The exact product pricing announced by Microsoft this morning for the upcoming Windows 7 release in October may not mean much to various enterprise clients with separately negotiated volume licensing agreements, but the trend may be indicative of what you can expect next time negotiations roll around: look for discounts.

Microsoft is knocking up to %20 off of the full retail package product suggested pricing on some Windows versions, and taking off up to %50 for pre-orders. This mostly seems to affect the home versions; Windows 7 Professional actually sees a minor price increase over Vista Business ($299.99 versus $299.95). This probably reflects the idea that Microsoft has businesses over a barrel: many of you have locked yourselves into their product, and they know it. But I suspect the lock isn't as strong as they think it is, and depending on how order volumes look later this year, I imagine there will be some softening even on the business price points.

In some ways, businesses have an easier time of managing an operating system transition than individuals. Businesses have paid IT staff, or can hire IT staff, who can provide options and suggest alternatives to extend their existing platform or move to a new one. Most individual consumers are stuck with whatever the PC they purchase happens to ship with. And as has been pointed out repeatedly, they rarely factor in the operating system cost as a component of that purchase... it's built in. Business, on the other hand, sees the licensing costs distinctly and is more likely to factor them into upgrade decisions.

I'm not throwing this out there as a sign of weakness on Microsoft's part or as a thing to attempt to take advantage of. Whether they are making the decision out of based on this factor or not, it happens that lowering the pricing for 7 is both the right and the realistic thing to do after the terribly botched Vista release. After years of expecting customers to smile after being served a steaming pile of... well, you know... it's about time to see some hint of a mea culpa out of the company.