Proof that there really is no helping some people. MS have done a great marketing job with W7 as far as im concerned. Most people i know are more than happy with the pre-order price, i know i am. It just blows the whole"If they wasnt so greedy and it was cheaper we would stop pirating and buy it" argument out of the water. Problem is many will have Virus's in and these idiots will just spread these virus's across the net to others.

Just because you are content with the price, doesn't mean it's acceptable to most, or comparable with competitor's products. If Windows 7 Ultimate cost the same as Mac OSX Leopard for instance, I would just pay for it.

I'm so tired of hearing all this BS justifying for piracy. It is not up to you to decide how much a product is worth, it is up to the company that puts the time and effort into making it. Until you can create your own OS and realise everything that goes into making it then please just STFU.

If you can actually design and code your own OS then sell it, I take my above comment back...

You guys are so silly, it's funny how some of you have not even given vista chance. Vista and windows 7 is almost the same thing and give the same issue. I know this because I use both currently. Windows 7 is not that amazing compared to windows vista. UAC can be turned off, if you actually used the OS you could have known that. windows 7 just look pretty but it is the same thing. Apple fans and users only made everyone think that vista was really that bad. So Microsoft came up with windows 7 and give it a new look and you guys just fall for it like little babies. games are a little slower on windows 7, even if you have all the drivers for the os. I want to see what it actually does when the final release comes out.

Who are you debating with goodbird? No-one is saying anything different from that. Surely everyone knows Windows 7 is just a cleaned up Vista by now anyway.

Chowder Head, of course I can't decide how much Microsoft charge for Windows 7, but I can decide how much I will pay - which unless Microsoft were to lower their prices to say £50 (about $80) will be $0. I don't need to justify piracy by claiming Microsoft are charging too much, as I don't consider piracy to be ethically or morally wrong in the first place.

There is simply no way I will pay the prices Microsoft intend on charging for Windows 7, regardless of whether or not I could obtain a version for free via piracy - I'd just stick with XP. So it makes absolutely zero difference to Microsoft if I install a pirate copy of Windows 7 or not. In fact, it will probably aid them by preventing or delaying me from switching to Mac or Linux.

Malphas, piracy is theft. If you are comfortable with this then you wont mind if someone walks of with your computer, will you! After all you don't consider piracy (theft) to be ethically or morally wrong in the first place, do you!

@ Malphus, The pre order price is 44.99 you muppet so whats your excuse now.

Mactronix

I think that these different 7600 builds are at a similar stage to RC builds of Firefox and the like. That is, that any one of these builds are potential 'gold' candidates. If there are no showstopper bugs after the build is tested, that build should become the final build, which then gets released to the public. Otherwise a new build 7600 is compiled.

The Windows 7 RC that was released earlier isn't a 'real' release candidate, as it's just a development milestone, and in development terms, it would probably be more appropriate to name it beta 2.

Apparently, from what I've heard, builds with the potential to go gold begin with a recompile number of 16384 for some reason.

When you think of the naming that way, build 7600.16384 would be 'RC1', build 7600.16385 would be 'RC2', and if there is a build 7600.16386 in future, that would be 'RC3', and so on. The same was true with Vista, as that had a build number of 6000.16386 when it went gold, meaning it was technically the third 'release candidate'.

Hopefully, that should clear up the confusion to do with the different versions of build 7600, and hopefully I didn't instead add to the confusion by cluttering the post up with too many numbers.

WHO CARES

mactronix, just because society has deemed piracy to be theft doesn't mean that it is.

Is it theft for me to have a copy of my brothers mp3's on my computer? If he lends me the CD it's not theft, so if he lends me the mp3?

Also, if I buy a DVD, do I own the copyright to the Blu-Ray version? When I rip DVD's to .avi its not theft. It's the same thing just a different quality.

You are drawing lines in your mind about right and wrong because that's what you've been told to think.

Use your own brain and you will realise that 'piracy' is not theft.

@devilxc,
I'm not drawing any lines, I'm simply saying that at the price the "they are ripping us off so i will get a pirated version" argument isn't valid, in my opinion, You can pay the same for a console game as MS are charging pre-order for W7. That's value as far as I'm concerned.
I never even mentioned theft riveralt did. Your just as bad as malphas who said that if the price was about £50 then buying it would be considered an option. Guess you didn't do your homework just the same.
Piracy and making a copy which you are legally aloud to do are two completely different things. And how you work out buying a single copy of anything gives you any Copyright to anything is just beyond me.

Mactronix

If that was the price for the ultimate version, then fair enough I'd buy it of course. I'm not paying for a version that Microsoft has pointless stripped features out of however.

And copyright infringement isn't theft - morally, legally or logically. To use your poor analogy, if someone came to my house and took my computer without my consent, yes that would be theft, and I would be unhappy with that. However if someone came to my house, made a copy of my computer and then left again, that wouldn't be theft at all, and I wouldn't care.