Redmond (ip-192.com): Microsoft has decided to discontinue its $150 Windows 7 Family Pack offering just in time for Christmas. Potential customers interested in the offer will find a simple note on the page dedicated to the Family Pack "Thank you for your interest in Windows 7. The Windows 7 Family Pack offer has ended." Retailers were quick to take advantage of Family Pack's disappearance to hike prices of their remaining copies of the three-PC upgrade by as much as 90 percent.

The $149.99 offering represented a savings of $210 over three separate copies of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade, which lists for $119.99 per copy. Windows 7 has been the hottest operating system of the holiday season, outselling Windows Vista by as much as 234 percent in initial sales.

Customers are now confused as they expected the deal would last longer. Microsoft did, however, initially indicate that the deal would only be around while supplies last. Apparently in each country where the family pack was offered, Microsoft allotted a set number of units, and once that number was sold the deal was pulled.

Windows XP is still the most used platform worldwide with a share of over 69 percent, Vista comes in second at 18.55 percent, and Windows 7 grabbed a bit over 5 percent of the OS market since its introduction. Support for Windows XP SP2 will be ending on July 13, 2010, so Microsoft may just count on home user and corporate customers to boost sales for the new OS in the New Year.

However, support for Windows XP, SP3 will continue until 2014, which gives enterprise customers 4 more years to use existing hardware before finally settling on a new OS. Over 2 Million downloads of XP SP3, which can be found here indicate that many customers are not in a hurry to buy Microsoft’s new Windows 7.

Related posts:

1. No discounts for Windows 7 anymore
2. New Apple OS pre-orders sky-high
3. Microsoft Pulls Security Update
4. IE 6 and 7: New zero-day exploit
5. Microsoft: Anti-Linux training for Best Buy?