WinXP pricing data gets ‘disappeared’ by Amazon

Amazon clearly must have jumped the gun when it published pricing for Windows XP yesterday; reports from Register readers that came in last night during our beauty sleep tell us first, that Amazon did get a price together for an upgrade to WinXP Professional, and second, that the prices got pulled shortly afterwards.

As of 3pm GMT today, a search for Windows XP on amazon.com was reporting four hits in the software category, but wasn't showing the specific entries. So, gone, but not yet quite forgotten by the search system.

From these antics we can conclude that Microsoft has set prices for Windows XP, has communicated these to at least a couple of its extra special vendor friends, and that it intends to roll with a pricing, preordering and hyping announcement any time now. Amazon wouldn't have had the info prepared and poised to roll unless this was going to happen fairly soon, and in order to avoid leaks, Microsoft likewise wouldn't have told them.

But strangely, Microsoft may well have been fairly sure about the prices it intended to charge for quite some time. When beta 2 of WinXP shipped one of our sources in Redmond told us that a pricing announcement at that time had been a possibility. And actually he seemed surprised that it hadn't happened then.

Barring last minute changes of plan, the prices for XP will be as follows: XP Professional, $299.99; XP Professional Upgrade version (the one we were missing yesterday) $199.99; XP Home Edition $199.99; XP Home Edition Upgrade $99.99. Look out for the MS release telling you why this is cheap RSN.

Meanwhile, if anybody has any info on how the trigger got pulled by mistake at Amazon, we'd love to hear from them... ®