistlin

It had better be as good as everybody says.

Hi Dave
I've been running a beta of 7 on a seperate partition from XP and I'm very impressed especially with hardware installation which is easier and quicker in 7

[Raistlin]

Originally Posted by JohnDotCom

Its far, far better than any version of Vista and NT and Windows Server 2003 R2 etc.
and should even make XP users change eventually.

Well, I never had a moment's problem with Vista John and on both occasions when I've tried to install W7 over a previous installation it's wrecked the PC.