Baker compared Microsoft's pricing and lack of a "family pack" to Apple's aggressive moves at the beginning of the month when it announced that Mac OS X 10.6, the performance and stability upgrade known as "Snow Leopard," would be for a single-user license, $49 for a five-license pack. Apple traditionally charges $129 for an operating system upgrade.

"Apple's Snow Leopard pricing model is much more appropriate to driving adoption and raising customer satisfaction levels," argued Baker. "This is a direction I would have much preferred to see Microsoft head."

Microsoft's response, when asked if it was planning a family-pack for Windows 7, was noncommittal. "We expect to have other great offers in the future as we lead up to and beyond general availability," a spokeswoman said via instant messaging. "[But] we have nothing to announce at this time."

On the bright side, said Baker, Microsoft has so far managed the rollout of Windows 7 "pretty darn well," especially when compared to the disaster of Vista, which launched in January 2007, one of the worst-possible months to introduce an operating system at retail.

"There's plenty of time between now and October for people to buy PCs, and get free upgrades," he said, referring to the , which Microsoft also announced today. "And they've dramatically reduced prices of some upgrades with the $50 offer. That's pretty slick, and a great way to build up buzz."